(Transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Accompanying audio is Louisa and my entire rangy chat)
Katie: I don't even know how to start this because it's not a podcast.
Louisa: It's actually, I mean, yeah. How do we start this? I don't want to start in the middle of the conversation that we were having because you're going to do a transcript.
Katie: I mean, well, first Louisa — Louisa Thomas, thank you for joining me. This is of course, your ‘Exits’. This is your audio version of ‘Exits’ and you picked the Denver Nuggets. So we're here to unpack what happened to that team.
Louisa: I feel like the Denver Nuggets picked me, frankly.
Louisa: I went out to see the Nuggets early on in the season and they had just actually lost very badly to the Timberwolves. They had raced out and they'd beaten the Lakers, opened the season. They were looking very good.
Jokic, who has historically taken a little while to warm up, had actually scored some points during the preseason and was already kind of looking in mid-season form and then they got, like, absolutely smacked in Minnesota. And Jokic had a very bad night. He couldn't shoot.
And obviously that was a kind of a different team than the team they ended up playing in some respects. But it was kind of — I remember texting with a friend and she was like, This team is like actually going to cause them real problems down the road. And we were reflecting on how they already had caused them some problems during the playoffs, the previous playoffs.
One of the things that was sort of interesting to me about this team as I was writing about it was that they seemed, particularly coming out of the All-Star break, they're so good. Their ceiling was so high. The best starting five in the league and you felt this sense of inevitability about them — but of course that turned out not to be true at all.
Katie: When was that? Was that in the winter?
Louisa: That was like November 2nd or something.
Katie: So early.
Louisa: Yeah, it was very early. But that was the first time I'd seen them play live and it was striking to me, how they played what I consider a very beautiful basketball game.
I know Jokic’s game is not for everyone, but it was this kind of beautiful mixture of a very team involved style, where everybody's constantly moving and constantly to be playing some sort of key role on the floor, while also having this virtuoso. Sort of like the Boston Celtics only with the pleasure, the sort of natural response of pleasure you have to seeing someone do something better than anyone you've ever seen do something before.
Katie: I think that's interesting because the Celtics to me, their basketball is more proficient than beautiful. And as you were saying that, I was trying to think, what is it about the Nuggets that makes their brand of basketball quite beautiful? Even Jokic's, I don't know, it's fluid in its own way.
Louisa: I think that he has an element of surprise about him. I actually feel like sometimes when you're watching the Celtics, I really like the Celtics. I'm actually like pro, I have like come around because I really like the concept of the team. I'm like just a dedicated socialist, I guess.
But the thing about Jokic is that when he has the ball, you know that something is going to happen. And sometimes you can see it unfolding in real time, which is exciting. But also sometimes you're a half second behind, and there's something thrilling about this inventive quality with which he plays. And I think it's partly his power to organize the floor and reorganize it and surprise you.
There's a real sense of playfulness about him. And when I say playfulness I mean that surprise is part of that, but it's a real sense of having fun, and sometimes even kind of bored fun, like a guy shooting a crumpled ball into a paper basket.
Katie: I'm not trying to be superlative because I think Jokic has been frustrated before — something in that game gave me a sense of, this person's reaching for something they know is always usually there.
There was this quality around Jokic of being surprised for the first time in a long time by an opponent. I wondered, because of the time you spent around the team, and this phenomenal profile you wrote basically channeling Jokic, what you found when you were watching that series?
Louisa: I'm going to start with what you said about him being frustrated. Watching him over the course of the season, I was actually surprised by how often he does get frustrated, because I think there is a little bit of a narrative like, Oh, he doesn't care. Which leads to a sense that he's not invested in any given game. And actually, he can be quite emotional. And sometimes it comes against the refs and sometimes himself or whatever, but I do think that you're onto something — which is the sense that he's a consummate problem solver and often you can see it happening over the course of a quarter or a half or a game. And in this series, it was happening over the course of the series, from game to game, as opposed to within the game.
There were just these dramatic swings, you know? Off mic, we were talking a little bit about the Timberwolves season and how it's hard to judge that particular team. The responses to that team are so dramatic, partly because there's no real consensus on them, as a team that was forming as opposed to formed. It could go in any direction. Whereas the Nuggets you felt were this known quantity, and here they were confronted by something that felt new and unexpected in some ways. They were being surprised in some sense, even though they shouldn't have been.
At times in that series Jokic was better than he's ever been in maybe his entire life. I mean, I didn't see all his games in Serbia, but really a kind of tremendous single man force. And then other times a sense of being thwarted by this defense.
And it's not just him. It's a mistake to think that the Nuggets are all about Jokic because when he's at his best, obviously he's playing this tremendous two man game with Jamal Murray. And one of the reasons that team works so well is that they have so many players who are willing to do these things that give him the kind of space that that he needs, and they're willing to set these screens and cut and do all those less glamorous parts of the game that are hard if you don't feel like they're going to be rewarded — because they were so often rewarded.
It's rare that you feel he's confronting a problem that he can't quite solve. And that was happening a little bit. What happens if you play a game eight, a game nine? I think that the chess metaphor is very much abused. But with him, and with a few of these great cerebral athletes, there is a sense of attack and counterattack and figuring things out and your move, my move. It's fun to watch that in the fast-paced flow of a real-time game.
Katie: I was thinking back to a conversation I had with Jamal Murray at the beginning of this season. We were talking about, is it harder or easier to go into a season post-title? He said it's easy in the way that you have your team figured out, but it feels harder because everybody's gunning for you and you have this target on your back.
