A.D. gets last laugh against the Joker

The two best big men in bas­ket­ball are Antho­ny Davis and Niko­la Jokic. At crunch time, every­body else stood back and ed the Brow and Jok­er do their stuff. It was a mag­nif­i­cent duel. Jokic scored the final 11 points for Den­ver to put his nev­er-say-quit team­mates ahead 103–102 with 2.7 sec­onds remain­ing in the fourth quar­ter. But on the final wild offen­sive pos­ses­sion,  A.D. swished a shot from beyond the 3‑point arc at the buzzer over the out-stretched arm of Jok­er to win Game 2. Dagger.

You can’t call MPJ a kid anymore.

In Game 1, Michael Porter Jr. looked as if he had nev­er been on a stage as big as the West­ern Con­fer­ence Finals. Although he padded stats dur­ing garbage time, the 22-year-old rook­ie from Mis­souri clanked jumpers ear­ly, when the Lak­ers took it to Den­ver. But here’s what you love about MPJ and the Nuggets’ future: In Game 2, Porter took anoth­er step of growth, look­ing com­fort­able at the adult table, unafraid to grab his fair share of meat and pota­toes. MPJ fin­ished with 15 points.

Age is just a number. Ask LeBron, not Millsap.

Ah, youth. Any­body can be a super­star at age 25. But the abil­i­ty to impact a play­off game at 35 years old? That’s a whole dif­fer­ent deal. LeBron James was born Dec. 30, 1984, rough­ly six weeks before Den­ver for­ward Paul Mill­sap. James is paid $37.4 mil­lion. Mill­sap is paid $30.3 mil­lion. While Mill­sap often appears to be on his last legs, James is as rare as the fine wine he likes to sip after a hard night’s work in the NBA bub­ble. We’ve all been warned what a drag it is get­ting old. Unless you’re the King.