It was a little over 2,700+ days since the Miami Heat hadn’t won a game in Denver, but Butler and company didn’t let the Nuggets take a 2-0 lead and they won the game 111-108 over the home team.

It’s obvious the Nuggets have an almost addictive dependency on Nikola Jokic, without him it’s unlikely they’ll win the NBA Finals or even go far in the regular season.

The problem is that when Jokic has a magical night things tend to go wrong for the Nuggets, especially when he scores more than forty points.

How many playoff games have the Nuggets lost when Jokic scores 40+ points?

So far the Denver Nuggets have a playoff losing record of 0-4 in games where Nikola Jokic has scored 40+ points, three of those games were in 2023 and one in 2019.

Source of Stats @thescorebet

It seems that the Nuggets should prevent Jokic from scoring 40 points or more since that could bring bad luck, his teammates tend to relax and think ‘he already did all the work, we are going to win this game’.