Don't look now, but the Denver Nuggets are two wins away from reaching the NBA Finals.
Then again, you probably weren't going to look, anyway. Or, if you were, most of your attention might've been directed toward the Los Angeles Lakers, whom the Nuggets beat again Thursday night to take a 2-0 lead in the Western Conference finals.
That was the prevailing sentiment expressed by Nuggets head coach Michael Malone after Denver's Game 2 victory, in which Jamal Murray scored 37 points and Nikola Jokic recorded yet another triple-double (23 points, 17 rebounds, 12 assists).
"You win Game 1 of the playoffs and all everybody talked about was the Lakers," Malone said during his postgame press conference. "Let's be honest, that was the national narrative, was, 'Hey, the Lakers are fine. They're down 1-0, but they figured something out.' No one talked about Nikola just had an historic performance (in Game 1). He's got 13 (playoff) triple-doubles now, third all-time. What he's doing is just incredible.
"But the narrative wasn't about the Nuggets. The narrative wasn't about Nikola. The narrative was about the Lakers and their adjustments. So, you know, you put that in your pipe, you smoke it, and you come back and you know what, we're gonna go up 2-0."
True to his word, Denver went up 2-0 -- with Jokic again playing an instrumental role for Denver.
Whether Malone's mic-drop moment changes the national narrative remains to be seen. The Lakers are one of the most iconic franchises in sports, with one of the best athletes of all-time in LeBron James, so it's not surprising they've dominated headlines this postseason, even with the Nuggets securing back-to-back wins in Denver to tip off the Western Conference finals.
Malone certainly was correct in his assessment of Jokic, though. The Joker is a five-time NBA All-Star and a two-time MVP, and he posted another jaw-dropping stat line (34 points, 21 rebounds, 14 assists) in Denver's Game 1 win. Yet, there wasn't that much talk about him and the Nuggets before Game 2.
A Nuggets victory in Game 3, with the series shifting to Los Angeles, almost certainly would force everyone to take notice.
