Nikola Jokic does not hand out defensive compliments lightly, and Wendell Carter Jr. just earned one.
In a recent appearance on the Serbian Jaomile Podcast, Jokic named Carter among the centers who make life difficult for him. The Denver star ran through a long list of big men, and Carter’s name was right there with it.
“Who guards me the best? Everybody!
The league is just as talented defensively as it is offensively. Ivica Zubac and Jusuf Nurkic, they’re chubby like me, so it’s hard for me to move them.
Rudy Gobert: I know people say all kinds of things about him, but I think he’s a great defender. He showed that in the last playoffs.
Jalen Duren from Detroit, Wendell Carter Jr, they’re smaller and tough to deal with. The entire Oklahoma City team...
Victor Wembanyama.”
That kind of mention matters. Jokic scores on just about everybody, piles up triple-doubles on a nightly basis, and rarely sounds like someone impressed by anything. So when he includes Carter in a group of defenders he respects, that says plenty.
It also fits Carter’s profile. He has never been the flashy kind of big man who jumps off the screen.
He hits threes, rebounds well enough, defends, and does the unglamorous work that tends to disappear in the box score. He is not usually the player fans point to first, but people around the league know he is a problem.
The matchup history backs that up. Last year against the Magic, Jokic averaged 28.5 points, 16.0 rebounds and 12.5 assists per game. Over 21 games against Orlando, he has put up 20.4 points, 10.8 rebounds and 9.1 assists per game, most of them with Carter on the roster.
Still, Carter has a track record of making Jokic work harder than usual.
According to NBA.com tracking data, Jokic scored 18 points on 6-for-13 shooting in 14.5 minutes directly matched up with Carter last season. He also had 14 total assists in the two games against Orlando. One of those came in the late-December Magic win at the Kia Center, when Jokic went 1-for-5.
Among players who logged at least 10 matchup minutes against Jokic last year, Carter ranked fourth in points allowed in those direct battles. Only Oso Ighadaro, Al Horford and Anthony Davis were better.
Carter also outscored Jokic in their direct matchups, 24 points to Jokic’s total across the two games. Those two games represented the ninth-most minutes of any defensive matchup for Carter last season.
The pattern has shown up before, too. In 2025, Jokic scored 25 points on 9-for-12 shooting in 12:22 against Carter.
In 2023, he had 18 points and 10 assists on 8-for-16 shooting in 16:44 against him. Carter missed both games against Denver in the 2024 season.
What Carter does not provide are the loud defensive moments that tend to dominate highlight packages. He averaged 7.4 rebounds per game and just 0.6 blocks per game, and he has reached 1.0 block per game only once in his career. Opponents shot 58.6 percent at the rim against him last year, according to Second Spectrum, which ranked 22nd out of 38 players who met the playing-time and rim-attempt thresholds.
Even so, his value shows up in other ways. Orlando finished top five in the league in defensive rebound rate, and Carter helped there even if his own rebound totals never looked gaudy. He gives the Magic flexibility because he can switch onto the perimeter and hold up against guards, which lets them use different coverages.
Synergy Sports data shows Carter was strong defending the ball handler in pick-and-roll and isolation situations, allowing .836 and .832 points per possession, respectively. He was also an above-average post defender.
Orlando posted a 111.3 defensive rating with Carter on the floor, which ranked fourth among the team’s regular rotation players, though still behind Goga Bitadze. With Carter off the floor, the Magic’s defensive rating was 113.3, a number only bettered by Jalen Suggs and Franz Wagner among rotation players.
That is the Wendell Carter story in a nutshell: not loud, not flashy, but consistently useful in all the places that matter. Jokic noticed.
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