The Nuggets Revive the Soul of Basketball

It might be a cliché, but there are things you can only witness in sports.

The refs were against them, the league wasn’t on their side but with 8 seconds left, after trailing the entire game, the Denver Nuggets pulled off a stunning win. 2.5 seconds before the buzzer, against Oklahoma, Christian Braun found the veteran many had already written off and laughed at, Russell Westbrook; who dished it to the powerful and brilliant Aaron Gordon in the left corner. Three. Silence. Oklahoma stunned.

OKC inbounded quickly and launched a desperate Hail Mary—it missed.

The Nuggets win. Unreal.

With the final buzzer Gordon just stood there, cold as ice with a soft smile, while the entire team jumped on him. He looked at his teammates as if to say: “I’m the guy.”

In the postgame interview, he put it simply: "The right play is the open man. The open man is the right play."

And all of this happened with Jokic (with an insane stat line of 40, 20, 5) hitting impossible threes, Braun playing his heart out, and above all, this team, not always glamorous, but full of heart, showing soul.

That soul, that fire, is especially striking because in recent years, many felt the NBA had lost its magic. Endless identity politics debates, an overreliance on the bland three-point shot, and a culture of fleeting loyalty, mostly to money, not to teams, had clouded the game and league. But the Nuggets? They brought the heart back to the game. Officially.

They were down 13 in the final minutes, playing against a team led by the so-called "MVP candidate" Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The crowd thought it was over. Down 5 with 90 seconds left and OKC in control, it really did looked over.

But then, two missed free throws with 8 seconds remaining gave Denver that one last shot.

And the rest? History. Shaq already welcomed Jokic into the legendary big man club—Hakeem, Kareem, Russell, Wilt, Howard, and was dancing in the TNT studio like a kid.

And for contrast? Just look at the superstar-assembled Lakers, stuck in the mud. Oh, and the Nuggets played this game just 48 hours after their previous one. The Thunder? Four full days of rest.