Clutch Buckets & Big Time Performances
This week right here is what we call a Thriller Week of Basketball.
There were five overtime games, two that took double-overtime to crown a victor. 22 of the games this week we’re decided by ten points or less, 11 in which the margin of victory was five points or less.
This was a week filled with high-scoring games, late-game heroics, and big-time buzzer beaters. So, with that I have to reward the guys who stepped up the most when the lights were the brightest and their teams really needed a bucket.
This week’s Hoopers of the Week in the NBA are Collin Sexton in the Eastern Conference Nikola Jokic in the Western Conference.
The Young Bull himself set NBA Twitter ablaze on Wednesday when he single-handedly (along with a standout performance from Cedi Osman) took down the Brooklyn Nets in their new star trio’s debut game.
The Nets offensively showed signs of how potent they can be when all three stars are clicking as Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden combined for 96 of Brooklyn’s 135 points on the night. But the Young Bull alone gave them 42 points back with his biggest shot of the night coming over Irving with 1.2 seconds left in the first overtime to tie things up at 127-all and force a double-OT.
Not only did he accept the challenge of playing against the trio head-on, but he also specifically took his matchup against Irving extremely seriously. Of course, we all know he wears the No. 2 jersey which used to be Irving’s number in Cleveland. He also was wearing the signature Kyrie Irving line Nike shoes. And similar to Irving’s shot heard round the world to take out Golden State in the 2016 NBA Finals, Sexton hit the shot of the week over Irving that would eventually lead to the Cavs taking over in the second overtime to win the game.
Then just when you thought he was done, he goes for 25 points and nine assists in another win over the Nets on Friday against the duo of Harden and Irving who went for a combined 57 points. Basically, with KD or without KD, Sexton wanted the smoke from Brooklyn and he delivered big time.
To put the cherry on top, Sexton did all of this coming off an ankle injury that led him to miss the five games prior to Wednesday’s initial matchup. They call him Young Bull for a reason and he has definitely come up big so far this season as he has this scrappy Cleveland team sitting at 6th place in the Eastern Conference with a record of 8-7.
This is the guy that I have been excited to talk about all week long. This man Jokic is playing MVP caliber basketball and I might even be willing to go out on a limb by calling him the current front runner for the award.
This season he is averaging 25.8 points (12th in the league), 12.0 rebounds (6th in the league), and 9.6 assists 2nd in the league) on 56.1% shooting from the floor. Standing at 6-foot-11 and nearly 300 pounds, Jokic is averaging more points than guys like Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, more rebounds than Joel Embiid and Nikola Vucevic, and to top it off, he assists the ball at a higher clip than some of the best facilitators in the game including Chris Paul, Trae Young, and freaking LeBron James. If that does not scream MVP, then I do not know what else the man is going to have to do to at least be considered as a top-5 candidate.
This week Jokic and the Denver Nuggets went 3-0 with victories over the Oklahoma City Thunder and two back-to-back overtime wins over the Phoenix Suns. Jokic recorded double-doubles in all three games with his most notable performance coming Saturday night when he put up 29 points and 22 rebounds along with six assists on the night to take out Phoenix. The totality of this week for the Joker has been an overall clinic putting up 87 points, 20 assists, and 44 rebounds with five steals total in the three games while also getting the Nuggets back in the mix as a legit playoff contender in the Western Conference.
I know that the center position is not the flashiest or sexiest topic of discussion to have when talking about the NBA, but it is undeniable that Jokic is doing astronomical things that not many big men in NBA history are capable of doing. He needs to be brought up more in the MVP discussion and as the driving force of the Denver Nuggets, he is the key to restoring this Nuggets team back to the team that we saw in the bubble that reached the Western Conference Finals last season.
