Before I dive into this piece, I feel like I owe an apology. Prior to this past month, I have been skeptical of The Denver Nuggets as being a great team. Don’t get me wrong. I can notice the appeal of Nikola Jokic, but as a team, I am used to watching games where it’s felt like they ebbed and flowed. Basically, they didn’t try hard until the closing stretch and then laid it on thick in hopes of compensation. There isn’t anything necessarily wrong with this approach. They still come out as the winners in most games. I’m more saying as a fan, it wasn’t exactly the most enjoyable thing to watch. I underestimated them because the past few years have been good, but I never believed that they were great.
Sure, that comes with being an NBA fan in general. Everyone has their teams, and The Nuggets wasn’t one of mine. With that said, I can’t exactly gloat right now because what teams I did support had unceremonious finales. The post-season was, among other things, an endurance test where everyone had to strategize when players could be injured or would be allowed to play. Given that I am first and foremost a Los Angeles Clippers fan, I am well aware of things going horribly wrong. The effort to bench Kawhi Leonard for “load management™” backfired spectacularly when coach Tyronne Liu suggested after the first Playoff game against The Phoenix Suns that there was more where that came from. Long story short, Leonard injured himself in practice and never played another game. Tragically, our other superstar Paul George had a small injury that caused him to be out for the entire series only to have it announced two days before Phoenix’s ultimate win that he would be ready to play by the next series. It may or may not rub salt in the wounds, but the subsequent “Paul George is finally ready to play” meme was a nice consolation prize.
It's rough to have gotten through this post-season for several reasons. It felt like the tried and true teams were crumbling under their own weight. The Dallas Mavericks missed it all because owner Mark Cuban openly admitted they were trying to win favors in the draft. Watching them sit out wunderkind Luka Doncic whose antsyness made him look ready to go felt like a slap in the face of a team decent enough to make The Play-In Tournament. Elsewhere, The Suns choked again in the second round at the most crucial time. Giannis Antetokuonmpo openly admitted that The Milwaukee Bucks had a bad year with one of the more inspiring speeches to come from post-game interviews. Even last year’s winner, The Golden State Warriors crumbled under their own management issues. Elsewhere Ja Morant performed the strangest of character assassination by flashing guns in Instagram videos that may or may not cause The Memphis Grizzlies’ rising status to have been for naught. Though, if we’re being honest, the cratering of The Brooklyn Nets was historic and their place in The Playoffs is very, very awkward.
With that said, there were some teams that experienced some welcomed surprises. The Sacramento Kings made it to The Playoffs for the first time since the late 2000s. To watch them do their “light the beam” ceremony was such a joyful sight, especially as it reminded fans that there is room for change. Underdogs are capable of making a big difference against the tried and true. This may have included a very gnarly match-up against The Warriors that resulted in, among other things, Draymond Green stomping on Damontas Sabonis and getting suspended, but it showed that The 2023-2024 Season is bound to be even more surprising. Even The Los Angeles Lakers showed some signs of life after being laughed off the court for most of the season. The fact that they made The Western Conference Finals at all is a miracle. The New York Knicks also broke their dry spell and made it to the second round for the first time in many decades.
Everything moved so fast this year and it’s hard to fully appreciate everything that came before. Among the greatest surprises was the ascension of The Miami Heat. While I always thought they were a great team, their post-season track record was inconsistent. It starts beautifully with an 8th-seed team winning The Play-In Tournament and potentially making history. Most people wouldn’t have suspected them to get far, but Jimmy Butler had a vendetta. “Playoff Jimmy” as he’s sometimes called would have these amazing games where it was clear that this might be the year where things change. For the first few match-ups, I’d argue that it was plausible…
And then they played The Boston Celtics. They were fresh off The Finals from last year and had every reason to believe they would push themselves harder to win this time. They were destined to play The Nuggets, who annihilated The Lakers at 4-0. While the first two games were on track to see this happen, the knife slowly began to turn. The goodwill that people had for Jimmy Buckets and crew was slowly spiraling. I wouldn’t say that The Heat cratered, but at some point by Game 4, things became embarrassing. Maybe it was that The Celtics understood their need to go big or go home, but suddenly The Heat began to fall behind. Butler wasn’t as dominant. The Celtics evened out the series to the point one could believe they might win it all.
The only saving grace with this run of games was Game 6, which had a sense of urgency for both teams. It was intense and ready to see The Heat finish what should’ve been done much quicker. Instead, a lucky free throw by Butler in the final seconds hinted at victory. Then, in one of the most amazing split-seconds of basketball this year, The Celtics rebound and get the ball into the net. It’s the type of play that you wish to see more often even if, quite frankly, the game should’ve never happened. The Heat was still a good team but I’d argue expanding the series to a complete seven match was terrible.
