Seasons within Seasons:High Altitude Basketball Adventures in Denver

Ever wondered how a professional sports team can pivot through a season's highs and lows while maintaining an electric atmosphere? Buckle up, Nuggets fans, as I take you through a riveting journey of our favorite Denver team's season—exploring the heady 9-1 start, injury battles, lineup shuffles, and the resurgence led by a healthy Jamal. Celebrate Jokmas with our giveaway winners, Brad and Colin, and get ready to understand the intricate tapestry of teamwork and determination that marks this year's campaign.

This episode is a slam dunk for anyone invested in the Nuggets' narrative or looking to appreciate the nuances of NBA team dynamics. We're spotlighting Nikola Jokic's foray into advertising with a hotels.com commercial that showcases his off-court charisma, and we'll explore how the young guns on the team are carving out their roles with vigor. Join us for a session where basketball analysis meets the heart and soul of fandom—no timeouts needed.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

All right, everyone, welcome back to Fandom from afar. Hope everybody had a great week. I want to start today's podcast off with announcing the winners of our Yoke-Miss giveaway. If you listened to the last episode, we explained the basketball holiday for all of us Denver Nuggets fans of Yoke-Miss, and I explained how to enter the drawing, and I appreciate everyone who did, and I'd like to announce that our two winners are Brad and Colin. So, brad and Colin, I will be reaching out to you after this episode, post tomorrow, and we will get you your Amazon gift cards. So happy Yoke-Miss to you guys.

Speaker 1: 0:46

So it's been a while since I've recorded an actual episode. I wasn't feeling well for one week and then I went on an awesome vacation with my family for the following two weeks just the way it happened to work out. So it was awesome. I felt re-energized and ready to go, and then last week we were celebrating Yoke-Miss. So this will be the first real episode in a while. I'm definitely glad to be back and hopefully you guys will enjoy what we have for you today. So I'm not going to do the game by game breakdown that I normally do on the weekly pods just because, like I said, it has been so long so I don't want to have you guys listen to 45 minutes of each game breakdown. So I just kind of wanted to go over the idea that it really seems like the Nugget season has been broken down into sections so far.

Speaker 1: 1:37

The first section started out with opening night. You could tell the team was motivated, everybody was healthy and I think they got off to a 9-in-1 start. So that was kind of the first section and it was really fun to see that they still got it. They can turn on the switch and dominate, like they just did in the playoffs as well. So that was section 1 and it was great. But the season's long, I didn't expect it to last forever. And the second section definitely was different. Jamal got hurt. He's constantly having leg issues but as long as he's healthy for the playoffs, that's really all that matters. But Jamal was hurt. The bench who had done so well in the first section, they started struggling and I don't know it. Just everything was different. The guys didn't seem as motivated. Maybe kind of the newness of the season had worn off and they were just kind of easing into a long season, making sure that they didn't get hurt, making sure that they're just going to be ready to go for the playoffs and so I was also hoping that section didn't last forever and it seems like we've kind of turned a corner into a third section now where Jamal is back and after missing some more time with more leg injuries after he came back the first time, but it seems like he's healthy now. I think they've at the time of this recording, they've won four out of five. They played Toronto later on this evening and they're playing well.

Speaker 1: 3:12

The bench is back to what they were doing in that first section and I think a lot of that is with Jamal back. It kind of resets everybody's responsibilities in the sense that Reggie Jackson can now run that bench unit and he's been playing amazing. Like, if you remember my season preview, as wrong as I was about DeAndre Jordan last year, I am just as wrong about Reggie Jackson this year. He has been amazing. I'm so happy he's our backup point guard and he's been playing so well. But what he does is he gives the bench kind of a scoring option and that takes some of the pressure off of Christian Brown, peyton Watson, julian Strother. Like those guys are great at what they do. They're never going to be the number one scoring option, and so it's nice for them to be kind of like the next guys in line doing the dirty work and just kind of being super athletes, which which they are. So this section three has been fun. Hopefully this one keeps going for a while and we'll have to see what the what the next section is down the line. We'll get into our categories now.

Speaker 1: 4:20

Our favorite yokism of the week, what was our favorite thing that Nikola Yokic did this past week? Well, this one's a surprising one, because all of a sudden, yokic had a commercial come out yesterday and he never does anything like that. But it's a hotelscom commercial. It's him and Peyton Watson and a little pony. So if you haven't seen that, please go watch it. There's two different versions. There's one inside and one out by the pool. It's Yokic being Yokic. He's just goofy and funny and they're playing off his love for horses. I guess it's surprisingly funny, just because I never thought I would see Yokic in a national TV commercial. He seems like he was never interested in that kind of thing, and so I think the big question is A how did hotelscom convince him to do it? And B, was it Peyton Watson that convinced him to do it. It doesn't really make sense that he's in the commercial with Yokic. You would think it would be either Jamal Murray or Aaron Gordon or somebody. But I love it. It's great. It was a nice surprise and hopefully there's many more to come.

Speaker 1: 5:38

So next category is what I'm looking forward to, and this week it's easy. It's Christmas, not only for the time with the family, and just the whole holiday season. My family and I, we love it. We love watching all the Christmas movies. My wife does an amazing job at putting up Christmas lights and decorations and just all sorts of goodies around the house as far as cookies and stuff like that. So just the whole holiday season is great. But Christmas has turned into somewhat of a basketball holiday. They kind of have taken that holiday for themselves, although there are a few Christmas NFL games this year.

