[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] What is up everybody, thank you all for joining me. I'm the latest broadcast part of the CSG network. I'm, of course, your host, Jeff Morton, Saturday, broadcast. The Nuggets managed to beat, well, I say, managed to beat. They beat the snot out of the Minnesota Timberwolves, 117 to 90, I think, in a game that really wasn't even that close by the second half. The Nuggets were just mopping the floor with them. The Nuggets took a 15-point lead into the second half and just went from there. Remarkable turnaround, in every way, shape or form. This changed a lot of the tone and a lot of the stuff that was going on immediately after game two. And I'll get to that in a bit. In the second half of the podcast, I'm going to talk to you about the absolute ridiculousness that is cropped up in the hours following the game last night and the stupid anonymous executive who decided to make a situation about what the NBA was doing with not spending to Mulberry. But we're going to get to this game at night. As you all know, I don't go deep dive and I don't do things like this. I will give you historical context. I'll give you other things like that. And there is a historical context for losing two games at home and then coming back to win a series. One team that won a championship actually did that, but I'll leave it to the last note of the podcast. But the Nuggets came out last night and after it was found out that Jamal Murray will not be suspended, which we found out a few days ago. And in fact, it was, I think it was Wednesday. The Wednesday practice we found out that he wasn't going to be suspended. So it was several days at this point because this is Saturday when I'm recording this, then Jamal Murray was not going to be suspended. The Nuggets came into the game and first and foremost, and the thing that is the top line observation of this whole thing is that Jamal Murray was doing a lot better. And we'll talk to that. We'll talk about that after I talk to you about our sponsor, our new sponsor, Bet Online. Now, as you all know, I myself, I do not gamble, but I do think that you know, finding places that can be a one stop shop for your like to make an informed bet to make what you would call a good bet. Something that's, you know, something that you go into knowing and you're confident beforehand is Bet Online. Bet Online is your number one source for all summer sports this season from MLB Golf NBA and NHL playoff stats. All the latest stats, news scores and are available on your favorite teams. And that's kind of one of the things I want to talk about with us is that having that available and at your fingertips, a lot of places do that. But this is Bet Online is one of the probably the best places to do that, where you can get your one stop shop for everything you need in one place, so you don't have to have like a bunch of launch tabs open on your computer or a bunch of things open on your mobile app in order to place an informed bet. And really what it's about if you want to mitigate risk in any sort of situation is making something an informed decision. And knowing that Jamal Murray, say for instance, is not going to be suspended for a certain game, will help you out and make you get an informed bet before you go ahead. To get the latest odds and lines, including the latest team matchups, player props and odds on just about every sport out there, head to the website today or use your mobile device to get in on the action Bet Online where the game starts. Okay, Jamal Murray was back. And as I said before, that was the top line of this thing. The very top line of this game is that Jamal Murray was not suspended and he looked good. He had 24 points on 11 of 21 shooting, but he was just looked 20 times better than he has since there was maybe one game of the Laker series where he looked like he was his usual self, but it really wasn't that even through that series. Jamal Murray looked like Jamal and that really helped the Nuggets out, but it wasn't necessarily the only reason they won. And in fact, I would go so far as to say that the reason the Nuggets won is something summed up in a very simple, very below the line thing. And it was several possessions into the game, maybe two or three possessions into the game. Nicole Yokech set a screen on Jayden McDaniel's and it crumpled Jayden McDaniel's. It just completely crumpled him. And that was different from the first two games in the series. The Nuggets had purpose. They had intent and Nicole Yokech made a great pick. Now, Yokech can actually set great picks and for some reason he wasn't in the first two games, but he can set some motivated and purposeful picks. And he really, with that pick, I immediately knew the Nuggets were going to win the game because Jayden McDaniel's crumpled to the ground. And there's a thing about the Minnesota Timberwolves. And one of the primary things we know about them is that they are a stupendous, great, great defense. And they have a, what I would describe as a pedestrian offense. If Anthony Edwards is not going thermonuclear, their offense will struggle. And you saw that in this game. And what happened was the Nuggets set out to make a statement. And they did it just by setting one pick, but it one pick turned into several. There were several picks that, and then of course there was one on Nikhil. And it was Alexander Walker that was in late in the game where Yokech was just standing there. He didn't do anything wrong, but Walker just basically was one of those spine-compressing picks that I think Nuggets fans will remember in 2013. Andrew Bogut used to set picks like that back when the Warriors were coaching. The Warriors were coached by Mark Jackson. So that was an eye-opening thing. And I think it was an eye-opening thing for the Minnesota Timberwolves. One thing led to another. The