An issue with discussing The Finals is how one-sided everything feels. Had The Heat won 4-0, I might’ve had more enthusiasm for the final stretch. This was a historic moment for Denver. They were going to bring the franchise their first ever win. Jokic was coming from an amazing back-to-back series of MVP wins in the regular season and this was his moment to prove himself. After all, Antetokounmpo had done it two seasons prior so it felt like destiny. More than that, he had a humbleness where he spent post-game interviews recognizing how his team was full of great players. There was also Jamal Murray who, together, set historic numbers throughout the run. They were indomitable and it’s a miracle that the series went 4-1 at all with the final game being fairly close.
If there was one message going through the days leading up to The Finals, it was that The Nuggets vs. The Heat wasn’t a great match-up. This was usually from people who only watched NBA from a commercial standpoint. Of course, people would want to see The Lakers and The Celtics. It’s a classic rivalry. However, anyone who had watched the season would know the magic of Jokic and Butler. They were the best athletes on the best teams. This was going to be a great run, again provided that The Heat actually showed up with any consistency.
Were The Nuggets the best? By a mile. However, I think all of this is to say that a 4-1 series doesn’t bode well for entertainment value. It was fun to watch Denver geek out about their imminent status in history. To see Jokic and Murray put up record numbers made me hopeful for the future of basketball. However, I am still dubious about how invested I was in the actual series. Butler had worn out his charm by this point and the predictability of The Nuggets taking it all had been in place since the previous series. Nobody was stopping them. I’m sure for some this is not a problem, but it does impact the chances of spontaneity and surprise. The only real shake-up that I saw in those five games was when Spectrum’s network went down midway through Game 3 to the point their phone number had a message saying, “We already know ABC is down.”
I guess a lot of the issues with the series for me wasn’t just that Denver was that obvious of a favorite, but that Jokic is a different kind of Finals MVP. If you look at the past few winners, there is a performative quality to their game. Stephen Curry makes a spectacle of three-pointers. Antetokounmpo was just so much fun to watch. Lebron James can’t go more than five seconds without making a fool of himself. What does Jokic do? Jokic does a Post-Finals interview where he claims that he just wants to go home and is nonchalant about almost losing his trophy. It’s clear that basketball is about the game to him. This victory is nice, but he’d rather see it as a job where he goes home at the end of the day. Even the celebration parade was met with people holding signs saying “Free the Joker!” and “Let Joker Go Home!” Long story short, they have a great fan base who have a lot to enjoy – including their overpaid mascot Rocky – but man is Jokic not the most amusing personality imaginable.
With that said, I am enjoying how the NBA’s recent run of winners symbolizes the rise of a new generation. The Warriors’ win last year may not seem like it, but having a supporting crew of younger players showed potential for the team’s Post-Splash Brothers future. The Bucks are more in line with the generational shift as it kickstarted The Age of Giannis. With two of three recent Finals MVP winners being from overseas, the NBA is expanding and showing the potential for the game. There’s so much great talent out there and given that Victor Wembanyama seems likely to win the draft in a few weeks, it’s likely that the next 10 years will be even more global than what’s been seen already.
As much as I’m happy to continue supporting the legends who continue to do great work, I am curious to see if The Nuggets are capable of another win next year. Similarly, I wonder if the recent shake-up will do anything significant. The fact that The Philadelphia 76ers were capable of marking Joel Embiid as MVP and firing Doc Rivers as a coach within the same month is crazy. To have a handful of coaches heading into the great unknown, I’m hoping it brings a new perspective that ultimately improves the teams who may have come up short. Similarly, I hope the up and coming teams like The Kings will only continue their upward trajectory.
The 2022-2023 season may not have been my favorite of recent years, but that isn’t to say that it lacked good basketball. Every year has a few that are bound to be remembered as franchise highlights. To know that The Clippers set the second highest scoring NBA game within days of acquiring Russell Westbrook gives me hope for their future. The idea that The San Antonio Spurs might have Wembanyama in the near future makes me wonder if they’ll actually be fun to watch. Even then, I’m happy to see that The NBA has done more partnerships with The WNBA and has even included several commercials with major players. To me, it’s nice to see the organization recognizing how to grow and be more inclusive. The Nuggets' win is a perfect embodiment of that. They may not be the most commercialized team now, but one can imagine what a new generation raised to admire a Serbian force of nature will be like. Only time will tell.
For now, we enter the off season and begin planning for the road ahead. It may not be the most eventful time, but I want to believe that it’ll be more productive than the last. This time last year, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving were threatening to leave The Nets only to wait several more months to do so. One can hope we have a more eventful and positive turnout than that. Shakeups are always worth some attention, and I can’t wait to see if anything worthwhile comes of it.
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