Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, the consensus favorite to win this year's MVP award, has seamlessly carried his regular season dominance into the NBA playoffs.
Through three games against the Portland Trail Blazers, the 26-year-old star is averaging a double-double of 36 points and 11 rebounds across 33 minutes. According to ESPN Stats & Info, Jokic is the first player to record 30 points and shoot 50-percent from the field in each of his first three games of a postseason since Michael Jordan in 1992.
In spite of star Jamal Murray's season-ending knee injury, the three-seeded Nuggets -- led by none other than Jokic -- still have the pieces to make some noise this summer. And Nuggets general manager Calvin Booth hopes Jokic will be the face of the franchise for years to come.
"I think at this place in time, Nikola is extremely happy with Denver, the fans, the city, his teammates, his coaches," Booth told The Zach Gelb Show on Friday. "I think right now where we sit today, it's hard for him to imagine being anywhere else. But we've got to try to do everything as an organization to keep it that way, as we move forward. And I think Nikola will try to do the best he can to be the best teammate possible. So, we try to stay in the moment and not try to think about [his long-term future] too much, even though everybody wants him to be here for the next 20 years as a player...
"In a sense, it's not really in our control. Every time his contract expires, he'll have a decision to make. We'll have to live with whatever decision that happens to be. I think right now, we feel pretty good about Nikola wanting to be a Denver Nugget for a long, long time. And hopefully it stays that way."
Jokic, who signed a five-year, $147 million max contract with Denver back in June 2018, is a three-time All-Star, who averaged a career-high 26.4 points per game with 10.8 rebounds and 8.3 assists in 72 games this season. He'll become an unrestricted free agent in 2023.
The Nuggets, which own a 2-1 series lead over the Trail Blazers, will play Game 4 in Portland on Saturday afternoon, with tipoff scheduled for 4 p.m. ET. According to FiveThirtyEight's projections, Denver has a 78-percent chance to advance to the West's semifinal round.
The entire conversation between Booth and Gelb can be accessed in the audio player above.
You can follow The Zach Gelb Show on Twitter @ZachGelb and Tom Hanslin @TomHanslin.