Nuggets, Jokic Keep Rolling As Aaron Gordon Returns
No Jinx on the win over the Mavericks, whether Russ should start, and Aaron Gordon’s return!
Follow & Subscribe on all Podcast platforms…
🎧 https://link.chtbl.com/LONuggets?sid=YouTube
Locked On NBA League-Wide: Every Team, Fantasy, Draft, WNBA & More
🎧 https://linktr.ee/LockedOnNBA
#DenverNuggets #NikolaJokic #NBA
5 Comments
Guys the trailed early by 19 and came back to take the lead … then another big deficit (17?) on second half and came back again. Even in today’s NBA that has to be rare to erase two near-20 deficits?
No matter how many points Jamal scored in the last quarter, that cannot cancel his complete game with 2 reb and 2 ast. His movement on the field shows that he is slow, indecisive in attack, and instead of letting the ball flow from player to player, he holds it and dribbles between three opposing players and finally looks at the clock and throws the ball to Jokic wherever he is on the field. field, and no matter how great the chances are that the ball will be intercepted, Jokic manages to get hold of it and then in the last seconds he shoots over the players while the two on the side scratch him, pull him by the jersey, and there is no call from referee. Jamal seems to have much more serious problems with the leg where the knee was operated on. Any leaning when in full run or landing can be seen from the plane as having problems, along with slow standing up while the opponent is already organizing an offense. Denver still needs at least two players, strong wings that can have a positive impact on the Denver game. Reath from Portland is, in my opinion, an excellent solution 6 10, a very strong athlete and very mobile with a contract of 2.6 million, and even in Portland, with the arrival of Clingan, there is no place for him, which shows how much he played this season. Next to him (Reath, 28 years old), if he succeeds with this one from Toronto, if we don't look for another strong, mobile winger, that would be Tory Craig, who can score 15-20 points in 15-25 minutes, like in a couple of games in Chicago when let him on the court (his three-point percentage is very good and it would be good to have a left-handed player on the team, at least one). So my opinion is that Reath from Portland and Tory former Nugget with very small contracts they can significantly strengthen the Denver team.
This is the Jamal Murray propaganda show. The swinging and swaying weekly about his unreliability but then suddenly going back and discussing how great he is is dizzying.
The criticisms of Jamal are so strong because they’re well earned. He is always banged up and then he takes forever to ramp back up after he eventually returns that the rhythm of the team is always in flux. How can we say he was terrific in the second half? He was good OFFENSIVELY for like seven minutes, still a complete siv defensively and you can attribute the huge run as much or more to Aaron Gordon than Murray. Plus, you don’t end up in that massive hole to begin with if you don’t get the first half ball hog variant of him who drives into traffic with no plan, bricks a bunch of shots or throws last second grenades to Jokic with three defenders draped over him. disastrous process that destroys rhythm for the entire starting unit. The moment he sat the starters established the necessary rhythm.
If it was a meritocracy, he should be on the bench. At this point in time he functions better as a microwave, ball dominant scorer which is what we saw in the second half with the bench. Sixth men often don’t give you defense, they just give you offensive pop and that’s all he can give the team for like five minute stretches here and there, we never see it for full games anymore and if we do get one fully solid game, he gets injured shortly after resetting the entire process.
In regards to what Matt said about him earning the starting position due to having built up so much equity with the championship and long tenure as a starter: so what? He comes into every season not ready to contribute. He starts slow and the team suffers and then he gets banged up. This is the trend starting to emerge. That destroys equity you build up in a meritocracy. His starting position is held due to the contract and Malones bias towards him but I think that equity he earned in 2023 has been doing nothing but erode away and at this point he’s a damaging starter. Like Ryan pointed out, Russ in his spot with Braun as the 2 has been way more dominant and it has looked that way.
Fans just want to see consistency, they don’t want excuses, they don’t want to see you dribble the air out of the ball and then throw the possession away anyways. The dude is always dealing with some nagging injury to the point where I could care less if it is mentioned. At this moment, if he plays ten “healthy” games it’d be a miracle and cheering him on for toughing through it is tiresome. If the injuries were that serious, you’d think Malone would stop playing him into the ground, which is a completely separate problem. He’s quickly going the way of Will Barton and I have seen people hate seeing that comparison but Murray frustrates me the same way now that Barton did the year before he was traded.
Murray was the reason they were down to begin with in this game and in the fourth he helped them recover. To me, he was still more damaging than he was helpful and you gotta wonder, how many fewer games would they have to claw their way back if Murray was actually consistent, less ball dominant and more shot ready
All you so called “nuggets fans” slandering Murray but somehow keep forgetting that this man elevates his play when it matters most (when healthy). He is the only player like that in the league beside jokic. Nuggets would NOT have a CHAMPIONSHIP without him. Smfh.
Denver win over Dallas without Doncic and Irving was like Boston win over Denver without Jokic and Gordon. Lets hope Gordon will find his old form because Jamal is a lost case and he will play good every third game in best case