Put down the remote, Michael Malone.
Trust us, there are far better ways to spend your free time than lingering on what a few talking heads on ESPN and FS1 have to say about your Nuggets. Just because someone saw fit to give Kendrick Perkins and Nick Wright microphones doesn’t mean you have to listen.
Nuggets disrespect — C+
Behold, the Denver Nuggets, the most disrespected betting favorite the Grading the Week staff has ever seen.
Yes, this Nuggets team that 11 of 17 ESPN experts picked to win the Western Conference Finals, and TNT talking head Charles Barkley installed as his personal NBA title favorite weeks ago, can’t get no respect.
Just ask Malone. He’ll tell you all about it. At length.
As will Nuggets guard Jamal Murray, sixth man Bruce Brown, and the entire Denver press corps (including several who write for this very publication) — not to mention the Uber driver who took you to Ball Arena and the barista who whipped up a heart shape in the froth of your mocha.
Sadly, there are people in this troubled world who dared doubt the Nuggets — shoot, they might’ve even said a few positive things about the Lakers — and it is a crime that cannot be forgiven by Malone, nor anyone else on the Front Range.
Except, of course, for Nikola Jokic.
Somehow, the Nuggets’ superstar center manages to carry on without dwelling on the mountain of slights that continually pile up on his doorstep: Stuff like not being named MVP for the third year in a row, or ESPN sideline reporter Lisa Salters having the temerity to have not seen him play in person prior to the conference finals.
For Malone and the rest of the Nuggets roster, these indignities will not stand.
Much like another Michael of basketball fame — think: Chicago Bulls’ No. 23 — the Nuggets head coach collects perceived insults like chunks of uranium, carefully gathers and stores them away, then waits for just the right moment to use it as fuel for his team’s next nuclear explosion.
Murray delivered the latest detonation in the fourth quarter of Thursday night’s Game 2 win over the Lakers — a 23-point outburst that assured Denver would head to Los Angeles with a 2-0 series lead — then lamented postgame how nobody ever seems to give the Nuggets their just due.
In that way, this team has taken on the spirit of Denver, a city that isn’t entirely secure about its place in the Lost Time Zone and desperately craves validation from the coastal elites who occasionally pop in to check out the mountains.
That will all come soon enough, dear friends.
The Nuggets aren’t about to lose four of five games to LeBron James, Anthony Davis and the Lakers. And there’s plenty of reason to believe they’ll finish the job against whoever comes out of the Eastern Conference — Boston or Miami.
Once that happens, the Nuggets can embody the latest phase of their city’s life cycle, when the price of tickets to watch the defending NBA champs inside Ball Arena skyrockets and the locals are left to lament all the transplant fans who’ve jumped on the bandwagon.
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