The Denver Nuggets are, in itself, a teaching. A return to the past with interpreters of the present. The triumph of the pass over the shot, the throw as a consequence and not as a cause. Converting is the end of the trick, not the beginning. Poetry gives shine to mathematics.
The run and shoot essay finds in this team a fair break from its overwhelming doctrine. We mustn't confuse rhythm with speed. Progress worshipers now have to stop in the face of nostalgia for a game that seemed destined to sleep in encyclopedias.
Analog basketball, that of VHS, pushes itself into the era of social networks. The Nuggets are a version 3.0 of the Spurs that revolutionized everything two decades ago. The game that made assistance its main method returns to the fore.
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Shared ingenuity, altruism as a choice and not as an obligation, is contagious. We have Jamal Murray at the head of the snake. We think of him as a scorer, but he averages 10.5 assists in these Finals, something that hasn't happened since 1991 with Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan.
It isn't about statistics, but about making an intention known. Denver wants to make his partner happy: a search in a sport that, in its purest form, is played with the other. And then Nikola Jokic appears, a vintage player capable of doing everything.
Jokic's main assist is to us. To those of us who are watching. It is a direct pass towards the smile, because those unexplored angles, that taking advantage of the partner's cut from the top of the mountain is an obligation for him. A must be.
It's funny, but taking the shot for Jokic is, in his ideals as a player, a kind of a failure. Not been able to find a better option, not having been able to supply a teammate on time. Jokic is generosity. Since Tim Duncan, you haven't seen anything like this in a league used to practicing ruthless self-centeredness.
Jokic's fifth foul in Game 4 of the Finals was the best thing that could have happened to us as spectators. It revealed things that we thought of as hypotheses but that we could not verify due to lack of empirical evidence. With Jokic on the bench, team basketball flowed over individual basketball. Aaron Gordon as a perfect wild card, Bruce Brown as a scoring plane, Christian Braun as a revulsive rookie. In short, from one for all to all for all.
The Heat, for their part, taught us in these Playoffs that effort pays off. That it's worth fighting even in limited conditions because only those who don't give up prematurely achieve feats. The Nuggets are fighting against that mammoth effort of a team born to cause chaos.
Denver knows what it's up against and that demand for energy from Mike Malone. He knew what to say and when, something taken from the manual of that great teacher named Gregg Popovich.
Under normal conditions, the Nuggets are a superior team to the Heat. There isn't doubt about it. But things, dear friends, it isn't enough to say them: they must be done. And that's what started to happen in Miami and may finally happen today in Denver.
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