Denver fans are living in the golden age of Jokic and MacKinnon
Jan 26, 2024, 6:35 AM
As Denver sports fans, we are truly blessed to be watching two transcendent talents at the same time. Nikola Jokic and Nathan MacKinnon are simply that good.
They are in position and poised to do something that has only happened one other time in sports history. If they both win their league’s respective MVP awards, they will become the first MVP winners in the NBA and NHL from the same city in the same year since Magic Johnson of the Lakers and Wayne Gretzky of the Kings in 1989. That is some amazing company.
Their stats are extraordinary. Their performances are sublime. But I’m most fascinated with the impact they have on their teams.
I’m interested in what makes a good team culture. What is it? How do you get it?
I’ve long believed a winning culture can’t come from the coach. He can lay out his vision for what it looks like. He can establish the outline. But for a culture to truly form and stick it has to come from the players. Specifically, the biggest buy-in needs to come from the best players.
That’s what we’re watching with Jokic and MacKinnon.
In the wake of Nate’s four-goal masterpiece against the Caps, Jared Bednar came out and raved about MacKinnon’s work ethic. He acknowledged it has always been unbelievable. But this season, he’s taken it to another unimaginable level.
Bednar shared the Avs are the latest arriving team in the NHL because MacKinnon has a postgame routine he will not sacrifice. Once he’s logged 25 ferocious minutes on the ice, he puts in another intense workout off it. So while the equipment bags have been packed and the bus is idling and the team plane is on the tarmac spooling up its engines, MacKinnon is still working. And everyone waits.
Well, not everyone. Other players are also putting in the work. Because how in the world can I not put in the work when Nathan MacKinnon is? That is leadership. That is culture.
With Jokic it’s different, but no less impactful. (And let’s get this out of the way, I know Jokic works his butt off too. This a different type of compliment I want to convey.)
In an NBA that has gotten depressingly selfish and non-team-oriented, the Nuggets are a shining light to the way the game should be played. And the man who sets that tone is Jokic. He’s the epitome of not caring who gets the credit. He’s unselfish. He shares the basketball. And here we go again: when the best player on your team who also happens to be the best player on the planet is playing that way, everyone else understands they have to play that way as well.
It is the absolute best kind of peer pressure. And it is the living, breathing embodiment of what a winning culture looks like.
It is so hard to define and even harder to create. That we here in Denver are watching it happen in its purest form with not one, but two teams and superstars is something to treasure. Because it may never happen like this again.