Nuggets were up by eight going out of the first quarter. They were up by 15 going out of the second quarter. And they were up by I think 26 going into the fourth quarter. The Nuggets are 24. And Nuggets were just expanding their lead with every single quarter. And there wasn't any chance for the Wolves to come back because the Wolves are not that type of team. The Minnesota Timberwolves are very much a team that is not going to be reliant on explosive offense. And the Nuggets really are the inverse of that. But the Nuggets are capable of playing good defense, but they're not the same. One of the things that the Wolves have been really, really relying on this postseason is their defense being so smothering that whatever they do on offense doesn't matter. And you saw that basically come to fruition in the fourth quarter of Game 1 and all through Game 2. And it's not as if Michael Malone has made this point and it's an astute one. Here I am complimenting Michael Malone, you know. The Wolves only scored 106 points and it wasn't as if their offense was spectacular. Everything amounted to, and this is kind of like an offense that is kind of like the Pacers. You think of the Pacers. They are the complete opposite of that. Their offense generates a ton of possessions. They play fast, sort of like the old Denver Nuggets of the 80s. And that pace obscured their defensive issues. Well, it's the exact opposite with the Wolves. The Wolves are very reliant on their defense. And what that defense is, what they want it to lead to is transition easy baskets primarily for anti-adwards. And two, open shots for Carl Anthony Towns. And then on their bench, Nas Reed being able to hit open threes basically is really what it is. And you saw that come to fruition late in the game in Game 1. And then Game 2 was different because the Nuggets just were not, they let the refing get in their heads. They played like garbage and things descended from there. The very curiously in this game, the inverse happened to the, I keep saying inverse, but it's true. The inverse happened to the Minnesota Tim Wolves. The refereeing was, they were calling fouls, unlike what they were doing in the first game. Excuse me, in Game 2. And what happened was, as the fouls racked up specifically to Jade McDaniels, though the Wolves weren't able to compensate by adjusting their defensive scheme, which is heavily reliant on guard pressure and funneling everything to go bare as a rim protector. It really reminds me of the Nuggets mid-90s Nuggets when Madamba was there. Guys who wanted to have everything funnel into the guy who can vacuum up shots. The problem with this is that the Nuggets, when they are functioning as a high potent offense, is that you saw what you saw last night. 21 points from Michael Warder Jr. 11, 14 points for Aaron Gordon. 24 points for Nicole Yokich. 24 points for Jamal Murray. That's a lot of points from your starting lineup. And they get what they get from KCP. But it is truly an offense that is designed to put pressure on you from multiple angles. Because of the way they were guarding Jamal Murray in the first game, which includes a lot of ball pressure, which one of these things is people got to understand. As I said in the last podcast, Jamal doesn't really like mob ball pressure. It's very well known in the league. And one of the few teams that is really able to take advantage of that is the Minnesota Timberwolves, what the Nuggets did, but basically is just have Aaron Gordon take the ball up the court or Nicole Yokich. And it was that simple adjustment that cut off the, it wasn't 90 feet, but let's say 75 feet of defense that the wolves are playing. So when you got beyond that, the Nuggets were able to get into their actions and be able to out act because they were always inevitably going to be able to out execute in that scenario. The wolves want early defense. There's a concept of early offense. Well, there is a concept also of early defense. And that's exactly what the wolves were doing so well in game two. So the Nuggets adjusted perfectly around that and it really opened up Jamal. And it really opened up Michael Porter Jr. who got, I think he was five of six on free throws in the first half. Who was really, he was drawing fouls and getting switches on to go bare. And Carl Anthony towns and towns wasn't able to cover him. And go bare doesn't want to leave the paint. So it really resulted in Mike getting good through, open three point shots and getting out and getting enough space in transition at the times he was able to do it. But Mike had 21 points on 10 shots, which is, which is amazing. So thank God for those free throws, but I mean, that is still amazing. And Aaron Gordon really helped out a lot in this scenario because he hit three three point shots. It's clear the strategy for the wolves is to leave Aaron Gordon open. And Gordon is going to have to take those shots every single time he gets it. He's going to have to take those open threes and he hit them in this game and it completely discombobulated the wolves. And I think that and Jamal Murray really are the things that just completely threw off the Minnesota generals. Anthony Edwards had 19 points and he was okay. He had like five or six turnovers in this game and he didn't look comfortable. He didn't want to drive. Maybe some of that is due to the way they were calling the fouls in the game, but he just did not seem like he wanted to drive. And I think that kind of permeated into the rest of the team because without Anthony Edwards, this, as I said before, the wolves offense is pretty pedestrian. And what you saw last night is they were only able to score 90 points and the Nuggets were able to score 117 because the Nuggets are just that good on offense. And it overcame the good defense. So it's going to be interesting to see what they do in Game 4. Game 4, my prediction