LeBron James: “The respect level is out of this world” for Nuggets’ historic run

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – The respect LeBron James has for the Den­ver Nuggets runs deep.

It’s not just the his­toric nature of their run, or their self­less fran­chise super­star or the shared his­to­ry between him­self and Nuggets coach Michael Mal­one. It’s all of it, in totality.

James is so media savvy he only tips his hand, or his hat, when he wants to. And after the Nuggets made NBA his­to­ry by claw­ing back from two 3–1 deficits, James knows what’s star­ing at him ahead of Friday’s Game 1 of the West­ern Con­fer­ence Finals.

“Very resilient, very con­fi­dent, very dri­ven and very well-coached team,” James said. “It takes a lot of ener­gy, effort and a lot of des­per­a­tion to be able to come back from a 3–1 deficit, and they did it twice.”

James, whose last cham­pi­onship in 2016 was a result of Cleveland’s his­toric 3–1 come­back against Gold­en State, knows first-hand how the Nuggets felt. It takes resilience, then composure.

“The respect lev­el is out of this world … for this ball­club,” James said. “And that’s how we’ll go into this series, under­stand­ing what they’re capa­ble of and where they stand.”

That’s noth­ing short of effu­sive. The com­mon denom­i­na­tors are numer­ous. Mal­one was an assis­tant coach in Cleve­land on Mike Brown’s staff in 2007, when James upset the Pis­tons in his first Con­fer­ence Finals appear­ance. James saw Malone’s work eth­ic and appre­ci­at­ed his ded­i­ca­tion. Ever since, James has had an affin­i­ty for Denver’s blue-col­lar coach.

“When you work hard on your craft and you see oth­ers work­ing just as hard on their craft, it becomes organ­ic and it becomes mutu­al respect,” James said of Malone.

That Cavs team fin­ished with 50 wins and the fourth-best defen­sive rat­ing in the NBA. Stick around the NBA long enough, and things are bound to come full cir­cle. Mal­one pre­dict­ed the defen­sive instincts James honed in Cleve­land would ulti­mate­ly be used to stop Nuggets super­star Niko­la Jokic at some point in this series. James has made a habit of check­ing oppo­nents’ best play­ers come crunch time.

He also has a shared admi­ra­tion for Jokic’s craft. Any­one who ed Jokic dis­sect the Clip­pers in Game 7, fin­ish­ing with an eye-pop­ping 16-point, 22-rebound, 13-assist triple-dou­ble, would. Espe­cial­ly in the third quar­ter, Jokic thread­ed seams tighter than a Singer sewing machine with some of his dish­es. Once again, James can relate, his bas­ket­ball mind oper­at­ing on the same wave-length as Jokic’s.

“It’s prob­a­bly the best part of the game,” James said. “Being able to get your team­mates involved, putting the ball on time, on tar­get, being able to see things hap­pen before they hap­pen and see­ing the reward go to your team­mates, it’s the best part of the game.”

Sound famil­iar? That’s basi­cal­ly Jokic’s bas­ket­ball ethos. His loves to remind any­one who’ll lis­ten: An assist makes two peo­ple hap­py, while a buck­et serves just one.

“It’s just infec­tious,” James said of Jokic’s self­less nature. “When you have the best play­er on the team, or one of the best play­ers on the team, not real­ly car­ing about him­self at all, for the bet­ter of the team, it sends a mes­sage to the rest of the group.”

Though James knows the Lak­ers are the favorite, he’s way too smart to admit any­thing close to that. And he has too much respect for the gaunt­let Den­ver sur­vived to get here.

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