Another Nikola Jokic Masterpiece | The Bill Simmons Podcast

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Justin Termine to discuss Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets after taking a commanding 3-2 lead against the Timberwolves.

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we just watch yic throw a masterpiece at us I don’t know you tell me I thought after game two I thought this had a good chance to be a sweep and that Denver was beaten down and semi-broken and this is what happens to back toback teams and 72 hours pass they summon something they figure out something and from that point on they flip a series in a way that I only have a couple historical examples of what is the number one reason this happen to you because now they’re up 3-2 heading uh heading back to Minnesota for game six but the series has flipped in the most unusual way over the course of a week that I can remember in a while why do you think that happened I think maybe three different things so I’ll give you three bill off the top of my head one is Minnesota maybe relaxed a little bit two is the greatness of nicolea yic and three I’ll place it on our industry the media acting like yic can’t play acting like Denver’s Championship really didn’t count because of who they were going through and they’re a team that wasn’t going to be able to bounce back and they were diminishing what they did last year and you saw Mike Malone or Michael Malone used that as motivation and I don’t know how much that played a role I personally was disgusted in the way that it was covered and I’m not talking about you specifically because you said sweet but you gave I think a pretty logical reason it was the health of Jamal Murray right Murray didn’t look good but other people were coming out and saying well this proves that what yic did last year was a fluke kind of sounded like he didn’t deserve one MVP never mind three and that’s clearly not the case yeah it seemed I don’t know what happened to Murray last week from game two to game three but you know he looks way better Christian Brown the last two games has really helped them Gordon has been awesome game four and game five but the the big reason is yage his computer superb brain just figured out how to slow the pace down correctly against the Timberwolves and then today specifically just pi the par goar like it was like it felt more like a boxing match to me it felt like watching the superior boxer who when they showed the scorecard after 10 rounds and they go to like you know Harold Letterman what he have had I have it 10 Rounds nothing yic Jim I just think he’s dominated that’s what he was doing he was just killing goar the Defensive Player of the Year good no to me it seemed a little bit more like uh like Tyson and Peter McNeely right where it’s just like one punch and he goes down cuz I think it was like over pretty fast and then like he wasn’t the only people killing and I’m looking at people on social media and people are killing goar so bad that I felt bad for him yeah well that you and I didn’t think this because I think we’ve been riding in the front seat of the yage ban wagon and I I know I’ve been in my share of like personal life arguments about it and some people were slow to come around some people were begrudgingly admitting how good he was but then as soon as this Minnesota series turned like you laid out in the beginning I was like H see told you well who do he beat last year well go look at the playoff teams they beat they didn’t beat anybody hey congrats you won one title A lot of people won title we heard all this stuff I kind of think he needed this to just kind of slam the door and like if they finish off this Min Minnesota series God knows what’s GNA happen but I feel like he needed this in a weird way because people still didn’t believe because he just doesn’t look the part of this guy who’s this generation Ally special basketball player I don’t I don’t think people can wrap their heads around it and yet if you watch it day in day out this is what he does he’s the most consistent Superstar he’s the most consistent super duper Star we’ve probably had since I don’t know what offensively I mean even like LeBron wasn’t at the level he’s averaging 30 13 and eight in the playoffs now for four years you know like this is this is just I you have to go back to the the bird Jordan magic era really for any of this yeah I mean I’ve heard you say it before that you think he’s one of the greatest offensive players of all time and like I can maybe argue that there are guys just as good as him at least during my lifetime I can’t argue that there’s a guy better than him I wouldn’t say there’s anybody out there that I would say is definitively better than him uh to me yeah it was growing up in the 80s you’re looking at Magic and bird where they got the combination of like I can score when I want to but I also make my teammates better it’s Curry who kind of did it in a different way by his gravitational pole and he made everybody better that way as well even a guy like LeBron or Luca who are both fantastic and Luca specifically is a little bit more heliocentric than LeBron but LeBron’s got the ball a lot and doesn’t necessarily make other guys better passers and you saw it when you like grew up watching Bird right he made everybody else on that team a great passer joic has the same impact where he gets the ball he gets rid of it and it’s almost infectious outside of maybe Michael Porter Jr but like look at the player Aaron Gordon has turned into where it’s almost like he’s learned for like some of the passes that he made tonight where he