{"id":868444,"date":"2026-10-26T18:15:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T18:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/868444\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T18:15:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T18:15:15","slug":"was-nikola-jokic-wrong-for-calling-out-fans-for-booing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/868444\/","title":{"rendered":"Was Nikola Jokic wrong for calling out fans for booing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Troy Renck: After the Nuggets defense disappeared for three quarters, Nikola Jokic<\/a> became a ghost, an overnight expert in boos<\/a>. Lost in the college football shuffle \u2014 CU is not hard to find at the bottom of the Big 12 conference and CSU celebrated a miracle by holding San Diego State under 50 points<\/a> \u2014 the Nuggets opened their home season on Saturday. It set up as a soft landing to return to the fans\u2019 warm embrace as they clobbered the sorry New Orleans Pelicans. As is their wont, the Nuggets decided not to contest layups, leading to a 73-57 halftime deficit. The crowd let the Nuggets have it as they walked off the court. Jokic did not approve, saying fans who booed in the overtime win \u201cwere not welcome anymore.\u201d Is he right or wrong in his opinion?\n<\/p>\n

Sean Keeler: The Joker may own a room with 19,905 people in it, but that doesn\u2019t mean he can always read it.<\/a> The Nuggets and their fans are in what Facebook, in the old days, would call a \u201ccomplicated\u201d relationship right now. The latter loves the former, and always will. They\u2019ve hung in there through thin air and even thinner rosters. But the NBA is a playoff league. Pro basketball is a playoff sport, and the wounds from that first-round stinker against Minnesota this past spring are still fresh and still very, very real. Before this past weekend, the last time they saw the Nuggets up close, David Adelman\u2019s team was getting blown out of a building they shouldn\u2019t have by a team they shouldn\u2019t have. When one of the worst units in the West in the Pelicans walks into your house and drops 73 points on you over the first two quarters<\/a> \u2014 yeah, the natives are going to get restless.<\/p>\n

Renck: In nearly 36 years of covering professional sports, I have learned not to tell people how to spend their discretionary income or how to vocalize their feelings. In general, it is uncomfortable when the home crowd turns on its team. Jokic seemed hurt. But it also highlighted a disconnect between players and fans. When fans boo, they have not disavowed their allegiance. They are frustrated, and, ironically, they often reach their boiling point sooner following years of success. That creates expectations of competence, if not brilliance. The Nuggets\u2019 fans want to believe this team can make another title run. So when defense becomes optional, as it was the last time the Nuggets were in Ball Arena during the embarrassing Timberwolves series, the fans become hot. Fans don\u2019t deserve wins. But they do deserve consistent effort.<\/p>\n

Keeler: You have to put the entire offseason in context, too. Since June, the Nuggets traded away their most athletic player in a salary dump; let their best bench player and backup center walk in free agency; let go of a beloved play-by-play announcer and color analyst; and cried poor with every turn. It\u2019s not Joker\u2019s fault he\u2019s making $59 million<\/a> or Jamal Murray\u2019s fault he\u2019s making $50 million.<\/a> But it is their responsibility \u2014 and part of their responsibility to perform. Which they did.<\/p>\n

Renck: There\u2019s another element of play: ticket prices and gambling. Not sure if you have noticed, but the economy is pinching a lot of people. So when folks decide to dip into the college fund to attend a game, they want the players to care as much as they do. It\u2019s not realistic in an 82-game season, but fans aren\u2019t wrong to believe it should be. Also, too many people have money on the games, from three-leg parlays to halftime over-unders. In my opinion, it has sapped the public\u2019s patience, making it less forgiving. Jokic has earned the right to say and do anything he wants as the greatest player in franchise history. However, he would be better served to see the full picture rather than demand blind loyalty from fans.<\/p>\n

Keeler: The Nuggets are one of the NBA\u2019s \u201cAvis\u201d franchises \u2014 they have to try harder, even in the good times.<\/a>\u00a0 ESPN has wanted the Nuggs to go away for most of the last eight years, especially as The Jokic-Murray Era reached its apex<\/a> and MIchael Malone\u2019s dudes began knocking out the teams (Lakers, cough, LeBron, cough) that were better for Disney\u2019s bottom line. But when Michael Wilbon said last week that the Nuggets were \u201cteetering on irrelevance\u201d nationally, it was hard to argue. That hurt. There\u2019s only one way this team can kick that narrative in the teeth, and games such as Saturday\u2019s don\u2019t help. At all.<\/p>\n

Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver\u2019s teams.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Troy Renck: After the Nuggets defense disappeared for three quarters, Nikola Jokic became a ghost, an overnight expert…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3796],"tags":[2276,7,4928,5486,250,301,187,14010,7678,130,3726,712,762,165,307,152,252,6,478,470,4073,4072,253,302,4097,179,675,4098,8869,66,198,3788,8870],"class_list":["post-868444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-orleans-pelicans","tag-ball-arena","tag-basketball","tag-big-12","tag-college-football","tag-david-adelman","tag-denver","tag-denver-nuggets","tag-disney","tag-economy","tag-espn","tag-football","tag-gambling","tag-jamal-murray","tag-latest-headlines","tag-minnesota","tag-minnesota-timberwolves","tag-more-nuggets-news","tag-nba","tag-new-orleans","tag-new-orleans-pelicans","tag-neworleans","tag-neworleanspelicans","tag-nikola-jokic","tag-nuggets","tag-nuggets-takes","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-pelicans","tag-sean-keeler","tag-sean-keeler-versus","tag-sports","tag-sports-columnists","tag-troy-renck","tag-troy-renck-versus"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}