{"id":166239,"date":"2022-12-23T14:41:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-23T14:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/10-christmas-day-things-including-an-all-time-great-a-cagey-celtic-and-the-knicks\/"},"modified":"2022-12-23T14:41:00","modified_gmt":"2022-12-23T14:41:00","slug":"10-christmas-day-things-including-an-all-time-great-a-cagey-celtic-and-the-knicks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/10-christmas-day-things-including-an-all-time-great-a-cagey-celtic-and-the-knicks\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Christmas Day things, including an all-time great, a cagey Celtic and the Knicks!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It’s the Friday before Christmas, and that means … 10 things — Christmas Day edition! This week, we highlight two-time MVP Nikola Jokic making another<\/i> MVP case, Jayson Tatum’s scary apex rise, and — holiday surprise! — the New York Knicks?<\/p>\n

1. Nikola Jokic, always finding something new<\/h2>\n

The Denver Nuggets are No. 1 in the West. Jokic is averaging 24.7 points, 11 rebounds, 9.2 assists (what?), and 1.5 steals. He’s shooting 62% overall, and 67.5% on 2s. The Nuggets are obliterating teams when he’s on the floor and helpless when he rests. He’s No. 1 in almost every advanced statistic. It’s too early to suspend out the MVP race, but it should go without saying that “I just didn’t feel like voting Jokic to the three-peat” is not sufficient support for voting someone else. Start preparing better rationales.<\/p>\n

That better rationale might be that someone else on an elite team — Jayson Tatum, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, and Kevin Durant being the front-runners among that group right now — is an amazing two-way player having an amazing season on par with what Jokic is doing. When it’s close, the “how much do I trust them in the second round of the playoffs?” test is not totally out of bounds as a tiebreaker — depending on individual voting preferences — even though the award is for the regular season.<\/p>\n

But Jokic is absolutely this good. All-time great good. And every season, he arrives with new skills-within-skills that make him even more unguardable.<\/p>\n

Denver runs a lot of typical big man sets designed to get Jokic the ball on the move — usually for quick-hitting post-ups. But Jokic is hunting random cuts all over the floor, and weaseling his way to more easy buckets:<\/p>\n