is it's going to be a complete war. It's going to be one of those elimination game kind of scenarios. It's going to be knock down, drag out, mono, mono, just balls to the wall kind of game. It is going to be like that. It's going to be tense. It's going to be 90s. We're going to be upset. We're going to be elated. It's going to be all the emotions at once. And it's probably going to be a score of like 75 to 76 right around there. It's going to be low scoring and tooth and nail. And everyone just needs to mentally prepare themselves for this thing. They really do. All right, in the second half of the podcast, I'm going to talk to you about the assoninity coming out post of this game. And how perplexing it is that it's cropping up now. And we'll be getting to that in the second half of the podcast. So an article came out this morning in Heavy, which isn't your go-to NBA news site. And it was from Steve Bullpit, who usually covers the Boston Celtics. And it was quoting some anonymous executives saying that it was how basically shaming the NBA for not suspending Jamal Murray. If anyone who listens to this podcast, if you listen to the last podcast or the podcast before that, I was fully expecting Jamal Murray to be suspended because he threw some stuff on the court. He wasn't. He was given a $100,000 fine. And these sources come over like he was simply implying that it was done for ratings, which is, which, by the way, folks, the NBA does not care about the whatever ratings the Denver Nuggets bring. Okay. This is to imply that sort of thing, especially when the Nuggets are playing the Minnesota fucking Timberwolves is not a thing. It is not a thing. It's not a thing that will be ever be there. Even if it's a quick series, the NBA does not care about that when it comes to the Denver Nuggets. Now, if the Nuggets got to the finals, I would say that maybe that would be a different scenario considering they were in the finals last year, but the Nuggets did okay ratings wise in the finals last year. But sure as hell, it doesn't matter when they're playing in the second round against the Minnesota fucking Timberwolves. And I'm sorry to use off color language here, but that is the god's honest truth. They just do not care. So they get the Iowa surprise when Jamal wasn't wasn't fine, but the direction L provided by the leagues that this is Jamal doesn't have a history of this sort of thing. He's never done it before. And, you know, when they've been suspending people, they've been taking in their histories into account. I think Rudy go bear did the money sign and he got $100,000 fine. You know, when they spend people like dream on green, it's because he has a very long and extensive history with this sort of thing on so on and so forth. So Jamal ends up playing in this game, but what has been frustrating reading the discourse around this is that what would lead any Minnesota fan who was watching this to believe that Jamal Murray would have had the game that he had last night. That's what I can't wrap my mind around. So were you depending on Jamal Murray being suspended so a sweep would be more possible for your team. Because the Nuggets won by almost 30 is the implication there that Jamal being there would have been the difference, not being there would have been the difference issues. Of course, the Nuggets would have played differently if Jamal wasn't there. And, you know, you could make a great argument that they would have lost. I mean, I wouldn't put I did probably be a logical conclusion. But why is this happening now only after he had a good game and not say after game two when I was getting a whole bunch of people telling me it doesn't matter if Jamal plays. And in fact, it would be probably better if Jamal was suspended for the Nuggets because he was playing that bad. It's just really strange and it's really asinine. And I think there's another thing I want to bring up here and this is kind of goes hand in hand with that discussion. The intervening days between the Nuggets losing in game two and what happened on Friday night and winning game three, Nuggets winning game three. So they lost game two, one game three. There was, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and most of Friday in between. Okay. The Nuggets basically, what I would describe as were forgotten as that they were the the champs and the discourse became insane. I would describe the discourse and the gassing up of Minnesota to be just completely wild. And I do have a theory on that that I espoused on Twitter today, but I'll talk about it here. But I think that it got out of hand and I do know that Nuggets clipped together something and showed it to the players about people doubting them. I'm fairly certain that I was clipped into that, by the way, due to some things that I am aware of. But, you know, all this stuff gets clipped together because what had happened was they went from the Nuggets are the best team in the league and the champions to these guys are bombs. And it went really quick. And look, in some extent, I don't blame them after game two, which was which was ridiculous. Game two was embarrassing for and should have been embarrassing for everyone who was involved on the Nuggets side of that game, including Michael Malone, who managed to not take responsibility for anything, but that's the lonely shot I'll take it alone in this thing. So there was this, but all this going on was getting weird to me, but then I kind of realized what it was. And I think if any Nuggets fan takes some time to talk about it, you realize two things happen. One, the Nuggets lost two home games for the first time, like, you know, no one thought this would happen. Two game home games in a row. I mean, that'll shake people. And be the, the, the, the, the, the Temerals are undoubtedly a good team. And this is, this is not a slight at the Tim, the Temerals. But