NBA Playoffs – playoffs – working day 37
Nikola Jokic will play his first NBA final. The Serbian shone on Monday in the fourth game of the Western final. With the victory, 113-111, the Nuggets close the series with four straight victories over the Lakers of LeBron James, who has fallen despite having scored 40 points. The Joker, as the European center is nicknamed, has registered his eighth triple double of the postseason (30 points, 14 rebounds and 13 assists). His performance this afternoon at Crypto Stadium has unseated another great, Wilt Chamberlain, who had managed seven 56 years ago. With an overwhelming rhythm, Jokic and his team enter a championship ring for the first time since the Nuggets joined the league in 1976.
Jokic, 28 years old, has already lifted his first trophy on Monday. It has been the title of the conference, the first for the franchise. This was accompanied by the trophy magic Johnson for the best player of the series. Jokic, who lost the MVP of the season to Joel Embiid of the 76ers, received it and said that he did not represent anything to him, because he still had work to do with his teammates. The first game against the winner of the Miami or Boston series will be on Thursday, June 1 in Denver. “It has been surreal, but we will continue to make history. We have much more to do. That’s what we’re thinking about right now,” said Jamal Murray, who scored 25 points and has been a mainstay for the Nuggets during the playoffs.
It seemed that LeBron was not ready to go home. The 38-year-old Lakers star was once again the engine of a team that started the night against the wall. Four times NBA champion, James showed that saving the season was a commitment that he made personally. In the first quarter he hit all four shots he took outside the box, including one that looked more like a pass from alley-oop than a shot to the basket. But he also missed the most important shot, the last one, which would have sent the game to extra time.
James played almost non-stop the first two quarters. He rested for only four seconds. In the first two quarters he scored 31 points, boosting the Lakers who went fifteen points ahead at halftime (73-58). Rui Hachimura had 10 points and Anthony Davis had eight rebounds and nine points.
The Nuggets had run out of fuel by the end of the second quarter. More than neutralized by the Lakers’ game, a thread of arbitration decisions took them out of concentration. James and Aaron Gordon, the Denver forward, clashed in a brawl that heated things up between the teams and caused guards to leave their benches to prevent a brawl from breaking out. The referees solved the problem with a technical foul for each player. Michael Malone, Denver’s coach, also got another technical a few minutes later for challenging a referee’s decision. But the physical shock of the game got Jokic into foul trouble from the third quarter. By the end of the game he added five fouls.
The story changed in the third quarter. It took 20 seconds for Denver to show its power at both ends of the court. When the Lakers’ Hachimura missed a drop shot, Jokic grabbed the defensive rebound and led the attack, passing the ball to Caldwell-Pope, who missed a 3-pointer. Michael Porter Jr. had the offensive rebound and went for the basket with a hook that didn’t go in either. Jokic caught the backboard and missed another shot down the basket. The cycle was closed by Caldwell-Pope with another rebound, which he was able to convert. Jokic had 14 rebounds in the game, 11 of these defensive. With these numbers, he battled Davis under the boards. The Lakers center grabbed 14 rebounds and 21 points, two of these came at a decisive moment through free throws to tie the game at 111 with seconds left. But Denver won defending their paint with nine blocks by four of the Angels (three were from Davis).
LeBron’s first-half prowess came at a cost to the Lakers, who watched as the Nuggets stole the game in the third quarter with thirteen points from Jokic. The Los Angeles team only scored 16 points in the period, their worst production in the entire playoff run. Denver, on the other hand, had 36. “I feel frustrated that I couldn’t win any of these games… But I just have to take my hat off to them, they are a fantastic team,” James said in the post-game conference. James played 47 minutes on the night. No one was on the field more than him.
This is the third time LeBron James has been swept in a playoff series. In 2007, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginóbili’s Spurs endorsed him with four straight wins in what was his first career final, which he played with Cleveland. In 2018 it was the second. He too with the Cavs, but against his nemesis, the Golden State Warriors with Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant. Today it was the turn of Nikola Jokic, who is taking giant steps towards becoming one of the best in the NBA.
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