finds jic curling to the hoop and it’s like they’re just on the same wavelength and I think he’s he’s helped him see the game in a different way I think he’s done that for all his teammates and I personally think that’s what great offensive players do yeah and he brings a selflessness now it just sounds like we’re throwing yic Koolaid at each other but it it was it was a pivotal moment at the tail end yeah Casey p goes and grabs the ball from him so he doesn’t get the turnover because this new stupid thing NBA teams do not relatively do when they dribble out the clock and take a turnover because they’re up 15 with 29 seconds left I have no idea why they don’t just shoot but yic was about to get stuck with the turnover and kcp ran over and grabbed the ball so he would get the 24 second shot clock violation it’s like it’s a little tiny thing but [ __ ] like that matters to me that’s the kind of stuff you look at when you’re like how tight is a team and then the other thing I noticed after the game and we’ve seen this there’s only a handful of guys and as much as I love Tim Duncan and I ride with Tim Duncan I think he’s the seventh best player of all time I don’t even know if he did this night tonight when somebody is so great during a game that you see the guys walking off and they’re coming over to high five them and they’re just kind of like holy [ __ ] man like they they have that look on their face like Jesus Christ I’m just honored to give you a high five right now very few guys have levitated in that territory where the people on their team the coaches the equipment managers every body’s just like I can’t believe what I [ __ ] just witnessed yeah I think specifically maybe they even do that a little bit more after this game because I would argue this was the the best game of his career I mean I think you can make that argument with what the stakes were right and all the heat he was taken like you got all the critics that are all over his case basically saying like all right this is the first time you faced adversity and Bill that’s like kind of what we love because I know we’re on the same wavelength it’s like you like defending Champions trying to defend the title right yes and then I also love and it’s the reason I was so angry with Durant for going to Golden State is I love to see when a super duper Star has his back up against the wall and how’s he going to react whereas when Durant went there it allowed like Curry to kind of pick up the slack or if Curry struggled it allowed Durant to pick up the slack you never really saw those guys in that spot they didn’t have to be in that position whereas joic was put in that position he’s down 02 he’s got all these critics how’s he going to respond first time he’s faced adversity and I think it really is the first time that he faced adversity because two years ago and three years ago he had the injuries to Jamal mie there’s no pressure on him last year what they go through the postseason 16 and four there was really never a tight spot outside of 2-2 against Phoenix here is really the first time he’s faced adversity throughout the course of his entire career and guess what he’s passed it with flying cers yeah I remember a week ago I led the I led this podcast with like hey what if Minnesota sweeps what are all the ramifications from this and the last piece I talked about was yage and saying if he actually solves this Minnesota team which is the best that defense they played in game two was I think the best defense any of us had seen in 20 years since the 04 Pistons it’s was like if he can flip this this will be the this will be the thing he this will be the thing in his back pocket that you just pull out anytime somebody is complaining about him questioning him wherever you want to put him in your Pantheon this will be the first thing mentioned 100% you didn’t overreact there two because Eddie and myself did the same thing on our show where that individual performance by the whole team but I’m talking about game two specifically the best defensive performance maybe that we’ve ever seen so you put that in the proper context when you were talking about it on your pod and for him then to do that against the defense that’s that good I mean think about it he went up against a defense that were comparing like 2004 Pistons 2008 Celtics the 89 Pistons the 91 bulls and he just went out there and had I was the final line 40 points uh 13 assists uh without a turnover against that defense and Rudy go shots yeah and Rudy goar’s got the what four Defensive Player of the Year Awards now whether you think he’s worthy or not the guy’s got four what is it it’s Ben Wallace and it’s it’s I believe Dwight and it’s him so he’s got or dmbe excuse me not to so he’s got the four and he does it against him he does it against them it makes the performance even more amazing yeah and I still don’t know why Minnesota decided not to keep playing like they did in game two where they were picking him up full court really pressuring him harassing him harassing Murray I thought that was such a big part of their success maybe they couldn’t sustain it they couldn’t sustain the intensity maybe Denver figured out something that I’m not smart enough to see on my giant TV but even like today I kept waiting for Nas Reed to pick up yage you know because they started pressuring M so then yage are bringing up and in game two especially Nas Reed was coming way up and just like just B yic and trying to get in his and they just didn’t do it they let him kind of get into the spots he wanted and the the thing I love about his computer brain in this series was he figured out all the