Nikola Jokić is “perhaps the best passer in the game right now, and certainly the best passing big man in history—but that misses the point,” louisahthomas writes.
of Rogers and Astaire. Murray, too, reached unexpected levels during the playoffs—not, like Jokić, by reinventing the game, but just by doing everything he normally did better than he’d ever done it. The team’s defense was less than staunch, however, and then Murray tore his A.C.L. You never know when a team’s championship window might close; it seemed like Denver’s might not open.
What luck. In a different, more impatient city, Malone might have been fired. The bond between Murray and Jokić might have been disrupted by the arrival of a mercurial superstar. More intense scrutiny might have distracted Jokić from developing his strength and stamina, from improving his defensive skills, from honing his court awareness, learning to let the game flow through him—and teaching his teammates to be ready when the game came to them.
In the first game, the opposite happened. Jokić barely attempted any of his own shots in the first two quarters. By the end of the half, he had ten assists, and the Nuggets had a seventeen-point lead. The game already felt decided. He finished with twenty-seven points, ten rebounds and fourteen assists. Murray scored twenty-six, and two of the team’s forwards, Aaron Gordon and Michael Porter, Jr., added sixteen and fourteen, respectively.
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