2025 NBA PLAYOFFS West Semifinals: #1 Oklahoma City Thunder vs #4 Denver Nuggets (OKC leads 3-2)

[Andri]

Jokic IMO recieving more criticism than SGA is a testament of who is considered the best player of the series.

SGA BTW is lucky to have such a deep roster around, or this whole PO's wouldn't look pretty for him as MVP level player. He still has time to turn it around though

[Bergmaniac]

It's not like the Thunder weren't gambling that Denver would miss wide open threes either. Denver shot 20.2 wide open 3s per game in this series, the Thunder shot 21.4. Also, I strongly disagree that Jokic wasn't hustling on D because they were playing a zone, a zone isn't some magical tool that doesn't require effort if you want it to be successful.

[bbms]

If you swap Jokic and SGA, and for arguments sake throw in Ihart too so Denver still has a centre. Does the series see a game 6? Does it even see a game 5?

both teams get worse

???? that's delusional. for starters, jokic is easily better on defense than ihart. and we aren't even mentioning the kind of defensive attention he would command and the kind of dunks/easy shots he could get for the one way thunder players

[hardenASG13]

If you swap Jokic and SGA, and for arguments sake throw in Ihart too so Denver still has a centre. Does the series see a game 6? Does it even see a game 5?

both teams get worse

???? that's delusional. for starters, jokic is easily better on defense than ihart. and we aren't even mentioning the kind of defensive attention he would command and the kind of dunks/easy shots he could get for the one way thunder players

He's not a better defender than Ihart, and the thunder role players have been getting and missing open looks all series. There's just not as much complaining about it because they have a great team defense, with speed everywhere. Their shooting has been a major disappointment, probably more so than Denvers.

[ballzboyee]

If Denver had a better 6 through 8 rotation, they definitely would be winning this series. Gordon or Jokic are clearly getting gassed. Denver is trying to rely on their biggest and most physical players in Jokic and Gordon 40+ minutes per game. Watch the body language and watch their breathing of these two late in the game. It's very obvious they don't have anything in the tank. Also playing Braun and Murray 40+ minutes, but they are little guys and should be able absorb those minutes better. Look at OKC, SGA barely played in the first half. I think he played 16 minutes overall in the first 24 minutes of the game. In my opinion, that is a strategic rest on the part of their coaching staff. OKC's best player is sitting their on the bench with his feet up sipping on Gatorade. Ends up playing 38 minutes and has 31 points on almost 10 BPM.

[Wolfgang630]

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Yeah…..

[Bergmaniac]

Nitpicking Jokic's defence in this series is pretty bizarre to me, Denver has been much better than I expected on that end except for Game 2 where they basically stopped trying after the first quarter since the game looked out of reach. Jokic has a defensive rating of 110.9 for the series which is pretty solid considering the opposition and his team has been quite a bit worse defensively when Jokic has been on the bench. And his individual defensive tracking numbers on nba.com are quite good too, for example players have shot only 57.6% on shots from 6 feet or less on shots he defended in this series compared to the 65.2% league average.

[WestbrookGOATed]

I fell asleep before halftime. What a great game!

[GeorgeSears]

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Yeah…..

But is Jokic protecting the rim !?!??!?!

[ballzboyee]

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Also it's not even so much the fact that Denver's starters must play practically the whole game to keep it competitive and this of course contributes to a degradation of performance. It's the fact that OKC can absorb Denver's runs while at the same time strategically resting their best players. They don't even care that Denver gets a double digit lead in spots. It's just whatever to OKC. They are going to keep sending bodies and eventually it becomes a minute war of attrition which greatly favors the deeper team in a seven game series. Last night OKC had nine guys that had double digit minutes but only two played more than 33 minutes. Pretty straight forward.

[SK21209]

Even up 3-2, it’s time to put to bed the idea of OKC being some all-time great team. Denver’s 2023 team might have ended this series already. OKC is really good, but at no point watching them have I felt like I was watching one of the best teams ever like the regular season net rating suggests.