different locations on the court that were the best places to attack right like sometimes he would go high to the right and just kind of see what he needed to see and then kind of attack quick and then do that kind of hurly Burly spin double triple spin move he does other times he would just try to post up gobear because he knew he could back him down and I thought Draymond was interesting at halftime talking I thought Draymond was good tonight uh he’s saying it halftime about like how is goar letting him back him down back him backwards like that like they he’s the defensive player of the year why are you going backwards uh but he but the point is he just figured it out yeah the only thing I’ll say about Draymond is draymond’s acting like he didn’t get his butt kicked against yic like in round one a couple of years ago when yic didn’t have any team yeah yic kicked his butt too that’s where he kind of Hur the hamstring I think in the final game of that series and he was still fantastic it took him about a game and a half to figure out Draymond back in that series uh and then the other thing with yic the two plays that stuck out to me tonight and there’s always usually it’s a pass that sticks out how about the Lefty hook I think that was in the first half where it gives you the Lefty hook to be able to do that at his size is just freakish and then the other one was the righty hook I think it was over goar when he’s like fading away into the corner he throws it high off the glass uh where it looked like he was off balance I mean so just the you know the touch that the guy has on on every single uh type of possession it’s just amazing I thought I enjoyed Jamal Crawford tonight but he brought up hakee versus David Robinson in 95 which was kind of the iconic I’m now taking this personally and I’m gonna destroy your career playoff performance that the reason I there’s pieces of it with Gober yage but goar just isn’t good enough he’s not in the yage class the thing what made the Hakeem Robinson thing so special was Robinson was handed the MVP during that series and hakee just like his eyes narrowed and he famously just laid the smackdown from that point on this is a little different goar the best they played in this entire series was game two he didn’t play and I’m still not positive you know now it’s like I might be back in on my gobear trade 210 cents of the dollar maybe what maybe I’m back in on that on that take but I just think yage is at a different level I like the most when it was Nas Reed and towns as the two bigs against him 100% because Nas Reed and Eddie and I talked about this as well he’s a little bit more girthy right so you saw what yish is just shoving him right under the basket with Rudy goar Nas Reed he can’t necessarily do that to NZ re is not the defender that goar is but that’s something that he’s unable to do in regards to like using his weight and with the hakee and David Robinson yeah if he’s going up against mbi’s doing that then yeah you could I think use that reference that Jamal’s talking about because mbi’s the guy that a lot of people still out there I think even after this game unfortunately I don’t know what they’re watching are going to argue embiid but we talked about it on like one of the pods I was on with you several several months ago it’s like the gap between this guy and everybody else in the sport is as as big as it was at any point when LeBron was was dominating the sport 2013 Range well and beid had 70 against the Spurs he did that’s a good bill I forgot about that I know how that compares to this the Gap is tightened a little bit after that point that’s that’s right I forgot about that I said this on your show but I haven’t said on my podcast after he won the third MVP and now what he’s doing this series and assuming they can finish this off they’ll go to the next round they’re going to play OKC or Dallas I just think to me this is the Western Finals this Denver Minnesota matchup I think yic is in my top 15 now and I I made the list and I have this whole group in the pantheon where it goes hakee Shaq Moses all in a row and they’re like 12 13 14 and then I had Oscar and Kevin Durant at 15 and 16 and I just don’t see how I can separate yage from hakee and chak and Moses anymore if he wins especially if he wins another title or even makes the finals Moses had that five year run on Houston and then the last year in Philly three MVPs won a title Shaq had the three straight finals MVPs and hakee uh for three years maybe four um was out of control onew title and was just awesome and this yage run is as good as All Those runs I think yeah so I don’t know if you saw it on TNT towards the tail end they gave Moses an extra MVP when they were running through all the MVPs they put up the graphic they gave him four on the graphic and they got magic and bird behind him with with three so yeah so he’s at three but uh no I I agree with you there and I would also say like the uh the title maybe that he wanted I want to give Jamaal Murray’s credit and we talked about this on my show with you the other day as well well but he won it with him as a sidekick like Shaq wins his three in La he’s got KOB Bryant okay who’s a top 10 to 12 player of all time Moses as good as he was what did he need before he won his first title he’s got to go to Philadelphia he’s got to team up with uh with Dr Jay who’s an all andony one 12 best players in the league that year yeah exactly uh killing the Celtics and Mo Cheeks who regardless of what you think should be in the hall of fame or not is still in the Hall of Fame and Jamal Murray will probably be there at some point as well it’s really