Pass or shot? Jokic, Gordon debate after Nuggets’ historic winner over Clips

Aaron Gordon joked it was a nice pass. Nikola Jokic couldn’t keep a straight face for long before saying it was a shot. The result? An airball from the Denver Nuggets’ star resulted in the only buzzer-beating dunk in NBA playoff history.

“Lotta skill with that one,” Gordon said, laughing about his putback. “Airballs are really hard to defend against.”

While the two humorously debated how the ball got to Gordon, the finish from the Nuggets’ power forward gave them a 101-99 win at the horn in Game 4 against the Los Angeles Clippers, evening the first-round series at 2-2.

The serious debate came from internet sleuths, NBA officials and Clippers fans about whether the bucket should have counted.

“We make a ruling on the floor. The ruling on the floor from the game officials was a good basket. It then automatically goes to the Replay Center official. The Replay Center official, after taking a good look at it, found clear and conclusive evidence that the ball was out of Gordon’s hands when the red light came on to end the game. That’s why it was ruled a good basket,” NBA referee in charge of the game Zach Zarba told a pool reporter. “It has to be out of his hand when that red light is on. That’s what we’re looking for. It’s not the cylinder of the rim — it’s whether it’s in contact with his hand or not when that red light comes on.”

At the end of Q4 of tonight’s #DENatLAC game, Replay Center officials confirmed the ruling of a good basket by the Nuggets’ Aaron Gordon: pic.twitter.com/BxB4j7TFs8

— NBA Official (@NBAOfficial) April 27, 2025

It wasn’t the only controversy with the referees in the game, as some thought Gordon should’ve been ejected at the end of the first half when he and James Harden got into a shoving match. The brouhaha broke out at midcourt after Harden didn’t enjoy Christian Braun’s take foul. The former MVP threw some arms, Gordon was jabbing back, and all heck broke loose. Six players in total were issued technical fouls for the mix-up, with everything but a closed-fist punch tossed between the teams.

That sparked the Nuggets. They returned from halftime with a huge 35-17 third quarter, where Jokic simply took over. The man who asked his teammates to play “fighter basketball” less than 48 hours before responded to the tussle with fire, scoring 16 in the third period to put his team up 20 going into the fourth. Jokic’s giant quarter was part of his absurd 36-point, 21-rebound, eight-assist performance.

But the Clippers punched back in the fourth, erasing a 22-point Nuggets lead to take the lead themselves late. But Jokic was clutch enough to respond, hitting a dizzying spinning post shot to put the Nuggets up late. The Clippers responded with an Ivica Zubac putback, and that set up the Nuggets with a few seconds left and the ball.

“This is gonna be bad,” Jokic said of what was going through his head when he shot. “I wanted to wait till the last second and just jack it up. It was a mistake.”

“I thought the ball was going in the hoop when he shot it,” Gordon said.

Either way, leaving just the half-beat for Gordon to clean up was exactly what the Nuggets needed and it’s something that Jokic has seen before, even if the NBA hasn’t. Jokic described a 2010 EuroLeague play in which Milos Teodosic missed a shot and Josh Childress cleaned up a miss for a huge putback just before the horn.

No matter the intent, the debate or the humor, the outcome was one of the biggest plays in Nuggets history to cap a wild night.