DENVER — The King is dead. Long live the Joker.
On a spring night in Colorado when human triple-double machine Nikola Jokic was large and in charge, while a muffed dunk reminded LeBron James what a drag it can be to grow old, the young guns from Denver outlasted the Slowtime Lakers, 108-103, and seized control of the Western Conference finals.
And maybe, just maybe, the gritty little Nuggets flipped the narrative.
While James will forever be the king, there’s a new sheriff in the West.
The Lakers are yesterday’s news. Can we stop all the yada, yada, yada about the team ESPN fawns over? Denver is sick and tired of being nothing more than a prop on the national stage.
“Whatever we can use for motivation,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said late Thursday.
“Our guys … they might not admit this, but you win Game 1 … and all everybody talked about was the Lakers. Let’s be honest. That was the national narrative: ‘Hey, the Lakers are fine. They’re down 1-0, but they’re fine; they figured something out.’ Nobody talked about how Nikola just had a historic performance. He’s got 13 triple-doubles now in the playoffs, third all time. What he’s doing is just incredible.
“But the narrative wasn’t about the Nuggets, the narrative wasn’t about Nikola. The narrative was about the Lakers and their adjustments. So you put that in your pipe, you smoke it and you come back and know what? We’re going to go up (in the series) 2-0.”
With the Nuggets undefeated in this best-of-seven series after winning a track meet in Game 1 and surviving a slugfest in Game 2, what’s the best thing the Lakers have going for them at this point?
Well, Bad Bunny and Kendall Jenner do glow in the primo celebrity courtside seats in L.A., where the series now shifts for Game 3 on Saturday night. Here in our dusty old cowtown, the best we can counter with is Casa Bonita owners Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
The cuter couple?
Hey, I’d take Cartman over the Kardashians. But that’s just me. I’d ask ESPN’s Lisa Salters her opinion, although I’m not sure if she’s ever seen an episode of “South Park.”
“Joker,” Malone said, “for those who don’t know him …”
Oh, burn.
Without prompting, Malone took a not-so-subtle shot at Salters, an NBA sideline reporter who admitted after Game 1 she couldn’t recall ever seeing the two-time MVP play in person.
While L.A.’s Anthony Davis followed his 40-point performance in the series-opener with a ho-hum effort in Game 2, Joker did Joker things.
Oh sure, he filled up the stat sheet with 23 points, 17 rebounds and 12 assists.
But this is a guy who can get a triple-double merely by walking on the big NBA stage. What I’m not sure the Lakers saw coming is how this big thoroughbred relentlessly runs a foe into the ground.
“Nikola is like Secretariat,” Malone said. “That man can run for days.”
If everybody outside of the Rocky Mountains sleeps on these Nuggets. So what?
“Normal for us,” Jokic said. “To be honest, I like.”
When crew chief Tony Brothers got handed a whistle to call Game 2, Nuggets Nation got apoplectic, figuring the fix was in, because James and the Lakers are NBA royalty. But it wasn’t some tinfoil hat conspiracy that gave Denver fits when the Lakers led 68-57 a little more than five minutes past halftime.
The refs didn’t turn L.A. reserve Rui Hachimura, who literally couldn’t miss in the opening half, into the Japanese Jordan. And whenever Los Angeles does manage to put a gridlock on the Nuggets’ fast break, Denver is known to struggle to score in halfcourt sets, especially when guard Jamal Murray is suffering through a spell of clink-clank clunking his jump shot.
For nearly three quarters, Murray couldn’t find the basket, missing 12 of 15 field-goal attempts. But shooters got to keep firing. And when the Blue Arrow finally found the bullseye, he could not miss. Murray accounted for 23 of Denver’s 32 points in the decisive fourth quarter.
So when will the talk stop being about the team Denver is beating?
“The outside noise is the outside noise. We’re the Denver Nuggets; we’re used to that. We’re used to even when we win,they talk about the other team,’ Murray said. “When we beat the Clippers in the bubble, they talked about the other team. Same old, same old. It just fuels us a little more, and it will be sweeter when we win the chip.”
Murray finished with 37 points and put the pedal to the metal as the Nuggets blew by the Slowtime Lakers, sending hordes of Colorado faker-Lakers fans scurrying for the Ball Arena exits to hop in their Teslas for the long drive back to Highlands Ranch.
James won’t let the Lakers go down without a fight. He’s still capable of being one of the top five players in the league on any given night. But not every given night, as was witnessed when an aging, all-time great went to put some frosting on a breakaway dunk in the first half, but instead fumbled the ball out of bounds like a cake going splat on the floor.
Even for LeBron, it can be a drag getting old. It is Nikola’s time to rule.
The King is dead. Long live the Joker.
