levon wrote:Tomjas wrote:Jeez guys
Jokic is a very good player but Gasol is a tough matchup who has embarrassed Embiid
Jokic didn’t deserve 20 fts
Nuggets lost
Get over it and move on
Jokic got 4 free throws awarded to him yesterday on non-shooting fouls. Without those, he'd have 28 points on 28 shots. There was also a blatant blocking foul on the AD dunk attempt where Jokic was in the restricted area that would've given him his second early in the first quarter, the same foul that was called on AG (correctly) later in the game. In the series against the Lakers, he was putting up 21 and getting in foul trouble on the regular. Maybe there's a pattern there about how the Lakers defend and attack the Nuggets, and it's not a reflection of Jokic as a player, and it's not some conspiracy against him either? Occam's razor?
It's become increasingly difficult for me to compartmentalize my player fandom with the annoying fans of other players, because the player starts to feed into the entitlement. Like I love Jokic and Doncic, but HATE it when they go too far on foul phishing. There's this toxic feedback loop with the commentators and the fans and local reporters too that makes it worse. See Denver commentators for the biggest unabashed homerism in the league.
Maybe I'm just too old for this in basketball fandom years.
You don't see how the whole idea of defending Jokic is to rough him up as much as you can, and hope to get away with it? The idea is literally to foul him repeatedly and get away with it so that he can't play basketball almost at all. And this is not an exaggeration. Any player plays conservatively when he sees that refs are gonna let him get beat up without whistle, if you ever played basketball you'd know that. If I'd have to put my money on which team Jokic will be playing when he gets seriously injured, I'd easily put it on the Lakers, because your guys don't have to give a **** about how they're defending him.
Look at the 1st situation, Marc Gasol is literally rushing chest-first into Jokic and Jokic is not playing with his back turned there in order for to make it legal. And Marc is hacking him on top of that. Easy missed foul call.
2nd situation Jokic is shooting and Marc is entering his shooting space, and Jokic lands on his foot and falls to the ground because of it. Another easy missed call.
5th situation Marc is literally pushing Jokic chest-first again, and refs again blatantly swallow the whistle. Another missed call.
7th situation again Marc blatantly shoving Jokic with his body and arms to get the ball out of his hands, and no whistle. A disaster.
And that one foul in the end could've easily been flagrant 1, you can dislocate someone's shoulder by grabbing him by the arms from behind like that.
This is not legit defense, this is Marc Gasol and the refs with some great teamwork in order to get Lebron out of the play-in.
There would be no non-shooting fouls on Jokic if Marc Gasol got fouled out because of all these fouls on top of the 4 fouls he already had, so Jokic would be able to destroy your smaller guys who wouldn't be able to stop him even while playing illegal defense.
People are revolted because the refs swallow the whistle only for the Lakers in these situations with Jokic, no other team gets away with this. This is the same way refs allowed Dwight, Javale and Morris to defend him last year in the playoffs.
Lebron goes implicitly complaining to the media that he's gonna end up in the play-ins, and refs get the message that it's time to give them a very an unfair whistle to bail them out of the situation. Whenever the Lakers need a W, refs are there to help them out.
Only biased Laker fans like you don't see this, but please realize that we have easily accessible free videos that show what a clown fiesta the whole Lakers-Lebron-League trifecta really is, and get out of here with your trash take.
.
