Rocky Mountain high

The Nuggets have been the best team in the entire postseason, and it's not close. PLUS: Mark Jackson made an honest mistake that is, nonetheless, funny.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Destiny; John William Waterhouse; 1900

The Phoenix Suns got absolutely dogwalked out of the playoffs for the second straight year. Last year, it was a historic beatdown in a Game 7 of the second round against Luka Doncic and the Mavericks. This year, down 3-2 in the second round, they went down 20 early in the second quarter and trailed by as many as 32. They didn’t get closer than 20.

Coming off of the 2021 NBA Finals run, the Suns have lost two consecutive elimination games by an average of 29 points. Even with all the legitimate excuses you can cook up — apparent COVID issues last season, the absence of Chris Paul and Deandre Ayton in Game 6 this year — that’s just abysmal.

But I will say that there’s one more legitimate excuse that I actually give a whole lot of respect to this year: the Denver Nuggets are really freaking good. Nikola Jokic has been the single best performer in the entire NBA postseason, and the Nuggets have been by far the most impressive team. It’s troubling for the Suns to go out like this again and for Kevin Durant to never really assert his will in the series. But there’s no shame in getting pummeled by a team this excellent. It may very well happen to every team Denver comes up against this postseason.

The shotmaking from Nikola Jokic is just incredible.

His series averages: 34-13-10 on 66% True Shooting. Unreal.

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope helped set an early two-way tone, and Jamal Murray had it going. One of the more amazing things about the Nuggets’ 8-3 postseason so far is that Michael Porter Jr. hasn’t really gotten it going yet. He’s due for a 30-point game or three in one of these series.

I’m actually sanguine about the Suns’ path forward: they can potentially move Ayton for depth (a bad team that misses out on Victor Wembanyama would be a good target; the Mavericks don’t have the pieces straight up but that feels like a good landing space) and having an offseason to build up a proper supporting cast that fits a Booker-Durant attack (even without any cap space) should help, as opposed to doing with only buy-out candidates available as was the case mid-season.

But it’s the Nuggets’ time right now. Denver should be heavily favored over whoever survives the Lakers-Warriors series, and I haven’t seen anything from the Eastern Conference that should particularly worry the Nuggets. It’s their time.