Flying (A Mile) High in Sin City.
Rabbit season? Even better. Welcome to championship season, courtesy of the Denver Nuggets and Vegas Golden Knights.
Why write two articles when you can just combine them into one?
Covering both the Nuggets, the Golden Knights and their respective championship success this week, I hope you enjoy it.
And thanks for reading Off-Balance!
Ryan
The Nuggets, Jokić, Murray, make history.
I called it!
I don’t want to be that guy (okay, I do, a little bit) but before Game 7 of the ECF last month, I had a feeling that whatever team made it out of the East, Boston or Miami, would have a helluva time against the Nuggets, who were on a warpath to the Finals.
(Remember? Pepperidge Farm does)
Well, alright, most everyone had that feeling but the way it came to pass on Monday night, with Denver beating the Heat in Game 5, 94-89, to win the first championship in franchise history, it was so perfunctory, so bold, such a stamp of success on their season.
They were the number one seed in the West and carried that momentum into the playoffs, going 16-and-4 and losing just three (!!) games over the past two months.
After dropping two straight to Phoenix during the Conference Semifinals, Denver responded, ever casual, by winning seven in a row and immediately put an exhausted Heat team on the back-foot in Game 1. Who, try as they might, by gutting out an impressive Game 2 victory, 111-108, never really stood a chance.
And though professional athletes have too much pride to ever say such a thing out loud, they probably knew it too - and in the aftermath of Game 5, long-time Miami head coach, Erik Spoelstra conceded that Denver was the superior team (I mean, obviously).
“There’s just sometimes where you get beat, you know, and Denver was the better basketball team in this series”
At the end of the day, for Miami to have beaten Denver, they would’ve needed to have been damn-near perfect in their on-court execution - they weren’t, too-often, relying on Jimmy Butler’s singular excellence. Butler ultimately faded down the stretch, gassed, having dragged the eighth-seeded Heat far further than they would’ve gone without him.
The Nuggets were just too good, to well-oiled, to ready, rising to whatever the moment required of them.
Whether it was Aaron Gordon, who paced the team with 27 points in Game 4 or Kitchener, Ontario-born Jamal Murray, who became the ninth Canadian to win an NBA title, playing some particularly outstanding basketball, they knew a championship was within their grasp and refused to let it go.
But perhaps more than anyone else for Denver, Nikola Jokić epitomized this.
Jokić, man, What more, really, can be said?
From the forty-first pick in 2011 Draft, to evolving into a two-time regular season MVP and now, the unanimous Finals MVP, he averaged just a shade less then a triple double during the postseason, (30.0/13.5/9.5) while becoming the first player in NBA history (yes, the first) to lead the playoffs in points, (600) rebounds (269) and assists (190), per ESPN.
It was an all-time, stuff-of-legend performance, only undersold by the man himself, never one to allow his incomparable brilliance to be overshadowed by his modesty. You’re an NBA champion, he was asked in his on-court interview, his teammates, celebrating around him, the crowd in Denver, loud enough, no doubt, to be heard across the country.
How does it feel?
“It’s good, it’s good” he said, completely composed, almost relaxed, far cry from what you would expect from someone having just reached the pinnacle of their profession.
“The job is done. Now we can go home.”
And go home they will - as champions.
Silver and Gold.
Mark Stone didn’t care.
Usually, empty netters don’t come with much fanfare.
It is a “hockey thing”, not wanting to be disrespectful, to show up your opponent, who, by pulling their goalie in the first place, have all but admitted that they are fresh out of options, down to their last resort, their final out.
And if you do score, you put your head down, do some half-hearted, super awkward, poorly-timed fist bumps and head back to the bench.
But with just under six minutes left in the third period, Stone, the Vegas Golden Knights captain, went for it, firing a shot from his own end that travelled the length of the ice and was promptly deposited into the unguarded Florida cage.
Stone, in defiance of “traditional” hockey protocol, empathically celebrated as teammates mobbed him at the bench and the hats came raining down, the second playoff hat trick of the 31 year-old’s career, a big one.
It put Vegas up by five and they’d add another goal for good measure before the final buzzer sounded, beating the Florida Panthers 9-3 to win the Stanley Cup on Tuesday night.
It was fitting though, in a way, if only because “defiance” has been the Vegas credo since the very beginning, an unshakable organizational belief that they could be just as good, better even, than anyone else from the moment they entered the League in 2017.
From their snarky, self-aware team Twitter account, to their surprising, shocking, immediate on-ice success, Vegas embraced their weirdness, their uniqueness and stuck with it, undeterred, even after missing the playoffs last year.
Basking in the glow of victory, Stone put it best.
We’re sitting on the bench with three minutes left and we’re looking at each other… [about] to win the Stanley Cup. That’s all I’m thinking. It’s a crazy feeling.”
It has frustrated the pants off of people both inside and outside the game, this swagger, this self-belief, proving, again, that the “traditional” way of doing things as an expansion team in the NHL, like toiling in irrelevance for decades, simply didn’t apply to Vegas, who, after just six years, are champions.
For the Panthers though, it was nothing but missed opportunity, chances, squandered, even after sneaking into the dance as the eighth seed.
Matthew Tkachuk, their engine and driving force through most of the playoffs, (something Heat counterpart Jimmy Butler would understand) didn’t play in the deciding game - it was revealed only afterwards that he had broken his sternum his Game 3, needed someone to help him dress before Game 4 and had nothing left to give come Tuesday.
And goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, it turned out, was mortal after all. After putting the team on his back this spring and seeming like a surefire Conn Smythe Trophy candidate, he was tagged for eight goals in Game 5 and was ultimately out-duelled by Adin Hill, who had garnered some potential playoff-MVP chatter of his own.
Stone was in the mix too, as was Jack Eichel. Competing in the playoffs for the first time, Eichel led all players with 26 points, quite the achievement given where his career was just a few years ago (and he has now won a Stanley Cup before Connor McDavid: who saw that coming?).
Instead, it went to forward Jonathan Marchessault, who put up 13 goals, 25 points and ended his playoffs on a ten-game point streak.
Marchessault, the first undrafted player to be named NHL playoff MVP since Wayne Gretzky, was one of those original Knights, the “Golden Misfits”, that magical first-year Vegas team who came up just short, three wins shy of a Cup.
Even then, it seemed far-fetched, going against so much of that “traditional” thinking. A team in the desert? The best in hockey? Yeah, talk about impossible.
Until it wasn’t.