what it is is a shot at the overreaction, and the overreaction had to do with this. Anthony Edwards is American in the NBA, and the people who cover the NBA really desperately want an American superstar and, and someone who did to be the face of the league. And you saw it as you, as you, as you filtered through all of the reactions. Charles Barkley just did what happened with Yokech and Shaquille O'Neal, which was stupid. The, the, the stuff you heard from Bill Simmons, who was predicting a sweep for some reason, even though he's, no, he's watched the Nuggets more than any national media person out there. And he just, he flipped. He completely flipped and abandoned the Nuggets so quick, which is maybe the nature of Bill Simmons. Uh, L Simmons, and some of you will get that reference. Um, and all this stuff was way over the top, and it really was disrespectful to the people, to the team that won the, the championship last year. And essentially brought back the same team minus the Quibbles, not Quibbles, but the gaps that I have talked about a lot on this podcast. And everything I've said, leading up to this point is true. Jamal Murray was embarrassing in Game Two. Um, the, the things that he did in Game Two and in Game One leading up to it, uh, and his poor play were a direct cause of the Nuggets. Blasey looking performances going back to the first round against the Lakers, but to completely dismiss and go out of their way to, to detract from the Denver Nuggets, that was different. And I think 10% of it, I said this on Twitter, but I believe 10% of this was, there is a desire among the media outlets in who cover the NBA that they need an American face of the league, an American superstar. And, and let's be quite frankly, Anthony Edwards is, is appealing in that way to your average basketball fan. He is easily translatable. They are comparing him to Michael Jordan. There's a lot of this going on. Meanwhile, Nicole Yokech won his third MVP and was disrespected to his face. While accepting a war, I'm getting like the interview right after he accepted the award by Shaquille O'Neal, like just blatantly disrespected to his face and told he shouldn't have won. Okay. Now, apply this to everything you have seen from the Nuggets to the Timberwolves and the way this has been covered. I do not blame the Denver Nuggets for getting extremely annoyed at the way this is Gal, Gal, Gal, Dan. And I got to tell you, folks, the she, the she, I love Shaq. Everyone knows I've done several podcasts on Shaq. Shaq is one of my favorite centers that I've ever, ever seen personally. And I was blessed in the 90s when I was in my teens and 20s growing up in my teens and 20s where I was able to watch some of the greatest center play in the history of the league. Shaquille O'Neal was one of the most dominant players I've ever seen in my life, ever. So I'm saying this as someone who likes Shaq. What Shaq did to Nicole Leyokic was one of the most disrespectful things I have ever seen done by someone who covers the league and was a former player. It was blatant. It was like, it was like, you shouldn't have won this blah, blah, blah, because I wanted Shaq Gildra Sandler Alexander to win this. To be kind of honest with you, who the hell the hell cares, Nicole Leyokic is not the person who votes. This is voted on by other people. Be mad at them. So you add all that up, and you add up all the gassing up of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Anthony Edwards and calling him the next Michael Jordan. And what you had was a defending champion who was completely disrespected and dismissed whole sale in an extremely disrespectful way. That really discounted absolutely everything, and including the guy who has now won three MVPs out of the last four years. It was incredible to behold, and like I said, tiking nothing away from the Timberwolves. They're a good team. This has nothing to do with them as a team. This has everything to do with the way the media covers this thing. And it's very obvious, very obvious. They are very, very, very desirous and almost desperate for an American face of the league. I don't necessarily think the NBA thinks this way, but I do believe that they would not be unhappy if there was an American face of this league. It's been a long time, basically, you know, since well, not then that long, you know, Yokech has been winning MVPs. Janis and Tutacupo has been winning MVPs and obviously Joellen Bead won one. But the MVP discourse is separate in part for someone who's the face of the league. They really want Anthony Edwards to take over this thing, which is fine. I do not care about that. Neither does Nicole Yokech. But the disrespect for the Denver Nuggets was really, really hard to watch. And when the Nuggets reminded everyone that they're the champs, there was this kind of glazed over "oh, going on." And I think, as people who cover the Nuggets and people who watch the Nuggets, understanding that the Nuggets played like garbage through the Lakers series, and then it caught up with them against the Minnesota Timberwolves, is something that we can all intellectually know and see. The people who don't see the Nuggets all the time just think, "Oh, well, they're frauds." And I don't blame Mike Malone for even if he did include a clip of me in there, understanding that this is highly motivating for players who went 16 and 4 last year in the playoffs. So, alright folks, thank you all for joining me. I'm the latest forecast. I'll be back after Game 4, which is going to be a war. And hopefully the Nuggets come out on top, but I'll be back after that with another episode. Goodbye. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [MUSIC]
The Denver Nuggets got off the schneid and beat the Minnesota Timberwolves 117-90 in game 3 on Friday. Also, the disrespect of the Nuggets reached a crescendo in between Game 2 and 3.