Louisa: The other thing I'm interested in is the way in which their loss now — people talk more often about, well, they had such an easy path to the finals the year before. Maybe they weren't that good. Which I think is actually kind of just... BS to be honest.
Katie: I think the irony of basketball though is I've seen so many “good” teams lose to very bad teams, because they don’t take those teams seriously. They think they have to play down and then they get walloped.
Louisa: That's a classic sports thing. That’s a real advantage that “bad” teams have.
Louisa: They played with such a small team. The rotation was really so small. Especially in the playoffs, I feel like that really inhibited the team. I mean, it's so easy for me. What do I know? But they have these younger players that just never saw the floor and then when you need them in the playoffs, like, guess what?
They don't have the experience. And when you do need some really rangy, athletic, a Peyton Watson or someone, he hasn't built enough trust with the coaches to be put on the floor in these critical situations. And that's the coach's job, but there's always a tension in an NBA team between developing the future or committing to the present based on past performance.
Katie: It's a hard duality to hold in your head as a coach. To be like, wait, we just proved it with this group. We're not equipped even as a franchise to — I know that Denver, when Masai [Ujiri] was still there, development was a key thing for that franchise, but that's also what happens to franchises that are overlooked or aren't necessarily destinations.
You've got to lean on development, but then, what happens when development works, you stop focusing on development.
Louisa: It's such a human thing, right? The human thing is to predict the future based on the past.
And it's brutal actually that what I'm describing in some ways, because there can only be five players on the floor at any given time. You can see these in extreme ways, as maybe on the Warriors is the classic example right now. Or if we're talking about the Celtics, that's a very ruthlessly forward-facing team.
Murray being injured was like a kind of blessing in disguise for the teams. Being injured is never a blessing, but they were forced to figure out how to build a team that could function without him and not over-rely on him. So that when he came back and was at full strength, it was so great. But how do you artificially create those constraints without anyone being injured?
Louisa: One thing I want to say, I think that the team was actually quite tired. Which I think people don't like because athletes are never supposed to get tired. The Timberwolves were exhausted after that. I feel like we think about these teams as known quantities, right? This is who they are. This is their level, or where they should be.
Often that is probably one of the main stories, who is most tired? If you look at the Mavericks in the Finals, they were exhausted. Clearly not just hurt, but really tired. It's not even a question about being fit.
It's a question about being the focal point for so many games, and for Jokic, even if he is not always touching the ball, even if his usage is lower, a player commanding so much attention and getting so much physical attention, that's one thing you really notice when you're closer to him in person — just how bruised he is. How many cuts there are on his arms. He's like a bear, right? He's this big physical guy and people are just hammering him.
The thing about winning a championship is you have to play more basketball than almost anyone else. And you're playing into June and especially for a guy who has made it very clear that he likes to go home and go whitewater rafting or play with his horses, not to have as much of that, you know?
Katie: But I think that's right. They went longer the previous season. It is a taboo in terms of any athlete being able to admit, yeah, I'm really tired. I wish there were metrics because I feel like if there were then it would make people less skeptical of it. I think the way it is now, with every new series in the postseason there's a sense that there's a full reset, a full mental-bodily reset. Maybe they’ve had four days off, but what is four days off in a season that's already gotten 82 games?
Louisa: There is an interesting tension with [Jokic] in particular. Everybody talks, including me, about his mind. Him being this intellectual player who is guided by his hyper-processing speed. And I think that's absolutely true. But that one of the things I loved writing about him, was rethinking how the body interacts with the mind and this need for an expanded definition of athleticism.
Because it's so clear that he is an elite athlete in all of these ways that matter tremendously when we're talking about basketball, but people are so hyper-focused on the fact that he like cannot jump — and he really cannot jump. That's not an overblown thing. He can dunk a little bit. He's seven feet tall, he can place the ball up there. But he can get his hands up there really, really fast. Part of that is the anticipatory thing, but part of that is a physical reflexive thing.
Part of the reason I was really attuned to his coloring and his bruising, it was a reminder, and I wanted to communicate to the reader that this is an intensely physical person playing a very physical game. It's not all just about superior mind. There was something lazy about that interpretation. I didn't want to overlook how bodily his effort was.
Louisa: I mean, let's be real. Your brain is your body.
Katie: People like us, writers, like to separate it because it makes for an interesting extrapolation and a good exercise in storytelling.
Louisa: Earlier today went on a run with a friend and there's something that happens when you run which is very physiological.
You're running at a pace where you can hold an easy conversation, and as you ramp up, your heart rate rises. Part of this is respiratory rate, you can't talk because you're breathing fast. But even when you're not talking, your mind changes. When I'm not running with a friend, I'm usually thinking about whatever story I'm working on. If I'm like running at a slower pace, I can write in my mind, no problem. When you start running really fast, it's not just that you can't talk because you're breathing too hard, you can't think. Your body is completely focused on maintaining your organs, staying alive.
There's something to that about the game too. These guys are so hyper-trained so that they can react. They don't have to think, their bodies know what to do when their brains shut down. But the people who rely more on their minds, you could make the argument they probably have to be in better shape, because they need to be able to preserve some of that capacity for their minds. And definitely have a harder time of it once they get tired.
Katie: I've seen a lot of videos already of Jokic dancing in Serbia, having a good time.
Louisa: It's important for him.
Louisa: I also just love... I love stories about development. I love players who become something other than what you think they're going to be. I love surprise. One of the reasons I was really drawn to this team was — not to come full circle — but was the joy of discovery that you felt in any given Jokic possession.
Share this post