Maybe the Nuggets and Avs aren’t as good as they used to be. But Nikola Jokic and Nathan MacKinnon are better than ever.
MacK and Joker are the centers of attention, not only in this dusty old cowtown, but often for the entire hockey and hoops universes.
Want a fearless prediction for 2024? How cool would it be if Joker and MacK rode side-by-side fire trucks down Broadway for dueling victory parades? Dare to dream. It’s not as crazy as it seems. At the midway point of the NHL and NBA seasons, the Avs and Nuggets are squarely in the championship hunt for one major reason: Greatness never takes a day off.
“The fact Jokic is playing at the level he plays every damn night, year after year after year, is just incredible,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said.
What makes MacKinnon and Jokic so amazing goes far beyond MacK’s fire-on-ice speed or a no-look-pass by Joker that can make jaws drop to the floor. Even among elite professional players, they are a rare breed.
“It’s magnified for me as a coach, because we need (MacK) more now … His game is always at a high level. It’s just that now, it’s every game he’s finding a way to impact the game in a positive way,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said last week, marveling how his MVP candidate has pushed Colorado to near the top of the Western Conference standings, despite the injury bug that has bitten the team hard again this season.
What’s a step above the gold standard? All I know is what my eyes tell me. On any given night, Jokic and MacKinnon can be a whole flight of stairs above any competitor on the court or in the rink.
And we’ve become so spoiled that sometimes we take this greatness for granted.
“Expectations are so high,” Bednar said. “I notice, listening to the sports radio, I hear: ‘Joker didn’t have a great game last night.’ Well, he has been the best player in the league for three-, four-plus years. And he’s doing it every night … It’s the same for Nate. Like he has a bad game and everybody goes, ‘Aw, Nate didn’t do it tonight.’ Well, he just did it 40 games in a row. What do you want him to do?”
Joker and MacK are one-man slump-busters. With greatness so vast, their presence alone can infuse an entire dressing room with a winning culture. Coaches are empowered to tinker more liberally with strategic structure and personnel, because even if the experiment doesn’t work, MacKinnon and Jokic can keep a team in the game all by themselves.
“If I’m a young player and I’m in that (Denver) locker room, I’m studying and watching everything Nikola does. I would eat what eats, I would drink what he drinks, I would lift the weights he lifts and I would go as hard as he does every day,” said Malone, sitting in the same chair where Bednar had waxed poetically about Joker and MacK only a few nights earlier.
“I wish there was a camera, behind the curtain in ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ to see there’s no secret to success. It’s hard work. Yes, Nikola has a great basketball IQ and makes everybody better. But he puts the time in every, single day.”
These Avs might well lose a best-of-seven series to the Stanley Cup champs of 2022 in five, maybe six, games. After saying goodbye to Bruce Brown, the Nuggets bench is a work in progress that sometimes gets exposed, as was the case when Denver reserves were a collective minus-58 during a recent blowout loss to Oklahoma City.
But without a truly dominant team in the league, the race for the Cup looks as unpredictable as any in the last decade. MacKinnon can create such firepower with whoever are his wingmen on Colorado’s top line, that if a minor miracle allows long-injured captain Gabriel Landeskog to finally return to action in time for the playoffs, balanced scoring might cease to be such a major concern.
The one to watch and the player who Jokic must nurture is 21-year-old Peyton Watson, whose defensive versatility and ability to knock down 3-point shots give him a shot to rapidly grow up before our eyes, blossoming into a sixth man to be reckoned with during April, May and June.
After hoisting the Stanley Cup and winning the Larry O’Brien Trophy in consecutive seasons, the Avs and Nuggets have discovered it’s impossible to keep the band together.
But until the generational greatness of Jokic and MacKinnon walk out the door of Ball Arena, the championship windows for the Nuggets and Avs are propped wide open.
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