Lisa Salters might be sleeping on Nikola Jokic. But nobody’s sleeping on LeBron James in May and June.
Since the Jordan Dynasty ended, the nine non-COVID NBA Finals to feature King James averaged 17.2 million viewers per game. The other 11 Finals, the non-LeBron tilts? 15.2 million. A drop of 11.6%.
So, yeah, forgive Nuggets Nation for raising an eyebrow every time James and Anthony Davis start their nightly march to the free throw line. Or raising two.
“(Denver fans) need to stop that,” longtime NBA sharpshooter and current Turner Sports analyst Reggie Miller said before Nuggets-Lakers Game 2 on Thursday night at Ball Arena. “Control the things you can control. They need to stop that. Seriously.
“The Lakers, are they going to get calls? Yeah. OK. Big deal. So does (Nikola) Jokic. And so does Jamal Murray. Control the things that you can control at both ends of the floor because there’s a lot of things that you can clean up. Because you know that Coach (Darvin) Ham and the Lakers are going to make adjustments. We saw that with Rui (Hachimura) guarding the big fella Jokic and (Davis) being the roamer and the helper. You’ve gotta find ways to make Aaron Gordon more viable, so (AD) just can’t patrol the paint. Control what you can control.”
Can’t control Tony Brothers. Or his referees running mates assigned to Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals in David Guthrie, Brian Forte and Pat Fraher, who had players from both sides chirping early.
I posited to another ex-NBA great, “Inside The NBA’s” Kenny Smith, on Thursday that Nuggets-Heat would be a network executive’s worst nightmare with Lakers-Celtics dangling out there. He waved it off.
“I mean, the conspiracy theory is always going to be there because the two franchises (Lakers and Celtics) are great,” Smith reasoned. “(Those) two franchises over the years have always made the correct decisions in terms of player personnel and coaching. And so that’s why they’re great.
“It has nothing to do with — I mean, when the San Antonio Spurs were winning (with Tim Duncan), we could have said it’s a conspiracy theory. When we broke through in the ‘90s with the Rockets …
“When you put the right mix together, which these franchises have always done — the Lakers and the Celtics, as a whole, they’ve always paid a premium to be the best. So that’s why people think it’s a conspiracy. But it’s just (that) they do the right things to be successful.”
Salters, ESPN’s sideline reporter, drew groans across social media when she went on The Rich Eisen Show on Wednesday and admitted to host Suzy Shuster that “I had never seen (Jokic) play” before Game 1.
Ouch.
Also, wow.
I mean, points for saying the quiet part out loud. But Salters’ admission also pretty much affirmed everything that every Nuggets fan had assumed about ESPN and its NBA voices. To say nothing about the assumptions of fans of just about every other team that isn’t the Lakers, Celtics, Knicks, Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, or Duke and North Carolina men’s basketball. Or any college football program that isn’t coached by Nick Saban, Jimbo Fisher or Deion Sanders.
“If you’re a Nuggets fan, you’re just happy that’s where you are (right now),” Smith continued.
“I do think that they’re the most complete basketball team that’s left. They have youth, they have experience, they’ve got an MVP candidate, they’ve got a great point guard in Murray, they have everything that you can ask for. (But) they haven’t been there. The Denver Nuggets haven’t been there. The franchise really hasn’t been there. They haven’t won an NBA title … So now, this is new, uncharted ground that the city should just be ecstatic over.
“And they have a realistic chance. They, to me, they are the favorite to be the NBA champions right now.”
