The Denver Nuggets managed to rise from the ashes like a great phoenix on Tuesday, pushing the series to 2-1 against the famed Los Angeles Lakers.
Much of Denver’s return to relevance in the series is due to Jamal Murray’s arrival as a major player. Often considered one of the better players in the league, he’s never been touted as a superstar; though his two clutch three-pointers and 28 points in Game 3 might begin to change that narrative.
For Michael Malone, it already has.
"Now I know every night what I'm getting from Jamal," Denver coach Michael Malone said. "Last year, we knew what we were getting from Nikola, but what kind of game would Jamal have. That's no longer the case.
"We have two superstars in Nikola and Jamal."
For now, forget the small sample of a single game, even if resulted in 50 percent shooting from three and 59 percent from the floor; as well as 12 assists and 8 rebounds to go along with those aforementioned 28 points. It’s the bigger postseason picture painting Murray as the cat’s meow.
In 17 NBA Playoffs games, the Kentucky Wildcats product (so far) averaged 26.6 points, 6.5 assists and 5.0 rebounds per. His efficiency actually rises in these crucial moments as well; increasing his regular season numbers, shooting seven percentage points better from the floor and 11 from three when it matters most.
Seventeen games is a good enough sample, especially for a player in his fourth year, to begin recalibrating earnest projections for a guy we might’ve previously overlooked. Not nefariously or anything. Merely a situation where, due to solid but not spectacular play in the past, a basketball loving nation didn’t realize just how good Jamal Murray’s best could be.
And hell, this might not be peak Jamal. Much like wine, many point guards get better with age. Now that Murray has played through just under a handful of seasons, coupled with the ups-and-downs of playoff adversity, he’s quickly becoming a battle-tested veteran at a relatively young age.
Does this mean the Nuggets will even the series and eventually advance to NBA Finals? Probably not. Not yet. But even if Denver fails to reach that next-level this season, the future is so bright for the franchise, the fanbase should begin wearing shades.
Talking Head Syndrome
A career 5.4 point per game scorer talking all the trash about a few future Hall of Famers might be your jam, but it isn’t mine.
We’ve touched on Perkins and the like before. It’s not lost on me I’ve actually averaged 0.0 points per game in the NBA, but I’m also not out on social media questioning the toughness of people because I watched a basketball game with Twitter at the ready.
I… don’t even have a Twitter.
For me, and this is obviously just a personal preference, if someone believes a team didn’t push their capabilities to the limit, it would be cooler if we refrained from character assassination — even if the character trait is more so a trope and an immeasurable.
Perkins made his bones in the NBA by playing hard, which is why he’s consistently hung up on the toughness narrative. That, and… ugh… he doesn’t offer sincerely good analysts otherwise.
Still, toughness and playing hard aren’t the same thing. Toughness is a trait. Playing hard is something that can change on any given day or moment, for numerous reasons (sometimes out of people’s control), which doesn’t define a person in a forever-kind-of-way.
It’s a battle of verbiage semantics, and not a hill I really care to die on, but when someone’s basketball opinions are otherwise also batshit awful, it’s hard to see what he says and do anything other than realize it comes from a bad faith perspective.
Perk is that guy with a YouTube channel who read up on a conspiracy theory, purposely ignores the science, then when people combat his ignorance with evidence, he yells at people in a way that will draw a crowd, but they’re only there to see the carnival barker make a fool of himself.
Seriously, no one is putting on ESPN to listen to what Perk has to say for any other reason than to make a meme out of him.
There are former NBA players who go on TV to talk about the game. They, like Perk, sometimes have to criticize former colleagues. But for the ones people respect, they’re at least approaching it in an educated, good faith way.
What they’re not doing? Trying to be the jellyfish version of Skip Bayless. All that random talk and hyperbolic nonsense, but without the spine to stand behind the takes.
Mask Gate?
NFL coaches are getting fined left and right for not wearing masks. They’re also wearing them incorrectly, or apparently thinking they’re going to smash a global pandemic to the ground by way of brute force.
So many coaches have been fined by the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE at this point, it’s resulted in a weird think-piece from PFT about if/why the league should abandon the currently mandatory policy.
While the piece correctly discusses how this is mostly an optics issue for the league, it doesn’t insert any medical data, information or the like into the post. Moreover, outside the optics point, which is accurate, the rest of this bar is downright laughable:
“To the extent the rule is driven by optics, it’s far better to not have the rule (and to attribute it to daily testing) than to have a rule that isn’t consistently followed.”
Ugh… The NFL can mandate a rule and also do daily testing. That would be like arguing refs should throw fewer pass interference flags in the name of daily resting. Furthermore, just because a rule isn’t followed doesn’t mean the rule should be abandoned.
Mind you, there’s actually a good argument to be made for coaches to not wear masks. How they’re on top of 100 other people during Sundays alone. That coaches are brushing up against sweaty, coughing men on a near daily basis due to size of operation versus room to move. How, given the situation, they just won’t help. So on and so forth.
But, I mean, do better. If you’re going to do the #WellActuallyNoMasks stance, be a bit more clever than the reverse “if everyone jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge,” dilly.
Where Is The Mass Effect Remaster?
No (good) emails this week. So I leave us with that question.
I’m sick of the rumors. I don’t think Andromeda is now somehow great because it was released on Steam, either. Just give me the trilogy remaster, fix up the ending as a bonus surprise, and let’s call it a day.
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Joseph used to write a bunch of things for places like Forbes, FRS and others. Now he’s ‘the man’ in management. A big old loser. A washed, leathery face, too. Here’s his own newsletter.