[SpurNani]

Even up 3-2, it’s time to put to bed the idea of OKC being some all-time great team. Denver’s 2023 team might have ended this series already. OKC is really good, but at no point watching them have I felt like I was watching one of the best teams ever like the regular season net rating suggests.

Agreed. Even if they go on to win the title, they have looked extremely beatable and have some obvious flaws. Even in the Memphis series , ATG teams dont let bad teams like Memphis build leads of 30 on them.

Very good young team that’s learning to win in the playoffs.

[bbms]

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sam presti is the thunder's mvp and i never doubted it.

[SpurNani]

We acknowledge it. We also acknowledge that there are concessions that need to be made especially since he's being asked to play 44 minutes per game just to give the team a chance.

you guys don't acknowledge it because when you sga is coasting, you are overlooking the fact thunder's success is built on one of the best defenses of the century that has no weak link, and sga happens to be one of the best playmaking links of the chain, that made disruptive plays all game, and even when he has had bad scoring stretches on this series, he's still playing his ass off on the other side of the ball delivering impact.

obviously jokic is better than sga on offense. his defense, however, has also made his team unstable. get real. nuggets defensive game plans is praying the thunder misses wide open threes. and thunder has missed them a lot.

The idea that Jokic can maintain this offensive level required for the Nuggets to even be competitive and then also ask him to contest every shot at the rim is ludicrous. He's doing what needs to be done and there are naturally concessions to be made.

He's not a defensive anchor.

He hasn’t maintained this level of offensive production for most of this series, though. He was bad in games 2-4 and Denvers others bailed him out with a G3 win. He was awful in the 4th Qtr of game 4 in a game that was begging to be won.

You know who i feel sorry for? Giannis. He was awesome in games 1-5 and his team let him down. Not Jokic who is ATG in games 1-5 and the other games he cant hit his free throws late or stop turning the ball over.

[GeorgeSears]

On the plus side he's now gotten more assists in this series than turnovers. He had 21 assists and 23 turnovers through the first 4 games. Now it's 26 assists and 25 turnovers. The Thunder are doing an excellent job of shutting his passing down

Nuggets had open 3 after open 3 off Jokic’s feeds. They just couldn’t hit any shots.

MPJ missing open 3s has been back breaking.

[Wolfgang630]

On the plus side he's now gotten more assists in this series than turnovers. He had 21 assists and 23 turnovers through the first 4 games. Now it's 26 assists and 25 turnovers. The Thunder are doing an excellent job of shutting his passing down

Nuggets had open 3 after open 3 off Jokic’s feeds. They just couldn’t hit any shots.

MPJ missing open 3s has been back breaking.

It’s momentum killers or the difference between giving yourself enough space to win a game. So many missed opportunities Denver had because they missed key 3 point shots

[SpurNani]

Nitpicking Jokic's defence in this series is pretty bizarre to me, Denver has been much better than I expected on that end except for Game 2 where they basically stopped trying after the first quarter since the game looked out of reach. Jokic has a defensive rating of 110.9 for the series which is pretty solid considering the opposition and his team has been quite a bit worse defensively when Jokic has been on the bench. And his individual defensive tracking numbers on nba.com are quite good too, for example players have shot only 57.6% on shots from 6 feet or less on shots he defended in this series compared to the 65.2% league average.

He’s hiding in a zone thats working because OKC, including SGA, havent been able to shoot Denver out of it.

But make no mistake, he’s a bad defender. I dare Denver to run that zone against Ind, NY, or Minny. But they won’t be advancing.

[HotRocks34]

Pretty much this, although Jokic was solid in the 4Q of Game 5 (4/6 for 13 points).

It's too bad that Calvin Booth wasn't fired earlier.

[MoneyTalks41890]

Lots of shoulda coulda woulda in this thread.

[Onlytimewilltel]

That's on Jokic.

He's passing everything as OKC came back.

He’s absolutely exhausted

No excuses.

He has to close this.

I’d say Jokic did his part. He was by far the best player out there on the court.