easy to get into the Hall of Fame but like yeah the sidekicks that he’s won that’s why I don’t know where you said you had Durant at like 15 I don’t think it’s any question that yic is ahead of dant he he he definitely bumped him Hakeem won the title in 94 where his best Sidekicks exactly that’s it was a hodge podge um but that was also a pretty year weird year for the league that was the year MJ was playing baseball Reggie Lewis had passed away like We we just had we lost some good players the talent it was kind of between two eras a little bit magic had just left bird had just left um but then the next year he won with Drexler joic I think I heard I heard you guys talking about this the other day where he’s never play yic has never played with another all-nba player yeah so Tom habish has this on his substack where he ran through the list of uh guys through this point in their career so basically at the age of 28 how many MVPs did the guy or how many all NBA players did the guy play with how many all stars did the guy play with and how many all defensive guys did the guy play with and like I think it was within a five or six year radius because DeAndre Jordan obviously made an all defensive team but he doesn’t count because he’s well pasted in primae he made an all NBA team as well did DeAndre Jordan but exactly and neither did Tom in the piece uh and joic has played with zero guys the average guy I think played with 14 of them to this point in this career average guy played with 14 joic is the only one that has played with none of those magic played with the most at 32 bird was second at 29 joic zero so the point of like basically the article is he’s had the least amount of help of any MVP since 1984 this is all 1984 on so we do the ringer 100 voting where we vote for the 100 players which it’s gimmicky but it’s fun to try to make a list and see where guys rank right so Mitchell I’m sorry Murray is somewhere in that group with you know uh well Anthony Ed is probably P him but he’s in there with Mitchell and fox I had him the last time we voted I think I had him 14th because I value the playoff thing right if you’re going regular season he’s probably not top 15 but if you’re valuing how he can go up a level in the playoffs so let’s say he’s 15 I had Aaron Gordon on this list uh somewhere somewhere in the 50s and and those are his two best teammates this is in the league and going back to like that Moses example where he’s playing with Dr J and Mo Cheeks and Tony um I do I do think he should get a little more credit for his ability to lift everything up which we saw during those no Murray Seasons he’s just throwing a team on its back that would would have been like a 20- win team otherwise I mean what was Will Barton his second leading score like the next leading score behind him I think one of the years when he did that uh uh you know a couple of other guys that are out of the league and uh with with Murray like Murray hasn’t even been fantastic in this postseason let’s be honest I mean Murray was against the Lakers had a two good quarters maybe in in the entire series and then in this series he’s been uh you know he’s been so so tonight he wasn’t great he hit a couple of shots late to sort of make the stats look better but Murray hasn’t been the same player he was last year by any stret he had a nice little stretching game for that I thought was huge and he was good in game three um the heat pack was was kind of his signature B of the series and I know you guys talked about it too but brell and I talked about on Sunday night I just can’t believe he wasn’t suspended um I just based on the history of punishment for that kind of stuff and if I’m a Minnesota fan now that I’m down 3-2 I’m moving into full-fledged we got absolutely screwed that guy should have been suspended if you go back and watch the clip it’s kind of crazy like towns could have easily stepped on that heat pack and gone flying and like hyperextended his knee or something it’s a clear one game suspension so at least Minnesota has that to grab on to without question and like any player out there it’s the same thing with Mitchell Robinson when MB pulled his leg like Mitchell Robinson should have went to the grounds and pretended like embi shot him yeah he should have roll around for 10 minutes right exactly and somebody should have saw that heat pad and like slipped on it now granted they probably didn’t know that uh you know Jamal threw it uh they were probably just surprised by it and you know I think you talked about this but it’s got to go down if they win as one of the biggest wh ifs in NBA history like he gets suspended Minnesota wins that series maybe the championship maybe it affects Boston Boston wins the championship oras they can’t beat Denver so like Minnesota’s not the only team that should be ticked that Jamal Murray didn’t get suspended like Oklahoma City Dallas Boston like anybody with a legitimate shot of the championship or yic just would have put them on his back in game three and just just laid this back down which would have made the Legacy even you know grow even never know the other thing I missed as I look back on trying to figure out how much did I did I overreact after game two what would I do differently Edwards was so great in round one and the first two games of round two that it really felt like you know the word the MJ initials were getting thrown around we knew that wasn’t yeah I don’t think compare anyone but that’s how that’s how good he was and you see tonight he looked like a 22y old kid tonight he made a ton of mistakes he just wasn’t that good yeah and 22s why I’m not going to