Grading The Week: Why Nikola Jokic, Rudy Carey, Jamal Murray deserved Sports Illustrated honors more than Coach Prime

LeBron’s on the fade. Steph Curry’s supporting cast is slipping. Do you hand it to Patrick Mahomes again? Kirby Smart? Ick.

In Sports Illustrated’s defense, while 2023 proved to be a solid year for storylines, it was a down one as far as North American sports icons. The guys who sell magazines.

Enter Deion Sanders.

The Grading The Week team loves them some Coach Prime. But Sanders being named SI’s Sportsperson of the Year earlier this week? That was the magazine equivalent of Harold Baines getting strong-armed by Jerry Reinsdorf and Tony La Russa into Cooperstown.

With a 4-8 record? Last in the Pac-12? Come on. That lowers the bar a bit. For everybody.

Now before you accuse the crack GTW staff of being pro-CSU and a bunch of FoCo homers — they’re not, and Jay Norvell and his staff have some explaining to do after a squad with Tory Horton and Mo Kamara failed to reach a bowl — we do respect SI’s argument. However flimsy.

Sanders opened doors for Black undergrads and Black citizens, period, in historically white Boulder. He was a pop-culture phenomenon who turned CU football into must-see TV. The Buffs have a national brand again, a national cache — like Kentucky, UCLA or Kansas basketball.

That said, the brand is basically one guy. And when that one guy leaves, he’s taking almost all of those curious onlookers with him.

SI.com also has some ‘splaining to do. Especially after SI.com got busted earlier this week for promoting AI-written pieces by made-up, software-generated authors. What was for decades the preeminent platform for the top sports writers in the country — Dan Jenkins, Frank DeFord — is now just another platform.

Well, this article was written and edited by real people. And the reality is, we’d have rather seen Nikola Jokic on that SI cover, truth be told.

Sports illustrated — F

By the magazine’s decree, the Sportsperson award is presented to “the athlete or team whose performance that year most embodies the spirit of sportsmanship and achievement.” And given that criteria, the GTW crew rattled off at least four local candidates who deserved as much, if not more, recognition as Coach Prime:

1. Nikola Jokic, center, Denver Nuggets

Performance: NBA champion. NBA Finals MVP. Sportsmanship: Cost himself MVP votes by resting during March and April as he healed up for the playoff run to come, when he could’ve pushed for a triple-double average for the season (at 9.8 assists per game, he was darn close). Third only only to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain, who played a combined 35 seasons, in career assists by a center. Achievement: Led Nuggets to franchise’s first-ever NBA title. Made Kendrick Perkins and Stephen A. Smith shut their traps. Actually, forget SI. Call the Nobel Prize people.

2. Rudy Carey, coach, Denver East

Performance: Notched his 10th boys basketball state title, a CHSAA record, by leading Denver East to an 82-61 win over Fossil Ridge. Sportsmanship: As a means of honoring the memory of slain East student Luis Garcia, Carey’s Angels warmed up during the Final Four wearing “Angels Against Gun Violence” T-shirts. Achievement: Led East to its 12th boys title all-time, tying it with Manual High for the most in state history.

3. Jamal Murray, guard, Denver Nuggets

Performance: NBA champion. Averaged 32.5 points, 6.3 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 3.8 3-pointers in a sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Western Conference Finals, the Nuggets’ first postseason series victory over The Lake Show. And yet he still wasn’t named the MVP of the conference finals (See: Jokic, Nikola.) Sportsmanship: When asked about not winning WCF MVP, the Canadian replied: “All that comes after you win a championship. If we were to lose, no one gets that trophy, right? We win the championship, everybody eats. I’m just excited to see everybody succeed.” Achievement: The first NBA player since 1977 to put up back-to-back 40-point playoff games without committing a turnover. And have you seen his championship ring?