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Older basketball fans will remember a recent era when the San Antonio Spurs were just as revered for their constant grandeur as for their respect. At that time, the league was producing new, custom-designed things to capture the hearts and minds of the next generation of fans, and the accursed Spurs did not stop showing up at the party with a lot of mud to throw away. Kevin Garnett's Timberwolves, Steve Nash's Phoenix Suns and Dirk Nowitzki's Dallas Mavericks all followed one another to take over from Gregg Popovich and the Spurs Big Three. They were there to defeat LeBron James' maiden voyage in the final and crush the pre-dynasty Warriors just as Steph Curry wore the coat of a folk hero. The latest darlings to be found in San Antonio's sinister locations are the Denver Nuggets, especially their doughy king Nikola Jokic.
The highly entertaining playoff series between the Nuggets and Spurs in the first round was qualified for a seventh game last night thanks to a Spurs 120-103 win. The Spurs, faced with an elimination on their ground, did what they always did: absorb the best shot of their opponent severely, then gently place this opponent in a freshly dug grave.
In an alternative scenario in which the Nuggets would not have met the Spurs in the first round, Jokic would likely spend today enjoying his first real Signature Playoff performance. Jokic, who averaged 23 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists in his first-ever playoff series, had one of the best games of his career last night. The big booty is always more willing to train a teammate than to get his own bucket, but on Thursday he threw 30 shots and appeared on a mission to prove that he was the kind of superstar capable of carrying out his team to a playoff game. He made 19 of those shots and finished the match with 43 points, in addition to 12 rebounds and 9 assists. It was as loud as the declaration games were getting, and a clear announcement that Jokic, despite all his peculiarities, could really do that shit when it was needed.
Do you think the Spurs do not care? Do they care when Dirk Nowitzki left them 42 and 18 while they were trying to delay their elimination in the fifth match of the semi-finals of the 2001 conference? Or when did LeBron meet them in his ascent to divinity? Or when Steve Nash was trying to ride his bloody heroic charge to the final? They did not care about that!
The Spurs expressed their disdain for the moment that Jokic should have lived perfectly in the Spursian fashion. They did not spoil the party by going to play and putting themselves under the skin of Jokic, or breaking their hearts with a drummer, but passing the ball into the hoop with an agonizing and improbable frequency. The slaughtered Spurs 57 percent of the ground in the sixth match and did it with cruel simplicity. They did not stop dribbling the ball in the basket and passing it through the hoop. On the possessions when they could not quite reach the edge, they got up and hit the mid-range jumpers. Here's how to send a bright girl home with some bruises on her face:
Now the Spurs have to return to Denver for the seventh game on Saturday night and we'll all see if the Nuggets and Jokic have learned a valuable lesson on what it takes to actually kill and bury the Spurs. When you meet this team in playoffs, even in a version that includes Bryn Forbes and Derrick White in the starter training, you will need more than one Big Moment to survive.
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