Joker’s tricks are taking down the waning and complaining Warriors dynasty

“If you’re going to shoot the king, don’t miss,” Niccolo Machiavelli wrote in The Prince.

On Thursday night, Steve Kerr went at the king of the NBA, missed and ended up only ticking him off.

With just over five minutes left in what looked like a lost ballgame Denver Nuggets star center Nikola Jokic knew Golden State Warriors rookie Brandin Podziemski was playing one of the Joker’s tricks. The high-effort guard was bleeding the clock off an inbound after Denver stormed to a 7-0 run. Nikola knew the Nuggets needed every second so the center tried to pick up the guard full court in hopes of saving some time. Podziemski worked to the midway line, and Kerr got a timeout. After Kerr whistled the play dead, the broadcast captured Kerr shaking his head and shouting at Jokic.

Look at Steve Kerr pic.twitter.com/bsyeq7vLPk

— Swipa (@SwipaCam) January 5, 2024

Kerr could’ve made an effective adjustment, changed things up or done practically anything differently, but instead, he wasted valuable time talking at the league’s two-time MVP god knows what. What ensued was a mishmash of Warriors lineups as the team struggled down the stretch.

As fate would have it, Jokic and the Nuggets needed every single one of those extra seconds that the center tried to save. Denver ballooned the 7-0 run before the timeout into an 18-4 run after the stoppage, making for a 25-4 run in total to end the game. The last points? A legendary half-court buzzer-beater from Jokic as the Nuggets beat the Warriors 130-127.

Not only did the Nuggets need the 39-footer from Jokic to fall to win and those extra ticks, but they needed his double team of former MVP Steph Curry to force a Jamal Murray steal with five seconds left to even get the ball. The ensuing chaos led to the inbounds in a tie game being at 3/4 court after a Denver timeout instead of in Warriors territory as is customary late in an NBA game.

“We had to take it out three-quarter court and the first look was going to be Jamal Murray up the sideline. The second look was going to be KCP coming off with Nikola. And then obviously lastly Nikola flashing back to the ball. And then I said, ‘I want you to take two dribbles, overhead and shoot a three’ and he executed the play to perfection,” Nuggets boss Michael Malone joked. “Great players make great plays. Him making something happen there was incredible.”

The win surged the Nuggets to the best in the West and dropped the Warriors out of the play-in and to 16-18 on the campaign. While it was a battle of the league’s past two champions, the last few minutes of the game showed the metal of one team and the lack thereof from the other. Thursday was the manifestation of the dynasty’s last breaths as the new leaders again stormed the castle.

Denver has now won six straight contests against Golden State since the shorthanded version of their crew dropped in five games to the Dubs in the 2022 playoffs. Reloaded and resupplied in part to specifically defeat the Warriors, Denver has done just that. Perimeter-stopper Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has never let Steph Curry best him while representing pickaxes. While Thursday was star guard Jamal Murray’s return to the battle scene of his grave knee injury, which doomed Denver for two years, he scored 25 while adding six helpers.

The immoral acts of punching teammates and illegal screens run amuck have been replaced by the pure horse lover, his blue arrow-slinging partner and the rest of the crew. Ever the Machiavellian, Kerr, cunned postgame about the officials after the teams’ last battle against another. Upset by the calls King Joker got, he wanted to reform the league’s officiating in a way that would better suit his faded dynasty. The league seemed to side with Kerr, giving Jokic a peasants’ whistle once more, as refs gifted Nikola just three free throws in the three Nuggets games following Christmas.

Once again, the Warriors strategy in the sequel was to muscle Jokic with undersized players one-on-one. He only got to the line seven times compared to the 18 trips last time, showing Kerr’s words did work. Though the big man finished his night with the game-winner—and has now made 39 of his last 44 shots over the past four games, the best shooting efficiency in a quartet of matches since the merger.

The most credit Kerr could muster after the game was about how Nuggets rookie Peyton Watson actually hit the biggest shot of the night.

Watson, who starred with Jokic in a hotel commercial that debuted last month, has helped the Nuggets to six road wins in a row. Denver has now rattled off 13 victories in their 15 contests as they are rolling behind the reigning NBA Finals MVP and a mostly full healthy deck of artillery around him.

“We are chasing the Denver Nuggets too, we want to be better than last year,” Jokic said about being the champs on Thursday.

After the Nuggets warred through the postseason to a 16-4 record and title last season, many have made the mistake of thinking Jokic’s celebration and focus on the family meant he did not care about basketball. His lifestyle, the translation of the Serbian culture to America and his ability to compartmentalize have been confused for a lack of care.

“Nikola lives for those moments and it’s great and joyful to watch a player of his talent go out there and make the plays that he makes,” Malone said.

Maybe this is the Nuggets best weapon—not only the confusion of how Jokic acts but the fact that their star has a champion mentality and the ability to separate himself from it. He can hit the clutch shot and be a good teammate unlike, Michael Jordan who famously punched teammate Steve Kerr in the face during the Bulls reign. Jokic has been and continues to be a man of the proletariat, and on Thursday he took it to the bemoaning bourgeoisie to the tune of  34 points, 10 rebounds, nine assists, two steals and a block.

In a way, all of this makes Jokic as great of a man as any, something that coincides with the play to coexist as possibly the greatest player in the history of basketball. At the very least, the peak of Jokic is as great or greater than any. And you know, there’s only one map of Rome that we all remember, it’s the peak of their reign.

‘An assist makes two people happy; a basket only makes one person happy,’ Jokic has famously said. Nikola only has to look at his teammates’ faces late Thursday night to know his own rule may be untrue but only when applied to the king himself.