Keeler: Bow to the new king, LeBron James! Nikola Jokic, Nuggets are the Lakers’ daddies. And the world knows it.
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Daddy 119, Lakers 107.
“Who’s your dad-dy?” the fans cried as a line of LeBron James replica jerseys filed out of Ball Arena early Tuesday night.
“Who’s your dad-dy?”
The Nuggets are.
The only thing more beautiful than that banner in the rafters is the bragging rights. The NBA champs have beaten the Lakers five straight, now, playoffs and regular season.
The Nuggets’ 12-point win on Ring Night confirmed the longest Mile High run over the West’s oldest, crustiest money since December 2012-November 2014, when Denver took seven in a row. And sealed the first five-game losing streak for King James against the Nuggets since he was with the Cavs from January 2006-February 2008.
“There’s no statement win,” Michael Malone said Tuesday night, “in the first game of the season.”
Sorry, coach.
Kinda was.
“We’re not going to make too much of this,” Malone continued. “We’ve got to turn the page and learn from it and get ready for Memphis and OKC on the road.”
We learned the order of power in the West hasn’t changed. At all. Nuggets veteran Reggie Jackson had Bron in the corner with 10:18 to go in the first half. Jackson reached out with a right foot and accidentally stomped on LeBron’s left. The King threw himself to the floor in a soccer flop, looking right and left, expecting the usual call.
None came.
With Bron splayed on the floor, Jackson set himself and drained the trey.
Nuggets 40, Ol’ Man James 22.
The banner was a celebration. The scoreboard was a confirmation.
Anthony Davis, who said he “couldn’t wait” for some Mile High smoke, had 17 at the break. He had none after. Grandpa might have ESPN riding shotgun. But the man can’t carry this bandwagon all by himself.
The King finished with 21, most of them (as usual) at the rim. But the Nuggets were plus-29 when he was off the floor.
“I think LeBron was just not on the court,” shrugged Jamal Murray, who finished with 21 points. He smiled. “So that helps.”
The hunger helped, too. That was the question in the back of Shaquille O’Neal’s mind as we’d huddled in the dusty basement beneath the Tivoli Student Union, the de facto green room for TNT’s “Inside The NBA” crew before they hit the stage at the Auraria Campus.
“It’s hard,” O’Neal, who won four NBA titles, said of the championship hangover. “It’s human nature.
“I don’t know how sensitive the Joker and Jamal are, but the fact that they haven’t been getting a lot of respectable press should upset them. And that should be another motivating factor.
“I’m just joking now, but nobody recognizes (them). ‘Oh, you don’t believe it’s me.’ So, is that true? So I don’t know how those guys are, how they react. Joker (Nikola Jokic) seems to be the guy that nothing gets to him. Never really seems to get mad, but he’s the type of player that he’s going to play his way, play his style, play his game … you shouldn’t get bored after that. And most of those guys are title-seekers. So I put (Joker) in the BMA, Big Man Alliance. He now holds the title as the best Denver Nugget. Does he want more? We shall see.”
He wanted more early Tuesday, draining eight of his first 14 shots and nearly notching a double-double (19 points, nine boards) by the halftime break en route to the usual night at the office.
“The one thing that you have to worry about, it’s not really Jokic, or even Murray,” O’Neal’s TNT teammate Kenny “The Jet” Smith told me. “It’s guys 6-7-8-9, who their energy was the reason they were really good. You lost (Bruce) Brown — but their energy, those guys sometimes think (it was) their skills, because they’re getting attention that they typically had not gotten. (Now) they’re in a couple of more commercials locally.”
Smith had a word for it: Fat-cat-itis.
Short version? You don’t want it.
“I remember we had a guy on our team — he was on the championship team but he wasn’t even suited (up),” recalled Smith, who anchored the backcourt for Houston’s back-to-back champs in 1994 and ’95. “He got a mattress commercial locally and he’s like on television locally every day. He’s walking around with shades. It’s like, ‘Bro, you really (think you’re all that)?’ So you’ve got what I call fat-cat-itis. You have to not be a fat cat. And you’ve gotta stay hungry. It’s typically (rotation players) 5 through 9 that could get (it). ‘I won a championship. I was a key member. I got a nice contract. I’m good.’ No, you’re not. We’re not good. And if you could fight (that) with 5 to 9, you’ll be fine.”
After three quarters, scorers five through nine for the Nuggets — Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and the bench — had combined for 32 points, six boards, three steals and a plus-14 in plus-minus.
All the stars aligned. Literally, some cases. Michael Porter Jr. hit the building wearing an orange Peyton Manning jersey. Payton Watson walked in with a “COACH PRIME” Buffs jersey.
Deion Sanders — the man himself — sat courtside, new Mile High royalty, flanked by sons Deion Sanders Jr. and Shedeur Sanders and CU star Travis Hunter, smiling like a kid at Christmas,
“Road to repeat,” Aaron Gordon said, dropping the hashtag and the mission for the next eight months and change.
“We got one ring,” Malone shouted into the microphone. “Who wants another?”
Some ring, too. Sixteen carats of diamonds, rubies and sapphires in honor of 16 postseason wins. Eighty-nine points of red rubies for the 89 points scored by Miami in the clinching Game 5. A hidden, sliding compartment that revealed a miniature championship banner.
“That’s a (heck) of a ring,” O’Neal said before the game.
That’s a (heck) of a team. Still.
“We have a bullseye on our back,” Malone said. “We’re going to get the best from everyone … so what? It’s one game.”
Don’t make us turn this car around, ‘Bron. The road to the NBA title still runs through Speer.
“Jamal,” a reporter asked Murray cheekily, “did you hear those ‘Who’s your daddy’ chants at the end?”
To this, the Blue Arrow swiftly turned in his chair, stood up, hopped down from the rostrum and broke for the door. His only response was the comet trail of a heavy, audible sigh. Daddy’s home. And fatherhood never felt so good.
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