By Alex P. Vidal
“I think I brought something different to the NBA. I brought that I can do pretty much everything on the floor.”—Nikola Jokic
DUNCAN Robinson stole the show from behemoth machine gun Nikola Jokic and hoisted Miami Heat to a Houdini-like 111-108 win in Game 2 of the NBA Finals on June 4 in Denver, Colorado to destroy the soothsayers’ prediction of a 4-0 shutout dominance for the Denver Nuggets in the best-of-seven series.
Jokic, of course, remains to be the ballgame’s major attraction. I thought he was like a giant robot controlled by a special computer system to inflict mayhem in the hardcourt.
Everything he grabbed turned into gold, so to speak. He was a veritable scoring machine and a well-rounded cager. He was fast and furious.
Jokic, who was reportedly asleep when the Denver Nuggets drafted him with the forty-first pick in the 2014 NBA draft, flickered despite Robinson’s astonishing fourth quarter snafu.
The series, now leveled to one win apiece, goes to Miami for Game 3 on June 7 (Wednesday).
Whatever happens next, Nuggets’ myth of invincibility has been tarnished.
Nuggets may still win the 2023 NBA championship, but it will have to pass through the proverbial hole of the needle now that Miami Heat will come back home with head unbowed for Game 4 on June 9 (Friday).
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Back to Jokic. Famously, according to a The New Yorker story on June 4, when the pick was announced, ESPN, which televised the draft, was airing a Taco Bell commercial, for a cross between a burrito and a quesadilla—the quesarito. Jokic’s name flashed on a chyron below the ad.
According to Jokic, who told the story in an essay for the Players’ Tribune, his brother called him with the news, champagne ready. Jokic hung up on him and went back to bed.
He didn’t come to Denver straight away and spent the next year playing in Serbia instead. He wanted to play basketball, and wanted to win, but he was in no rush.
The Nuggets, to that point, had never made the NBA Finals, let alone won a championship. The year that Jokic arrived, the team hired Mike Malone to be the head coach.
The year after that, the Nuggets drafted Jamal Murray, with the seventh pick, out of the University of Kentucky.
We will continue to watch Jokic extra-ordinary showmanship when the Games 3 and 4 unwraps in Miami.
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Some people who know things very well are unable to express their wisdom because they have never learned the art of simplicity.
The secret of good dressing is simplicity.
Dresses now are more sensible than ever before because they have less frills and furbelows on them.
As a rule the simpler the dress the more elegant and more modest it is.
Our thoughts would be clearer if they were simpler. We should avoid much confusion if we simply avoid exaggeration and ambiguity.
When a man has vision he thinks in simple, straight lines. He does not confuse himself with words he does not understand.
The greatest difficulty with wealth is that it increases our complexity of living. We get to many artificial wants.
That man is happiest whose wants are fewest and whose life is simplest. He gets more out of living than the next man.
One of the greatest things, therefore, is to learn how to do without things, to learn to keep our wants simple and our surroundings simple, so that life may be lived with the least obstruction.
We will find that in seeking simplicity we acquire both strength and beauty.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)
