You ain’t the King no more, James. When the Nuggets get those shiny rings Tuesday night and raise their first championship banner in the face of 38-year-old LeBron James, his once-mighty Lakers might be so envious they turn a royal shade of purple.
After years of being the cute little rainbow warriors from the lost time zone, the Nuggets are not only the team to beat. Nikola Jokic and his pals are the reigning NBA champs everyone wants to beat into submission.
“We get it, y’all won,” forward Anthony Davis said when the Lakers opened training camp, still smarting from the broom taken to their buns by the Nuggets in the Western Conference finals. “But me and Bron had some conversations like, ‘We can’t wait (to play them again).’”
Would this be a good time to remind Davis that Joker did the Sombor Shuffle all over him in the conference finals, averaging 27.8 points, 14.5 rebounds and 11.8 assists in the four games required to send L.A. packing?
The Lakers will show up for vengeance Tuesday, when Denver opens a new season at home. Coach Michael Malone warns it will be difficult for his Nuggets to admire their rings on one hand and beat a highly motivated foe with the other.
Here’s hoping James shows up, eyes aflame and itching for a fight, to show the Nuggets what kind of passion is required to win not one, not two, but four NBA championships.
“Once they raise that banner and we get those rings, now it’s over. That puts an end to last season,” Malone said on the day Denver opened camp in early October. “If we’re going to try to be a team that can repeat — if we’re going to try and be a team that can be a dynasty like Golden State, like San Antonio — we have to have a standard of excellence each and every day.”
Jokic is not only the best basketball player on the planet, but a unicorn whose magical skill-set makes Denver a contender for years to come. All that’s required is an obsession with building a legacy that honors a Hall of Fame player who Joker admits he would like to emulate: Tim Duncan, the leader of five San Antonio championships.
While general manager Calvin Booth tells anyone willing to listen that his ambition is to build a team that wins multiple titles, here’s the truth: For the Nuggets to repeat, much less become a dynasty, they need to get better.
Attempting to repeat, by climbing the same mountain with the same crew, is not only a thankless task, but a fool’s errand.
“We’re trying to climb the same mountain,” Malone told me. “But we’ve got to take an entirely different path.”
Taking nothing away from Denver’s championship, but as good as these Nuggets are, they don’t remind anyone of Michael Jordan and the Invinci-Bulls.
So while Jokic and guard Jamal Murray will miss the defensive prowess of Bruce Brown and the steady demeanor of veteran Jeff Green, if the goal is to repeat, Denver wasn’t good enough to merely run it all back.
If becoming a dynasty is to be anything more than a pipe dream, the Nuggets need to re-invent themselves around Jokic, with an infusion of youthful talent that reinvigorates the energy in Denver’s locker room during the grind of a long regular season.
There’s every reason to believe Jokic can again be the MVP and Murray will further elevate his game to be selected for his first trip to the All-Star Game. But with the Lakers and Suns looking to make trouble for Denver in the West, how strong a title defense the Nuggets can muster will depend heavily on the evolution of Christian Braun, the emergence of Peyton Watson, the maturity of Julian Strawther and the health of Michael Porter Jr.
To endure the climb back to the top, the Nuggets must view this season as a whole new adventure and embrace an even bigger challenge than winning the first championship in franchise history.
“We won it last year, but this is a whole new challenge to climb the mountain, because the landscape of the NBA is always changing. The Suns have Bradley Beal now, the Warriors added Chris Paul and the Bucks went out and got Damian Lillard,” Malone said.
“Maybe it’s the same mountain, but it’s a whole different path. This time, we’re going up the backside of Mt. Everest. That’s harder. But no matter what way you go, the goal’s the same: To get to that mountaintop and win a championship.”
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