Elevator Doors: As Good as It Gets
I look at my son and tell him with all the sincerity I can muster: “It will never get any better than this.”
Andrew is nine years old. He is obsessed with basketball. I passed my Denver Nuggets fandom onto him, never expecting that the burly Serbian center we drafted two months before Andrew was born would lead this previously mediocre franchise to unimagined levels of success. Half of Andrew’s wardrobe consists of Denver Nuggets gear. His lucky number is 15, and his backup lucky number is 27.
The Nuggets had just defeated the Dallas Mavericks, 122-120. We live in Arizona and don’t have League Pass, so we followed the last couple minutes on ESPN’s live tracker. We had no idea how Nikola Jokic was doing it, just that he was doing everything he always does – scoring from every spot on the floor, making perfect passes, getting the game’s biggest rebounds without jumping.
At the time of this writing, the Nuggets have played 10 games. Jokic has posted a triple double in six of them. His stat line against Dallas – 37 points, 18 rebounds, 15 assists, shooting splits of 62/100/100 – is the equivalent of two top 10 fantasy basketball performances smashed into one guy. He is fourth in the NBA in scoring, and he leads the entire league in rebounds AND assists. Jokic is in an eight-way tie for fourth in total steals at 17. He has won three of the last four MVP awards and he is still somehow getting better.
The Nuggets began the season with an uninspiring 2-3 record through the first five games, with the squad needing overtime against two of the NBA’s most depressing franchises – Brooklyn and Toronto – to avoid starting 0-5. Jokic was still every bit as good as he always is, but the roster Calvin Booth and the Nuggets’ front office assembled around him is, well, lacking (to put it politely). Key championship cogs Bruce Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope left in exchange for nothing due to Denver’s crowded cap sheet mismanagement (hello, Zeke Nnaji). The only reliable rotation players this team has added through the draft are Christian Braun, occasionally Peyton Watson and even less occasionally Julian Strawther. Russell Westbrook is doing, well, whatever it is he does at this stage of his career.
Jamal Murray has not been the same playoff flame-thrower since he struggled to bring the ball across half court against Minnesota’s swarming defense in last year’s playoffs. His Olympic struggles only added to the concerns. He has started to look a bit more like Jamal Murray lately, but he is still a full level below the other All-Star level guards in the West. Aaron Gordon – the ideal, do-everything lob smasher to slot alongside Jokic – is out for a while with a strained calf.
Nikola Jokic remains one of the only Hall-of-Fame level players to never play alongside a teammate who made an All-Star Game, which is truly insane to think about given how much better he makes everyone around him. Replace Jokic with another top five center (Karl Anthony-Towns?) and Denver Nuggets roster would be tanking for Cooper Flagg or Ace Bailey – and not on purpose.
Any other superstar in this situation does one of two things: 1) demands a trade, or 2) demands the front office trades 2-3 of his teammates for an All-Star running mate. Either the trade demand happens publicly, or it is backchanneled to a friendly reporter or through an intermediary. Everyone is on edge and always at fault – except the superstar.
Nikola Jokic is the only modern NBA superstar to find a third path: Win five in a row and shut down any inkling of a rumor, a leak, or a sideways comment.
Jokic doesn’t engage on social media – if he is, it is likely with a burner account that just follows horse racing. He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t demand. He just plays exactly the kind of basketball that gets a 9-year-old obsessed with how beautiful this game can be.
A couple weeks ago, our family ran into a young man named Quintyn at a local pizza spot called No Anchovies. He saw Andrew dressed head to toe in Nuggets gear – shorts, Jokic jersey, classic skyline hat – and asked my wife if we’re from Denver. “We aren’t, but my husband is from Wyoming, and he has rooted for the Nuggets all his life.”
“Wow,” Quintyn said. “My brother was just drafted by them.” His brother is DaRon Holmes II, the highly versatile, sweet-shooting big man from Dayton who would absolutely be playing 20-25 minutes per game right now had he not sadly torn his Achilles tendon in Denver’s summer league opener.
Andrew’s eyes lit up, as did Quintyn’s. Andrew didn’t expect to get a behind-the-scenes breakdown of his favorite basketball team, and Quintyn didn’t expect Andrew and I to know everything about his brother’s game. In my 2024 NBA Draft Instant Analysis, I wrote that Holmes shows ” flashes of Naz Reid’s game” and that he “could be the rare kind of big man who can thrive in either a five-out lineup or as the power forward alongside a more traditional center.” Denver promised to draft him early in the process and never wavered.
Quintyn told us that his brother’s rehab is going well and that he is itching to get back on the court. He also told us that the team flew his family out to Denver to meet his new team and that Jokic was “the coolest guy ever – super funny, super welcoming, just the best.”
Andrew was beaming. He has only known what it is like to root for an NBA team with Nikola Jokic on it. Can you imagine?
It is my job to make sure Andrew realizes this is special. This isn’t what it is usually like to root for any team – particularly a mid-market franchise like the Nuggets who are, at best, second in the city’s power rankings permanently behind the Broncos.
I think he gets it.
And 1’s:
- Welcome to “Elevator Doors,” a new weekly column where I write about basketball – the whole sport from every angle that matters to me. The 2025 NBA Draft looks like it’s going to be special – not just at the top, but with plenty of prospects that look like they will eventually become rotation players. If last week’s Kansas/UNC game is any indication, we are in for an awesome college basketball season. We’ll spend our time digging into last year’s draft class and how they’re adjusting to life in the NBA, as well as looking at the sport from a big-picture view – what’s working, what isn’t, and what we talk about when we’re talking about basketball. I love this game more than just about anything.
- My son, Andrew, is going to be a recurring character in this column. He knows more about basketball than most adults who get paid to talk about it for a living, and his insights into the sport give me a helpful sense of how the next generation is approaching the game. He is also a heck of a player in his own right. Even though he is the shortest kid on his club team, he started the last two games at center because the team needed his “toughest, energy, defense, and rebounding.” He says he models his game after Josh Hart. I’m so proud.
- Stat of the week: We’ve all seen what Creighton’s burly center Ryan Kalkbrenner has been doing to start the season. It hasn’t been the stiffest competition, but Kalkbrenner has 73 total points on NINETY-ONE-PERCENT shooting in two games. Go down to your local gym right now and take 32 shots with nobody guarding you. Would you make 29 of them, like Kalkbrenner did in these two games? I doubt it.