Speaker 1: 6:21

When I think of sports on Christmas, it's basketball, so I'm excited for some of the matchups. This year it starts out with Bucks, knicks, then Nuggets, warriors, celtics, lakers, the Sixers in the Heat and then the Mavs in the Sun. So if you wanted to, you can just have basketball on all day long, and it's obviously fun to see some of the big stars If you all aren't watching League Pass or just don't sit down to watch mini games at all. Bucks versus Knicks, right there, you can watch Yanis, you can watch Jalen Brunson, who's been amazing this year. Nuggets Warriors that's self-explanatory, of course. I love that one. And then Celtics Lakers the star power in that one is crazy. So it'll be really fun. It's a great day to spend with family, but if you happen to have some basketball on in the background, then even better.

Speaker 1: 7:12

So my recommendation for this week it's actually a brand new recommendation that I actually just discovered two days ago, and it's a newsletter called the Bounce. And I don't know if y'all like getting those weekly newsletters, monthly newsletters, anything like that. I kind of like them just for different topics and just quick read. But this one obviously is Basketball and it's written by Zach Harper and Shams Aranya. So Shams is obviously one of the big insiders for NBA, and Zach Harper I've been following him on X for quite a long time. Just I like the way he looks at the game, I think he's really funny, and so I'm excited that they have a newsletter together and I think if you like basketball, you'll enjoy it too.

Speaker 1: 7:57

And the last section for today is oh, there's other teams where I force myself to talk about some other team besides the nuggets because there are other teams out there and so, as I mentioned, with it being the week of Christmas, we will try and go with a Christmas theme here as we talk about some of the other teams. So I'm going to say a movie quote from some of my favorite Christmas movies and attribute a basketball team to them. So my first quote is she's a bute Clark, said by the amazing cousin Eddie in national ampoules Christmas vacation. And while he's talking about a junkie RV, I'm going to take it literally and just say how impressed I am with the Minnesota Timberwolves. I guess I just thought that they were going to be more of an average team just because of the pairing of Kat and Rudy.

Speaker 1: 8:55

Go bear just didn't look that great last year, but they've definitely figured something out and, as I mentioned in a previous pod, they they beat down the nuggets when they played earlier this year, but they've been doing that to everybody. They just keep winning. They look great. Anthony Edwards is amazing. Their defense is legit, like they got long athletes everywhere with go bear kind of just Roman the paint back there. They're they're a scary team and and and I am more than willing to say that they are a true contender and and I'm impressed. So, as Cuddy cousin Eddie would say, t wolves your bute. Next quote is you're going to shoot your eye out. And that's said by multiple people in the Christmas classic, a Christmas story when Ralphie wants his BB gun and everyone tells him he's going to shoot his eye out. So I'm taking that as in.

Speaker 1: 9:53

Maybe it's not always the best thing to get what you want, and to me that applies to the Lakers. They tried really hard and did an awesome job. They won the NZs in tournament and they looked very impressive doing it. They, I think, won all their group play games and then, obviously, they won all their tournament games, so undefeated. Lebron looked awesome, anthony Davis even looked pretty great in the championship game and since then I think they've gone one in three. So maybe, maybe they put a lot of their energy into the in season tournament and and maybe their I won't say old, but maybe, maybe their experienced legs are tired now. So I will say I've seen a lot of people making fun of Lakers for hanging in that in season tournament banner and I will not join on that bandwagon because a I know it's the league that's making them, because the league wants to make that very important, but B I like the NZs in tournament and if you win it, hang a banner Next. Quote buddy the elf. What's your favorite color? And again I'm going to take this on literally favorite colors of these teams red, white and blue, the team colors of the Los Angeles Clippers and these 76ers. Now both teams.

Speaker 1: 11:17

In my season preview I mentioned how I thought that drama was going to be the main storyline of their season and that it was going to implode. And I was wrong. The Clippers have played really well lately. They've kind of figured out a good rotation between having all the superstars with Russell Westbrook coming off the bench, and Kawai is kind of back to being what Kawai was five years ago, and so they're playing really well right now. That the key for them will obviously be in healthy come playoff time, because they've had stretches and moments where they have looked good in the past and it just seems like they can never stay healthy. So if they can keep doing what they're doing, then good for them, but I've been impressed. And then the 76ers again, I thought the hardened situation was going to just derail their season. And I thought Embiid was going to maybe try and prove people wrong after he didn't do so well in the playoffs last year, and it looks like it was addition by subtraction for them, getting rid of hardened even though they didn't get too much. He's been amazing. And then even Embiid he's playing out of his mind right now and he's putting up huge numbers and it seems like he's passing more and I have to admit they're they're looking good and so we'll see.

Speaker 1: 12:48

The joke around a lot of social media for basketball Twitter and stuff like that is that the Suns have been doing this against the worst teams in the East and and for some reason, their schedules been super easy. So as a as a resident 76ers hater, I'm kind of hoping to see them play some tough teams and and maybe come back down to earth a little bit. But I got it. I got to give it to him. Now they're. They're playing well.

Speaker 1: 13:15

Next quote Seeing isn't believing, believing is believing. And that's what the ghost told the little boy on top of the train on polar express Because he wasn't sure about Santa. Now I'm gonna take it as in. I Will believe it when I see it. For the Suns. Their big three was healthy and together for a whole day, and then Bradley Beale got hurt again. So while Booker and Kevin Durant are playing extremely well, bradley Beale is just a figment of our imagination until we actually see him out on the court for more than a day.

Speaker 1: 13:57

And last quote you guys give up or you're thirsty for more? Said by the amazing Kevin McAllister protecting his home against the robbers in home alone. And this one I'm gonna give to the Pistons. They are on a unbelievable 24 game losing streak right now and I just kind of picture them as Marvin Harry getting just pummeled by a little kid with random booby traps and just laying there in pain. And that's pretty much that the Pistons are right now as they try and go against real NBA teams. Poor Pistons. All right, y'all. That's gonna do it for today. I really appreciate you listening and have a Merry Christmas.