Hey Bird, Magic, Wilt, Parish, and McHale!
Meet the new bosses, not the same as the old bosses:
There’s a big white Serbian named Jokic who’s a magician with the ball. He can dunk but rarely bothers. He has a soft touch that usually finds the hoop, and loves to get the ball into the hands of others to do the same. He leads by example.
He’s so clever that watching basketball is now something like watching hockey – you lose track of the puck/ball. Jokic never went to college, never learned to trash talk, and never got too full of himself. Instead, he worked tirelessly to become the best center – and maybe the best basketball player at any position – since, well, forever.
There’s a streaky guy on Miami named Jimmy. One night he’s nothing, but that doesn’t bother him the next night when he’s everything. Consistency? Nah. But when he’s on, he’s really, really on.
A Canadian improbably named Jamal plays point guard for Denver. Step up to his jump shot, and he’ll fly around you for a fierce dunk. And he has the finest midrange, turn-around, fade-away jumper ever. It’s utterly undefendable. Jamal suffered one of the most-dreaded injuries in sports – a torn ACL – and sat out for a year and a half. They said he had to go to rehab, and he said “yes, yes, yes!” At the risk of jinxing him, I’ll say it:
HEEEEEE’S BAAAAACK!!!
The NBA semi-finals came down to LA vs. Denver and Boston vs. Miami. You could almost hear the saliva oozing out the lips of the networks and the NBA brass. The finals might be LA vs Boston – again! It will be a ratings bonanza!
But the times, they are a-changin.
LA and Boston are has-beens. Hollywood? It’s been replaced by Netflix and YouTube. Malibu? The Beach Boys caught the last train for the other coast. Paul Revere? They played reverie centuries ago. Bean Town? C’mon, man, I don’t give a fig about your beans.
Denver and Miami, on the other hand, are an up-and-coming culture. Denver isn’t in the Rocky Mountains and isn’t very high but you can see them from there. Traffic is almost as impressive as, say, Atlanta. They elected a new mayor last week who says (says…) he’ll enforce the law against sidewalk camping. We’ll see if he does, but at least he says he will – and got elected anyway.
Miami? Well, the mayor of Miami is of course Ron DeSantis who is also the mayor of the rest of Florida and wants to be the mayor of the rest of the country. He’s managed to demonize the Disney company, for which I congratulate him because I hate cartoon movies other than South Park, but it wasn’t difficult because Disney was already half way to becoming the Denizen of Demon Disney. DeSantis just nudged them along.
Rich folk are moving away from the environs of Boston and what we used to call New England. (How new can it be when it was settled four centuries ago?) These emigrants from New-ish England are going to Miami, where the state income tax just happens to be zero percent, they can send their kids to a school they like, and it doesn’t sleet all winter. Go figure.
There, they join immigrants of the legal kind from Cuba where the income tax is 100% plus ten years in a prison plus three years waiting in the line to get in.
Similarly, people are fleeing LA for Denver. If only they would leave behind the politics they fled.
LA and Boston are as dead as the Lakers and Celtics.
the Aspen beat 
Glen, Thanks for the update on the mayoral race. Hancock was vying with San Francisco to turn Denver into the poop capitol of the US. No one will miss him. The high-profile basketball players may elevate the city’s stature as well.
Speaking of elevation, there is a marker on the steps of the State Capitol in Denver at 5280′. That’s lower than Aspen but within 1,000′ of Mt. Washington, which rates as pretty high.
I long ago stopped looking for any connection whatsoever between professional athletic teams and the culture of their host cities. Sure, I admire and like Jokic more than, say, LeBron James, but the reasons have nothing to do with Denver, which he doesn’t “represent” any more than I represent Serbia. Yes, successful teams create a certain amount of civic spirit and pride, but that’s about as irrational a form of tribalism as one can find.
I would suggest that it’s one thing to let loose one’s natural tribal instincts on something where it’s harmless such as sports, and another to let it loose on something like politics, philosophy or religion.
Point taken, “harmless” being the operative word. I happen to look more favorably on the political violence at the Boston Tea Party than on the Boston riots in October 2004 following the Red Sox World Series victory — cars overturned and set on fire, rocks thrown at the police, scores taken to hospitals, over 35 arrests, etc., all because the team WON. But if the City of Denver did not do this after the Nuggets championship last night, then I guess that supports your thesis, that the torch of civilization has passed from Boston to Denver. Anyway, congrats to Nuggets fans: enjoy your animal spirits.
Harmless?
Well there you go — just good, clean tribalist fun!
Carrying the ball while traveling then double dribbling enables you to pass the ball out to the perimeter for a 3. Unwatchable.
How soon they forget. Jokic is Larry Bird in a center’s bod. The same soft hands, unbelievable passing, deadeye shooting, heavy duty rebounding, bringing the ball upcourt, and setting the example. Jokic doesn’t talk smack (Bird did); but he backs up anything he says on the floor as did Larry Legend. Also like Bird, Jokic doesn’t make excuses. And finally, exactly like Bird, Jokic isn’t very athletic; his game isn’t as pretty to watch as, say, Mike’s was.
Nikola Jokic, like Larry Bird, just wins.