Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
Sometime last week, while Denver waited for the Boston Celtics to lose to the Miami Heat so they could face off against them in the NBA Finals, Chris Mannix, a second-to-third-tier basketball writer, went on the Rich Eisen Show. When Eisen asked if the Nuggets weren’t respected enough, riffing on coach Mike Malone who likes to run his mouth about this topic to reporters sometimes, Mannix said something along the lines of hey, look, they are respected actually, the media just doesn’t talk about the Nuggets because they’re just “not especially interesting.”
So what constitutes “respect” exactly? Does anyone on the Nuggets need this respect in any way? Does a team deserve respect for being good? When they get it, what exactly do they do with it? Can you trade it for goods and services? If they can’t, why would two grown men talk about this, exactly? Who awards respect? Is it the media? Randos on Twitter? God?
Mannix goes on to explain that Nikola Jokic, the team’s star center, doesn’t do media. Jammal Murray and Michal Porter Jr. aren’t compelling. It doesn’t matter that the team is the top seed in the west and just swept the Lakers in a conference final: the Lakers employ LeBron James and sucked for like 3/4th of the season, so they’re more interesting. He seems annoyed that the Nuggets persist in winning even though they provide you with nothing to talk about off the court.