hammer the kid and I that’s not what other people in the media do I almost exactly and I and look what he did in game four I mean game four 44 five and five on I think it was like 15 to 26 from the field three of five from three like he was amazing his teammates didn’t lift him they really should have been up 3-1 if his teammates came along for the ride and I hope the rest of the media doesn’t do that and I almost feel like the media is a whole kind of put him in that spot where people have to criticize him because it’s like oh he’s he’s Jordan he’s Jordan and then people get defensive then they rip him see I told you not Jordan mean he didn’t do anything other than say please don’t compare me to Michael Jordan exactly and people are going to hammer him tomorrow probably oh I told you he’s not uh he’s not Michael Jordan but uh listen the way that he accepts criticism I think is like first class the way that he handled like the loss the other day in game three where he’s like no that’s directly on me Reggie Miller was 100% right we got veterans that are 35 36 that are pointing to their head coach in Phoenix uh and uh in in La uh that don’t take responsibility like Anthony Edwards took at the age of 22 yeah the only people who should be getting hammered tomorrow are Tyreese hbert and ricarla which we’ll get to in the next segment um I’m still not sure Minnesota is out of this series they’re coming home for game six and I don’t know I I for some reason I can’t count him out yet because we have seen them dial up the defense so I’m not ready to say this is over but I will say if Denver did flip this series and they’re going to end it in six I was going back I was trying to figure out the great dig deep series flips we’ve had and it can’t just be like a team that was down and came back like the 81 Celtics it’s like that’s that’s a comeback that’s not a dig we’re digging deep our our backs aren’t just against the wall they’re through the ra wall and then we turned it and by the end of the series we’re just like [ __ ] tattooing the other team the the 2016 Cavs doesn’t even totally qualify for this but I think they have to be mentioned just because game seven was so close but game five in game six they really spanked the Warriors if you remember game four right right before uh Draymond punched LeBron the balls yeah that was 2-1 in Cleveland game four and the Warriors played one of the best games of the entire C era and beat them in their house and the game was pretty much over when Draymond did the thing but it felt like the series was over over and then the Cavs slipped it the ‘ 06 Mavs is a really good one where Dallas wins the first two and it’s game three and then Wade makes that big comeback they get some calls and all of a sudden by game six Dallas is a sh of themselves right so that that’s probably your worst case scenario the uh the 95 Rockets fell behind to Phoenix two nothing and they and got waxed in the first two games they were down 3-1 after the fourth game and then came back in those last three and one and seven the 93 Bulls lost the first two to the Knicks and came back and then I think my favorite one for this is the 77 Blazers where and I’m going way back and people this are like what the who’s on the seven that was the bill walon Blazers they Portland wins the title they lose the first two games near the end of game two Daryl Dawkins gets in a fight with morrice Lucas yeah somehow Doug Collins is the only one that gets punched Dawkins goes destroys a toilet in the locker room after the game he’s mad the Sixers didn’t help him out and game three that’s it Portland just runs them off the court for the next couple games and they win in six it’s pretty rare to see a team established dominance and then by the end of the series they’re getting their ass kicked and I don’t know if that’s going to happen in this series do you think game six will be the culmination of that or you expect Minnesota to fight back uh you I think Minnesota’s gonna play hard uh just because I love the leadership of like Anthony Edwards uh I mean Conley’s a big blow Conley tonight yeah mentioned that earlier because we talked Bill about uh you know all season Conley and how important it was to go like get like Monty Morris at the trade deadline even though it’s not a big name we’re like oh that’s important for Tim connley to go out there and get just because they have no their offense falls apart down the stretch if if they don’t have Mike Conley on the floor uh so like that was important so the loss of him is obviously important and here’s the other thing I think that maybe we as a whole overreacted to with Minnesota and saying that you know maybe they’re the championship favorite at one point after they were up to nothing is all season long their offense wasn’t any good specifically down the stretch of games like their clutch offense was bad we got on Celtics cased all the time but their offense down the stretch isn’t great I think they’re returning down to uh you know they’re returning down to the norm maybe over the last couple of games where we didn’t see it in the first six when they’re going up against Phoenix they’re going up against Denver this is kind of the offense that we saw during the regular season out of them yeah I think that’s fair well they lost by 15 tonight we’ll see they at least got towns going a little bit Conley I’m sure will play in game six and they’re going to have to figure out a way to summon the game two energy again I don’t know if they will Denver might have done it I don’t know how they did it I really don’t but it’s it’s uh it’s going to be a feather in the yic cap [Music]