I Am So Thankful to Have Nikola Jokic Highlights to Comfort Me Right Now

By Jacob Weindling  |  November 7, 2024 | 3:20pm
Photo by Jose Garcia, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Sports NBA
I Am So Thankful to Have Nikola Jokic Highlights to Comfort Me Right Now

It’s pretty dark right now, sitting on the cusp of a second Trump administration, flying into office on the back of a mandate from the public who voted for him overwhelmingly over a bunch of out of touch elitists chasing the ghosts of the past at the expense of the future. There have not been many moments of my life that I would describe as joyous or happy since the realization washed over me on Tuesday night that Kamala was cooked. There’s been a lot of anger and swearing in my household. Mostly at Joe Biden.

But I did get to watch Nikola Jokic play basketball last night, which was undoubtedly the best part of my week. For my money, the two best teams in the NBA’s Western Conference faced off, as the shorthanded Nuggets without stars Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon hosted the absurdly deep and talented Oklahoma City Thunder. The Nuggets won a thriller, 124-122, as the Russell Westbrook experiment had its best test run to date. The, shall we say, divisive, veteran stepped in for Jamal Murray and produced a very Jamal Murray-esque line of 29 points on 10-15 hot shooting, including 3-4 from three-point land.

But the story of the night was Jokic, the official athlete of new Splinter and the best basketball player on the planet. He scored 23 points, grabbed 20 rebounds and dished out 16 assists with two steals and two blocks, literally doing everything in a two-man game with Russ to drag the Nuggets bench unit plus Michael Porter Jr. to victory.

Forget all of life’s troubles for a minute, and just sit back and enjoy the beauty of the sport of basketball at its absolute peak.

I can feel my soul healing with each highlight. I am embracing my inner Tommy Heinsohn, and now lecturing the Trumpy youths on how basketball is supposed to be played. “Back in my day, we didn’t need all this fancy above the rim hyper-athletic nonsense! We won championships with sound decision-making and selfless basketball. Layups are fundamentals!“

And lest the ignorant haters who like to prove they haven’t watched a Nuggets game in five years want to start talking about Jokic’s alleged bad defense, here’s a key possession with 1:50 left where Denver’s large Serbian son got switched out on to the man who finished second to him in last year’s MVP voting, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Let’s see how that worked out for SGA.

Nikola Jokic is the only good thing about America right now, and I’m still mad at his Serbian coach for blowing that huge lead against the United States in the Olympics. He deserved that win. America deserved that loss. I have very complicated feelings about this country right now, which is why I’m going to spend the rest of my day comforting myself with highlights of my city’s basketball god.

 
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