zefoki.blogg.se

What do Steph Curry, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Giannis, and Jokic have in common? They were all the alpha dog on a championship team in the last decade, yes. However, the best players don’t have a ceiling they may just need to take a different launch angle to enter orbit. Too many fans and executives conflate things that haven’t happened with things that can’t happen, and it restricts their creativity. There’s only one champion crowned per year, and so many teambuilding rules are based on small-sample views. There are no hard-and-fast rules for championship contenders anymore (and there never were we just couldn’t acknowledge that reality). Concerns about Giannis’ outside shot prompted NBA “analysts” to say that the Bucks couldn’t crest the summit unless he became the Robin to someone else’s Batman. Jump-shooting teams couldn’t win a championship until the Warriors dynasty arrived. Assuming an unusual player can’t reach the summit is backward-looking and, frankly, stupid. Jokic’s coronation is yet another example that absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence. Erik Spoelstra threw the kitchen sink at Nikola Jokic, and he turned it into a throne. His offensive everythingness just provided too high a floor for Denver to fail four times in seven games against anyone. His quick hands interrupted the timing of the Heat’s trademark interior passes, and his sheer size proved a problem for the undersized Miami frontline.īut at the end of the day, Nikola’s defense wasn’t really the key, as much as everyone would love to say otherwise. His defense rose to another level during the playoffs (I highly recommend you read Michael Pina’s fantastic breakdown on that subject), but you don’t need advanced analytics to notice how much trouble Miami had at the rim against Jokic - supposedly his bugaboo. The worries about Joker have been put six feet under for good. Big men are the linchpin of a team’s defense, so the thinking goes, and if a squad’s best big wasn’t a rim protector, they would always be vulnerable to the elite offensive creators that the playoffs invariably bring.Īsk Devin Booker and Kevin Durant how they feel about that line of thinking. In this most recent case, there was a concern that teams couldn’t win a championship building around a ground-bound, offensively-oriented center. Most impactfully, it finally nails the coffin shut on the idea that particular player and team archetypes can’t win a title. Most franchises would have fired him somewhere along the ride just for the sake of firing someone.)īut the ripples of the Nuggets championship spread farther. Eight years with the Nuggets hilariously makes him the fourth-longest tenured coach in the NBA. (The Nuggets also did a good job remaining cheap patient with coach Michael Malone.

The bling will also likely lead to some future All-Star selections (and more?) for Jamal Murray, who has proven himself on the biggest stage in a way some of his more decorated Western peers have not, and perhaps even Aaron Gordon.

It’s undoubtedly validating for Jokic and his supporters (*waves*). Nikola Jokic has a ring now, which naturally has set off thousands of premature “where does he rank historically” conversations. The Denver Nuggets clinched their first-ever NBA championship, fighting off a battered, bloodied, determined, but ultimately powerless Miami Heat squad with alacrity, if not ease.

The 2023 Finals concluded with a fittingly hideous, appropriately frantic Game 5 Monday night.