so your team blows a 20pt lead in a game7 and it's not the best player's fault?

[Real Men Wear Green]

The only thing haters hate as much as the object of their hatred is context. It is Jokic's fault of he played badly and his bad play leads to the loss. But every player in the losing side did not necessarily play badly, something even a casual fan like myself knows. If he did not play badly then what he is "guilty" of is not having done enough to help his team win... which even Bill Russell has been"guilty" of.

[highwhey]

I saw almost every game he played the last 4-5 years. I've seen him play more than you have, I think. So I'm aware of his limitations. You asked a 'serious' question to which I gave an honest answer. He became a lot better on defense in the past 2 years. Still a tad below average individual defender but with a very good understanding of team defense (lost of deflections, rarely getting lost, etc.) We may disagree on his defensive impact. Even if we do, him becoming a lot better than he is all of a sudden is not realistic. He wasn't a better defender last year when the Nuggets won it all. And he wasn't defending better in the 1st half of game 7 when they were up 15. Something else was missing. Shot making and rebounding. All in all the whole team was worse than last year and it showed in the regular season. Jokic himself was worse than last year, both regular season and playoffs. Even in their wins against the Lakers some of us (including me) kept saying: this team will not win in the 2nd round if things don't change. This loss didn't come out of nowhere.

i'm not asking about his general improvement, i know he's improved over the years, but we are discussing the performance of last night in this thread to assign the proper amount of culpability. his lack of defense had a direct impact as it allowed the timberwolves to decimate the 20 point deficit and come ahead. i concur, last season they were a much better team. this season they struggled a lot, and in this series in particular, murray came up short. but so did MPJ and Jokic. each in their own individual way. what bugs me is that although we all know it's a team sport, and ultimately their success is just the sum of their parts, we like to isolate particular players and assign blame to them rather than looking at the entire equation and realizing there were more errors involved that lead to the failure. and when they are victorious, we assign 100% of the credit to jokic while completely disregarding the difficult work that murray, mpj, AG, KCP did. it's as if Jokic won the title by himself last season, murray never went off like a mini kobe, AG and KCP never played lockdown defense on key opponents, Braun never hustled for rebounds, blocks and steals, MPJ never hit them corner 3s...nope, Jokic just willed his way to a title all by himself.

i'll end with the same shit i shared earlier:

so what you're saying is this is a team sport and as such, no individual performances should be isolated to credit or discredit any particular individual and rather, everyone shares blame and or credit for the net result?

[elementally morale]

so what you're saying is this is a team sport and as such, no individual performances should be isolated to credit or discredit any particular individual and rather, everyone shares blame and or credit for the net result?

Sure. To a different extent, but obviously yes. But I never said otherwise. Teams win and lose games. Individual accolades are absolutely overrated.

[elementally morale]

Sure. To a different extent, but obviously yes. But I never said otherwise. Teams win and lose games. Individual accolades are absolutely overrated.

When I was 14, we played in the Final 4 tournament for the National Title in Hungary for that age group. We didn't win and I'm not sure if we finished 2nd or 3rd. (It was a double round robin.) Anyway, I was selected as the MVP of the tournament. My coach made me not accept the award (and I was really angry with him for this at the time). He was against all individual glory. Told us that 1st place as a team or 3rd place as a team. But no individual 1st place for anything in a team sport. This was some 35 years ago. (Thanks for sharing, LOL)

[highwhey]

Sure. To a different extent, but obviously yes. But I never said otherwise. Teams win and lose games. Individual accolades are absolutely overrated.

thank you. this is all i was asking. most people on this board cannot, or out of ill will choose to not grasp this concept since it's entertaining for them to 'troll'.

[highwhey]

When I was 14, we played in the Final 4 tournament for the National Title in Hungary for that age group. We didn't win and I'm not sure if we finished 2nd or 3rd. (It was a double round robin.) Anyway, I was selected as the MVP of the tournament. My coach made me not accept the award (and I was really angry with him for this at the time). He was against all individual glory. Told us that 1st place as a team or 3rd place as a team. But no individual 1st place for anything in a team sport. This was some 35 years ago. (Thanks for sharing, LOL)

sounds like a good coach. individual recognition has destroyed american sports and selfishness in general has accelerated the decay of our society. open social media and it;s just "me, me, me".

[elementally morale]

sounds like a good coach. individual recognition has destroyed american sports and selfishness in general has accelerated the decay of our society. open social media and it;s just "me, me, me".

At the time we had something you guys call 'communism' in Eastern Europe. It was half- assed socialism or a malfunctioning state-corporatism but it doesn't matter. The whole ideology was that group above all. Of course it was a lie, but a very often repeated lie. We all wanted more individualism at the time. In retrospect... well, we all die in the end, I guess.

[SATAN]

*bookmarks and waits for Dallas vs Timberwolves*

[Duffy Pratt]

i ask that you dedicate 9 minutes to watching this video and point out where his average+ defense is at. thank you.

First off, it’s a highlight reel. It’s not gonna show examples of competent defense played by either side. These vids don’t show stops. Second, did you actually watch this reel, because it shows maybe two defensive breakdowns by Jokic, out of about 30 highlighted MN plays. It also clearly shows a couple of plays where Jokic deterred a driver, and one where he altered Ant’s shot, causing the miss that led to Towns offensive rebound from another player missing the box out.

Most of the highlighted plays have Jokic as not being in on the play. The contest on Gobert’s fadeaway was Average+, as was the D on a towns drive across the lane on which he made a good shot. This video does not prove at all what you are saying.

[highwhey]

First off, it’s a highlight reel. It’s not gonna show examples of competent defense played by either side. These vids don’t show stops. Second, did you actually watch this reel, because it shows maybe two defensive breakdowns by Jokic, out of about 30 highlighted MN plays. It also clearly shows a couple of plays where Jokic deterred a driver, and one where he altered Ant’s shot, causing the miss that led to Towns offensive rebound from another player missing the box out.

Most of the highlighted plays have Jokic as not being in on the play. The contest on Gobert’s fadeaway was Average+, as was the D on a towns drive across the lane on which he made a good shot. This video does not prove at all what you are saying.

time please. just point the time in the video and i'll reply accordingly.

[Duffy Pratt]

You miss the main point. Highlight reels show spectacular steals and blocks. They only show competent or solid defense when it fails. So I will throw the challenge back at you. Point out some examples from this reel of Gobert or Towns playing good defense.

The Gobert fadeaway was at 7:25.

There's a help on Edwards at 5:10.

[Norcaliblunt]

Dudes a fraud and his euro bitch non chalant attitude got exposed big time.