There’s no way to sugarcoat it; The first three games of the season were ugly for the Denver Nuggets. They finally got on the win list on Monday night, but it took a furious late comeback to force overtime before they cruised to a 127-125 victory over the Toronto Raptors.

A win is a win, and at this point the Nuggets are going to get a win no matter how they get it, but that hasn’t exactly eased the concerns within the team. The Raptors are not a very good team, but the Nuggets struggled to differentiate themselves.

For the third straight day the bench was a disaster, they didn’t shoot nearly enough threes, Jamal Murray looked like he lost a step (despite his heroic performance when he made an impressive reverse layup to force OT) , and Russell Westbrook was also actively hurting the team during his minutes.

With all the problems the Nuggets are dealing with early this season, leave it to the best player in the world to find a solution for everything. Make no mistake, Nikola Jokic is the reason the Nuggets won this game. He’s the reason they were even competitive in their first three games. And he’s the reason that, as bad as the team has looked, it still has a chance this year.

Jokic had an impressive triple-double in the season opener against the Thunder, but the Nuggets scored 87 points and were eliminated. He realized what was needed, adapted immediately and became much more aggressive.

Jokic has never been a player who wants to score first, but that’s exactly what he’s done in the last two games – out of necessity. The Nuggets are itching for some shots and offense, so Jokic has taken on the load and is single-handedly saving the team on that end of the floor.

Two games ago, in the narrow loss to the Clippers, we saw an unusually aggressive Jokic, scoring 41 points on 26 shots and making a career-high 7 three-pointers on 12 attempts. That was half of the Nuggets’ three-pointers and more than a third of their total points. It wasn’t quite enough to win, but it kept the game within reach.

However, this unusual performance was followed by an equally aggressive performance as Jokic was determined to keep the Nuggets from falling to 0-3. He scored 40 points again, this time on 27 shots, and made 3/5 three-pointers.

That may not be the way Jokic wants to play, but right now it’s the way the Nuggets need him. They don’t have time to mess around and figure things out, they need to win games. Jokic knows this and he will do everything to make it happen. even if it means leading the league in points this season.