Born 194 days and half the world apart, Nikola Jokic and Nathan MacKinnon are now the twin centers of our sports attention in Denver. They share MVP skills, the same year of birth and championship dreams. So who wins a ring first? Joker or MacK?
We can’t wait until next year, because we know the Nuggets and Avalanche both could’ve won it all this year, if fate had only been kinder. Jokic and MacKinnon are entering what figure to be the prime years of Hall-of-Fame-worthy careers. The brightest superstars in Colorado will both be 26 years old the next time they suit up for a home game in Ball Arena.
But would you rather build a championship contender around MacKinnon or Jokic?
It’s not a trick question. For me, it’s not even especially difficult to answer.
MacKinnon has magic in his genes, with other-worldly skills that made him the league’s No. 1 overall pick when the Avs drafted him out of Canada in 2013. Defensemen backpedaled in shock and awe from the first time he touched the puck as a teenager on NHL ice.
Jokic was selected No. 41 overall by the Nuggets in 2014 out of Serbia; with far more assembly required in his skill set. Before becoming the most unlikely MVP in NBA history, Joker’s rise to the top entailed more crazy twists and turns than a Marble Genius maze.
But when picking a leader of my championship dream, I would take Joker over MacK in a heartbeat.
Why?
Although born a little more than six months apart in 1995, Jokic is a man in full, while there’s still remnants of a petulant child in MacKinnon.
RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post
Colorado Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon (29) look up during the second period of Game 6 in the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoff series at T-Mobile Arena on June 10, 2021 in Las Vegas, Nevada.While MacK would scowl at the suggestion with the same pouty mouth I witnessed in Las Vegas after he finished as runner-up for the Hart Trophy in 2018, dare I say there’s more fight in Joker? And I would have made this same case to the jury even before Jokic slapped Phoenix guard Cameron Payne silly and stared down Suns star Devin Booker as his final act during the Nuggets’ final game in this year’s playoffs.
“Nikola knows this: I love him and support him and believe in him and will go to war with him any day and anywhere,” Denver coach Michael Malone said after his team was eliminated by Phoenix. “Our challenge is to find a way as an organization to continue to help him and put players around him that can ultimately win a championship.”
After being bounced from the Stanley Cup chase by Vegas, MacKinnon sounded like a man tired of hearing patience is a virtue, uttering words that now define a superstar whose individual greatness hasn’t translated into a championship for his team: “I’m going into my ninth year next year and I haven’t won (squat).”
There are 101 shades of gray in every life. But maybe there’s some simple black-and-white truth in the fact Joker has endured the NBA version of fat kid jokes and sweated for every ounce of basketball respect. Rather than a leader naturally born, Jokic has worked on finding his voice in the locker room with the same persistence used to master every quirky detail of his Sombor Shuffle jump shot.
MacKinnon makes everything look so easy that sometimes he leans too hard on talent alone. Flustered by relentless defensive attention in the series against Vegas, MacK rushed into trouble rather than letting open ice find him. That’s no sin; John Elway went through some of the same stuff on the football field early in his career before getting trounced in the Super Bowl forced him to learn how to place more trust in lesser teammates.
Nothing delights Jokic more than making everybody in his sphere of influence happier and more productive. He does everything on the court with the patience of a man who never doubts the process. After a loss, no matter how many points, rebounds and assists are next to his name on the stat sheet, Joker takes full responsibility for the team’s failure to win.
MacKinnon is a diva on skates. Brilliant. Temperamental. He dares everyone in his world to keep up with him. Tends to push too hard when things don’t go his way and pout while processing defeat, when the Avs tend to coddle him. Some guys want to win so badly and react so poorly when things don’t go their way that they never fully learn how to handle adversity.
There’s a world of difference between Jokic and MacKinnon in leadership ability.
Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Sombor, Serbia, are separated by more than 3,800 miles.
Sometime during his summer vacation, MacKinnon could do worse than cross the Atlantic Ocean, take a slow ride on a big horse alongside Jokic in Serbia and take notes on becoming a better teammate.
If you’re the most skilled skater on the planet and haven’t won squat in eight NHL seasons, it might not be a hockey problem. It might be a you problem.
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June 23, 2021 at 06:31AM
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