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Denver Nuggets' Nikola Jokic (15) reacts to being called with a foul as Oklahoma City Thunder's Chet Holmgren (7) looks on in the second half of Game 1 of an NBA basketball second-round playoff series Monday, May 5, 2025, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Nate Billings)
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Take as many shots as you want, Russell Westbrook. We’re going to leave you wide open this entire game. We don’t believe you can shoot. Strike that: we know you can’t shoot.
Same with you, Michael Porter. Fire away all game long. You too Jamal Murray and Christian Braun.
We dare you to beat us.
We don’t believe you can.
You’re proving we’re right – night after night after night.
You guys are bumbling basketball beef jerkys. What’s your team’s shooting percentage in the series against us, the Oklahoma City Thunder? 17 percent? Or is that 7 percent? .007 percent? Are you setting some sort of historical record for horrible shooting by an NBA team?
All of you not named Joker, keep shooting. All five of us defenders will smother Joker; he’s the only player on your team we believe is any good.
We’ll shove and push him, hack him and bother him, claw and scratch at him, wrestle and grab and cause his arms to bleed, anything. He’s the only one on your team we even care about. The rest of you – keep shooting and we’ll keep winning and end your season. We’ve even had serious discussions about how any of you bums even made it to the NBA being such sucky shooters.
This is the strategic mindset and game play execution the Oklahoma City Thunder are embracing and it’s working. Last night Joker scored 44 points and hauled in 15 rebounds despite being covered by five pro basketball players, while the rest of his teammates stunk up the gym with fumes from rotten eggs and other sulfuric acid scents. They missed shots galore; an errant off-target demonstration of basketball ineptitude. A skill set unrefined. It was incompetence exponentially magnified and undignified.
OKC now leads the series 3-2 and will put Denver away in Game 6, a tombstone will be there for this funeral. It will be a sad and pathetic ending to their season and the final time we will see Joker contend for another NBA title. Denver’s run as real contenders is officially six feet in the ground.
It’s all culminating the way I don’t want it to. My hero, Nikola Jokic, won’t win the series nor the MVP and the team will get busted up because too many of them can’t shoot. They’re letting down this superstar. He may ask to be traded. He’s getting older. All of what I hoped he would do he won’t. Not with this team nor any other team.
The joke is over. Joker’s no longer laughing at everybody.
There is only one thing for his teammates to do. All of you, get in the gym. Pronto. Now. Take 1,000 3-pointers each. Make 70 percent or shoot another thousand. Hit 90 percent or another thousand. It’s the only chance you have of winning the next two games and shocking everybody who is now convinced you guys are bad shooters and your team is burned-to-the-crisp toast.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (“SGA”) deserves the MVP. Unlike all of Denver’s bricklayers, he makes outside shots. He’s been classy and cool about the MVP debate – focused on whether he or Joker should win it – and is proving he’s more valuable to his team than Joker is to his. Reason number one: SGA’s teammates make shots for him while Joker’s teammates don’t. One player inspires his teammates to play better than another. That makes that one player more valuable.
SGA leads that team and inspires them to be tough. Joker’s not getting his teammates to shoot better. The verdict is obvious.
Although Joker was all world last night, he wasn’t even all Aspen, Colorado in the three previous games. Way below his standards across the stat sheet – and at the wrong time of the season. My sense is that the pressure has been getting to him, his mind is bothered, and all the wrestling matches with OKC defenders are leaving him flustered and agitated. It’s not basketball; it’s wrestling and dirty street fighting.
Uncharacteristically, during this series, he has clanked so many shots off target that it looked like the OKC five-on-one defense rattled his Eastern European abdominal muscles. They figured out how to stop him; more alarmingly, they’re out-thinking this basketball genius.
None of us is used to seeing Joker play basketball poorly and get outsmarted. Witnessing all this has ached my heart. It has been like Superman getting beat up by some street punk, or Caitlin Clark getting benched for an inept performance, or Sammy Sportface not being recognized for his blogging talent. I never wanted to see him play a bad game because I was more energized believing there was a perfect basketball player walking the Earth. No longer does that person exist.
Guilty I am of false idolatry, a believer in false gods. I think I violated one of the Ten Commandments, such as “thou shalt not have strange gods before me” or “thou shalt not worship basketball players.”
Feeling sullen, I want to sulk and be woeful, so I am doing exactly that. Honest emotions, even if unbecoming, are what this world needs more of. Besides, I have to be honest for this blog to sustain its pristine reputation for credibility.
Why can’t he win this series and NBA title so I can dance in my house, boast to Idea Man, and see him say something about his idolatry of Serbian-based horses during Denver’s championship parade? I want him to win the title and then complain he has to stick around for Denver’s championship parade because he’d rather go to Sombor, Serbia, and watch his horses gallop around the track.
Why does my fantasy have to end this way, with a thud, like a stick in the mud, feeling like a clump of crud?
Rid me of this reality. I don’t want people to say he’s never going to win a second NBA title. I want to be right about him and all his critics to be wrong, yet I am about to be proven wrong, which brings me to a downcast place.
Woe is me.
Life keeps obliterating our fantasies. There are none; only realities and truth, bad shooting and losses, my hero, whom I idolize, playing basketball like Billy Idol.
Lock yourselves in the gym, you battalions of Denver Nuggets basketball players who lay bricks better than real professional bricklayers. Don’t stop working on your shooting stroke muscle memory until the myelin in your brains fuses together more tightly, until it’s time to head to game 6. Stay there. Don’t come out. Don’t drink water or eat food. Do not pass go. No potty breaks. No scrolling your phones. No swiping right. No Doritos. No Twizzlers.
No reading anything except this blog as a reminder of how much is at stake right now and how crucial it is that you guys make outside shots in Game 6 so the Joker can keep joking around, so the joke doesn’t end up being about all of you which is exactly what’s going to happen unless you improve your outside shooting.
I am not joking around. This is the Joker’s reputation you’re all destroying.
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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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