Nikola Jokic is the best player in the NBA and we have our national writer at the Athletic Fred Katz to discuss some nuances in his approach and game. Dave DuFour and Zena Keita discuss Fred’s article on Nikola Jokic and what other players in the NBA are saying about his game. In part 2 Fred sticks around and the crew discusses their favorite Playoff matchups including Nuggets/Clippers, Wolves/Lakers and the return of Damian Lillard.Host: Dave DuFourWith: Zena Keita and Fred KatzExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio Producer: Grayson Moodyhttps://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6276862/2025/04/16/nikola-jokic-christian-braun-mentorship-nba-mvp-denver-nuggets/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily. Coming up, it's the playoffs. Fred Katz is here to talk about the Jokic bump, and we're going to break down some of the pivotal series as we march toward the finals. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, guys. How's it going?
Good morning. It's going well. We're taking a little break before the playoffs start. Shout out to the play-ins being... I love this pace.
Fred Katz is here right off the jump. Fred, this is about as light of a schedule as you've had all year, right?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, nothing. It's not like I've had features that I've been working on forever coming out all week. It's not like I'm working on, you know, post-mortem stuff for 17 teams whose seasons are over and preparing for the playoffs coming up and everything else. None of that is happening. So I'm doing great.
Fred is in it's you've you've been added to the list of guys that you just don't want to have writing about your team right as the season ends. I mean, you know, if Fred is writing about your team right now, except for the Knicks, it's probably not great. Although you did write about Nikola Jokic and the Jokic bump, the Jokic effect. And the way that this guy elevates his teammates.
Now, look, you also covered John Wall, who was a guy that elevated his teammates quite a bit. Totally different styles, right? John Wall would attack the basket and he'd find these shooters in the corner. Man, how do you wrap your head around a guy like Jokic that finds shooters in places where they normally don't stand and where usually guys can't make passes to?
yeah to me so i wrote i wrote this story and it kind of started i i don't like going into a story with an idea of this is exactly what i'm writing about no matter what because i find if if you if you have specific goals going into a story before you know everything then you end up getting tunnel vision and ironically like you end up not being you should treat a story like nicola jokic treats a basketball game
No tunnel vision. Don't lock in on one spot. Just know you got the whole court to work with. So I go in and I'm like, I'm just going to talk to people about things I think are interesting and people are going to explain things to me and I'm going to learn things. And then a story is going to start to form. And you go in with an idea of kind of what you're thinking.
And originally what I was thinking was, hey, Christian Brown is way better this year. I would like to write something about how Christian Brown has been way better this year and how this happened. Christian Brown was nice enough to talk to me for a very long time. I mean, he gave me a ton of time and was extremely open in our interview.
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