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Two six-foot-ten-plus men, late at night, looked spent. Reporters peppered them with questions about what had just happened between them.
The Joker had unleashed a thirty-foot three-pointer with the score tied and four seconds left in a game that his team had to win or his run for a second Larry O’Brien NBA Title trophy would be pretty much doomed.
The ball floated a few feet over the rim. Rising up to grab it in mid-air was his very close friend, Aaron Gordon, who took the ball and, from about a foot above the rim, stuffed it through the orange ring with more or less 0.00001 seconds left in the game.
Gordon sprinted down the center of the court thinking his Lorenzo Charles-like-dunk off a Derrick Whittenberg airball (see 1983 national title game) had beaten the clock and evened this NBA Finals-like first round playoff series at two games apiece against the terrifically tough-out Los Angeles Clippers.
Officials studied the replay over and over and concluded that, yes, Gordon’s smash dunk from the rafters of the stadium had beaten the clock. The Nuggets – who had lost a 22 point lead in the fourth quarter – had still won and that was all that mattered.
The play itself got me out of my chair screaming because it opened the possibility that I could watch this team of tight friends – revolving around the inimitable and infinitely lovable Nikola Jokic – play two more basketball games and hopefully plenty more on their odyssey to the NBA Finals title.
Yet again Joker played one of those games again where I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I played basketball a ton. I know the game. But the way this guy plays is unknowable. It’s something from another world, beyond human understanding.
A three-point fade-away from 35 feet at the buzzer ending the first quarter – all net. An impossible-to- make shot he made then calmly walked to his bench. You almost want to shake the guy and say “Do you have any freaking idea how great a basketball player you are? You’re doing things night after night no one has ever done on the court. What’s up with you, fella? How do you do what you do?”
A MasterClass in basketball expertness is what he taught me and everyone who saw how he played last night. Good glory. Late in the game a three-point pivot in the lane without leaving his pivot foot and then to a fade-away looping swish to give his team a two-point lead late in the fourth quarter. A pump fake three-pointer from the sideline sending the defender flying towards the front row, then a calm as white snow swishing of a high arching three with perfect follow through.
Also, caught at the top of the key being mauled by two defenders – a situation any other basketball player would struggle to survive – he somehow guides a pass to Christian Braun under the basket for a layup. No one on the court or in the stands or watching on TV or on any of the seven continents could have seen Braun open; he wasn’t part of the situation of play whatsoever. Until he was – but only Joker could see it.
Joker found him as if he just knew he was there even though there was no obvious or non-obvious evidence for this. Joker cracked yet another joke on the basketball universe and we all were left just wondering about this man thinking to ourselves that maybe he’s the greatest basketball genius who has ever lived.
His stat line for the game: 36 points, 21 rebounds, 8 assists.
My God.
How many masterpieces can one artist produce in one lifetime? Isn’t there a ceiling?
But I don’t even want to dwell on his otherworldliness now because he does these things every night and there was something else about the whole experience that moved my emotions even more.
It was studying the body language and words spoken by Joker and Gordon during the press conference afterward. Gordon leaned on the podium with his hand holding up his chin; both of Joker’s hands were on each side of his face, you know that posture you take when you can hardly do anything physically you’re so physically, emotionally, and mentally drained.
Totally wiped out physically, they had left their entire bodies and hearts on that court to win that game. It seemed hard for them to sit there and answer the questions. The weariness looked almost overpowering.
You should know more context. Joker recently said that Aaron Gordon is in his top five favorite guys in his life. He likes him – a lot. They’re really really really good friends. They click together. For the past several years Joker has dished a few gajillion alley-oop dunks to Gordon; they’re on-court chemistry is like peanut butter and chocolate.
It’s beautiful. The two of them, together, playing ball and sitting side by side at a presser, uplifts my spirits and hopes about the world.
Think about the happenstance of it all. A guy from the United States, Gordon, gets traded to the Denver Nuggets and ends up on a team from a phenom from Serbia he undoubtedly knew very little about upon arrival. Serbian and American kids rarely socialize due to geographic constraints.
What are the chances these two guys would end up in the same country on the same team becoming fast friends and then, last night, connecting on one of the most spectacular endings to a basketball game any of us will ever see? The answer approaches something real close to zero.
And yet – – all improbabilities notwithstanding – there they were last night being asked about the shot and dunk.
“To be honest I’m just glad we got the win,” said Gordon.
He wasn’t interested in bragging about himself and saying how amazing and clutch his dunk had been – even though he had a right given how monumental his dunk was. A reporter asked how he had become so unselfish.
“The Joker is the best player in the world and he’s unselfish, so I can be unselfish, too,” he said.
In another act of unselfishness, Gordon and Joker had stepped in to defend teammate Christian Braun when he and James Harden got into a near-fight and face-to-face bickering in the first half.
“I had to defend my young fella (Braun),” said Gordon.
It’s the unselfishness that makes me love these two guys and this team so much. There was no arrogance in their demeanors or answers, no “look at me” behavior like we all had to endure with Shedeur Sanders and his softball- sized necklaces and socially unaware stupid comments as the smart teams kept opting not to draft him onto their NFL teams.
No bling. No trash talk. No excuses. The antithesis of cockiness and wanting to be lauded.
All coolness. A house full of humility.
Just two really tired guys on a basketball team who had done something historic an hour earlier. I almost got the sense they value their friendship more than even winning another championship because friends ultimately are more important. On our deathbeds I don’t think we care as much how many trophies we have as how many friends.
Recently Gordon was asked what he might do when he retires. He said he told Joker he would like to be an assistant coach on a basketball team with Joker as the head coach. He wants to hang out with his foreign friend – one he could have never fathomed as a kid from America – when the next chapter of his life starts.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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