Nikola Jokić's defense, Jayson Tatum's glass work and more NBA trends I'm watching

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Will Nikola Jokić’s defense sink as low as it has for most of this season, or might it rebound to respectable levels when games matter most? For years, Jokić’s defense has been either overrated or underrated, depending on who you ask. One side argues that because opponents toss him into pick-and-rolls aplenty and he’s not a consistent rim protector, he is thus a disaster. Another takes the other extreme: the advanced numbers, especially the ones focused more on his dominant defensive rebounding, paint him as a top-notch defender, so the stats are telling us a story our eyes cannot see in full. Reality is somewhere in the middle. Jokić is no Victor Wembanyama, but he hadn’t been a modern-day Enes Kanter Freedom, either. He’s a clever team defender, can delay lots of opponents’ actions, has soft hands and is one of the league’s better centers at forcing turnovers. But over the second half of this season, specifically since he returned from a knee injury in January, Jokić has fallen into a Kanter-esque form. Too often, his hands are by his side with his posture upright. Or, he’s too slow to rotate over and help. Or, he slides out of the way as a dribbler approaches the basket. The Nuggets have dipped into the bottom 10 in points allowed per possession. But with the playoffs in sight, the old-school Jokić has broken out. He’s returning to competence. He blocked three shots during the Nuggets’ remarkable win over the San Antonio Spurs this past weekend. Two of them came against perimeter players who drove to the hoop but couldn’t speed past him. Then, tricky Jokić showed up a game later during a thrilling, 17-point, fourth-quarter comeback over the Portland Trail Blazers. He had five steals, including one second-half play when he manned the back end of pick-and-roll, cut off a drive from Deni Avdija and poked a dribble away from the All-NBA hopeful, which led to a fast break and Bruce Brown free throws. The Nuggets don’t need to clamp down like the Oklahoma City Thunder or Detroit Pistons to challenge in the West. The offense is so dynamic that the defense has to be just good enough. That starts with Jokić performing as he has of late. Jayson Tatum’s jumper is returning, a horrifying development for the other Eastern Conference contenders. And yet, the missed shots still stand out most. Tatum has moved like the All-NBA version of himself in his month-long comeback from an Achilles tear. The off-the-dribble work, the cadence, the passing, the physicality — it’s indistinguishable from the guy who led the Boston Celtics to a title less than two years ago. Boston looks scary, especially because Tatum actually appears improved at one essential aspect of the game. No, his misses aren’t standing out. Instead, it’s the ones from Celtics opponents, which are food for Tatum. Tatum has been one of the NBA’s best-rebounding wings since he became a pro nine years ago but he’s never feasted on the glass like this. He pulled down 18 boards, 12 in the first half, during his triple-double against the Miami Heat last week. He’s reached double-digits in the rebound column in more than half of his games played. And that doesn’t even begin to explain his impact down low. Tatum possesses a Dennis Rodman-esque intuition to track where the ball might ricochet not long after it rolls off a shooter’s fingertips. Next time you tune into a Celtics game, watch Tatum drift into the lane as an opponent rises for a jumper. He understands angles in a way that most wings don’t. Notice the ball bouncing straight to him one or two times without more context, and you may believe he’s getting lucky. But he’s making his own good fortune. And he’s doing that more than ever. Heading into Thursday night’s action, Tatum had rebounded 31.3 percent of opponents’ misses while on the court this season. For perspective, if that number belonged to a qualifying player for the full season, it would rank third in the NBA, behind two big men, Wembanyama and Karl-Anthony Towns. Tatum isn’t just rebounding like a top-notch wing anymore. He’s outdoing centers. And he’s not just chasing down long rebounds, which is one of the Celtics’ many fortes. The proof? He has grabbed 4.7 defensive boards in the paint per 100 rebound chances, according to Second Spectrum. The only players in the NBA, qualifying or not, who have averaged more this season are Wembanyama, Towns, Jokić and Jusuf Nurkić. No non-big man is close to Tatum. The Celtics’ defensive-rebounding rollercoaster has an argument as the most surprising turnaround in the NBA this season. They don’t employ players with a reputation for tremendous individual rebounding. On Dec. 1, they were last in the league in defensive rebound rate. But since that date, they have been second. They have jostled around defensive coverages to fix the issues. Their bigs stay closer to the basket now. Their box-out and crashing strategies are innovative, as I outlined in December. And now, Tatum makes them even better. Their defensive-rebound rate goes up a gargantuan 6.4 percentage points when Tatum is on the floor, according to Cleaning the Glass. It’s just one more way an elite player has added to a team that was already rolling when he returned. Daniss Jenkins’ mother broke the news. The public had been pronouncing the point guard’s name incorrectly all season, she told the Pistons’ broadcast. It’s not DAN-iss, like the DAN in “dance.” It’s DAY-niss, like the DAY in “This dude who barely made the roster is now dominating every DAY.” What’s a better sign of vast improvement than going from a mispronounced name to what’s becoming, at least in Detroit, a household one? Pistons star Cade Cunningham returned to the court Wednesday after missing 11 games with a collapsed lung, but Jenkins can’t and won’t go away. The Pistons went 8-3 without Cunningham, 9-3 if you include the game when he got hurt midway through the first quarter. The main character during this stretch has been the second-year up-and-comer, Jenkins, who was on a two-way contract earlier this season and is now an essential cog on the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed. Jenkins averaged 18.9 points, 7.6 assists and 4.2 rebounds during the 11 games without Cunningham. He went for 30 points and eight assists in an unexpected victory over the at-the-time streaking Los Angeles Lakers. He dished out 14 assists during a road blowout of the Philadelphia 76ers. Detroit entered this season in need of another playmaker it could deploy not just behind Cunningham but also alongside him. They now have one. One trend to watch come the postseason will be how often Jenkins and Cunningham play together. The Dennis Schröder three-month honeymoon in Detroit last season gave the Pistons a reliable option behind Cunningham as well as an outlet next to him. Come the playoffs, head coach J.B. Bickerstaff was pairing his two point guards together often. A go-to strategy for anyone who plays the Pistons will be to send two defenders at Cunningham on pick-and-rolls, which ideally gets the ball out of his hands and forces another player to create. That’s when a safety net is handy. Detroit isn’t loaded with shooting or facilitating, but a dual point guard lineup gives it another weapon. And if Jenkins is rolling, picking at advantages on the second side as defenses worry about the head of the snake, maybe Pistons’ opponents think a smidgen harder about blitzing Cunningham. And even if they don’t, at least they will pronounce Jenkins’ name correctly in the next day’s film session. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Fred Katz is a senior NBA writer for The Athletic. Follow Fred on Twitter @FredKatz