Are The Nuggets Interesting Enough?

Hey folks, this is Brent Reeves with the Me Deaters New Podcast, this country life. You ever wondered how to pick out a good dog, bowl up a mess of crawfish or catch catfish on a trotter line? Well, on this country life, I'm inviting you into my home where in each episode I'll be telling you the story of a good hunt, close call, a hard time, a good time, whatever. They will talk on some good country skills I think you ought to know. Listen to this country life in the bagreese feed on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. In a new series from the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio, this is the Fighting Pucks. We're going out on the ice with the most violent hockey team ever. That was guerrilla warfare, at its highest. Were they heroes or villains you decide? I don't know what to say and I don't want to get shot. Well, come to the young girl. Listen to the Fighting Pucks on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Puckasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest tag team in history is back and we're ready to make our grand entrance in season three of wrestling with Freddie. That's right, Freddie. We're bringing the heat with exclusive interviews, highlights and all the in-ring drama from the world of pro wrestling. Not only are we talking wrestling, but we'll be unleashing those fan-favorite sidequists. So strap up your boots, put on those headsets and get ready for more episodes from your podcast wrestling tag team JBS on wrestling with Freddie. Listen to wrestling with Freddie on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Alright, well, I guess today, go ahead and knock on me, SI.com, SI staff writer. Today is as good a day as any to have a bonus podcast. We were not planning to podcast on Thursday because, you know, the Western Conference finals have been over for a couple of days. The Eastern Conference finals rolls into game five tonight in Boston, so there really wasn't a ton to talk about on Thursday. I'm glad I injected myself into that news cycle and enraged all of Colorado in the process. To recap what Thursday has been, I woke up on the West Coast, I woke up and saw a torrent of tweets about an interview I did on The Rich Eisen Show. This was on Wednesday when I was in studio with Rich Eisen. And Rich Eisen asked me why the nuggets weren't respected. Why was Michael Malone talking about respecting Nicole Yochich and respecting what the nuggets have done? And I said to Rich, and I'll kind of paraphrase myself here, I said the nuggets can't play the disrespect card. They can't play that nobody believes in us card because Nicole Yochich is a two-time MVP. That's awarded by the media. Michael Malone is consistently in the top five of most media members, Coach of the Year ballot, including mine. And the nuggets, I mean, I saw some, I'm not going to get too deep into specifics, but some people like nobody believed in the nuggets this year. Okay, right. Nobody picked the number one seed to come out of the West. Sure, I'm sure that's true. Rich followed up with, you know, and I followed up by saying the card the nuggets can play is nobody talks about us, which is true. The nuggets are not a sexy team to talk about, at least haven't been in the second half of the season when they've been racking up wins and running away with the Western Conference. In the second half of the season, the teams that we were talking about are, as always, the Lakers were going through our roller coaster ride from start to finish. The Phoenix Suns, which made a major trade at the deadline to bring in one of the biggest stars in the game. We talked about the Celtics and the ebbs and flows that they've had during their season. And those were the primary story. The Clippers too were part of that news cycle because Kawais in, Kawais out, does it really matter? We were able to put the pieces together and make a run. The nuggets, in part because of their success, were not front burner because really since mid-season they've been rolling along, sitting, I don't know what the date was, but it's been a while they were at the top of the Western Conference. So we weren't talking about them front of mind. People got offended by that, by me saying they weren't as interesting, that the Jamal Murray story wasn't as interesting. The Michael Porter Jr. story wasn't as interesting. And again, this is where it gets kind of cut off. I said, at least not as interesting as what these teams were doing at the end of the year. So you saw the clip, Rowan. You saw the backlash on social media. Before I get to my full-throated defense of myself, what did you think of it all? Yeah. So Chris, like a good colleague, I actually watched your rich eyes interview yesterday because I was like, look at Manic's. I think you were on Dan Patrick's show too. He's making the rounds. Let me check it out. I watched the whole thing. I guess part of it is because I work with you. We talk about the Nuggets also a lot on this podcast. I wasn't taken aback by it. I was a little surprised to see the clip blow up as much as it did this morning. And again, I have the benefit of knowing you, knowing the stories you've written over the course of the entire season. So I come in with it a lot of perspectives a little bit different than the people who have seen the clip on Twitter. But to me, I don't think you were insulting the Nuggets as much as you were kind of getting to what drives NBA conversation. And people come at us and say, well, listen to it on you guys to drive the conversation. We try. Okay. We try. I mean, you've written stories about John Wall. You did your cover story about the Celtics. Like I tweeted today about the next series of videos. Yeah. Let me just jump in there. With the coverage stuff, like, yeah, I've leaned into the Lakers a lot over the last couple of months. I do write, have written a lot about the Celtics because I'm largely based in Boston as the team I see more often than not. But one of the benefits that we have in our specific jobs is that we kind of work two of them, right? And we write for the web a lot of days, but we also were able to do magazine stories. And in the magazine, over the last, I know, three or four months, I have written about the behind the bench coaches who are charged with deciding whether or not to signal a challenge. I have written about Donovan Mitchell's impact with the Cleveland Cavaliers. I have written about Shea Gilgers Alexander and the run that he went on in Oklahoma City. Not big market stories, not Lakers, not Celtics, not content producing things. So the idea that I'm only writing about the Lakers or the Celtics or Houston, or not Houston Phoenix or the Clippers is just not accurate to be fair. And yeah, and I think that's, I think you're getting to the point of, I think, what all this is about and what is very difficult to explain on Twitter, which is we cannot control all the media that people consume. And I understand if you're a Nuggets fan, like you might be a little frustrated. You know, they didn't have last year. They didn't have a Christmas game. But like you mentioned, like, you know, just one, two MVPs are SIs written about them a lot over the last few years. Many national outlets have learned about them a lot over the last few years. And to your point, like we had Steph Curry and LeBron James for the last two months of the season fighting it out for a playoff spot as great as Nicole Yolkich is like those stories are very compelling. And I think the point that you're ultimately trying to make is that's what gets responded to when we write. Like I say, this is someone who's written about the Nuggets many times. Like I know for a fact the story I wrote. That's the other part of this too. That's the other part of this too. You and I are colleagues at Sports Illustrated. So it's not like we're ignoring the Nuggets. You're writing about them. You're writing about Aaron Gordon. You've written about Contavious Caldwell Pope. You've written about Nicole Yolkich, just to name a few of the Nuggets stories that you've written at how it works is with you writing them. I'm not going to follow up with the exact same story. That's just the way it goes. And frankly, like do those stories, are they doing as well? Are they sweeping? Are they grabbing people's attentions as much? I don't know. I'm not saying that's not a reason to do them. We do them for a reason. We and you both like the NBA. That's why you wrote about Shay and the behind the bench coaches. Like there are lots of interesting angles. But I think it's a little disingenuous for some of the people who are really, really upset to ignore the fact that the compelling thing about the Western Conference in particular for most of the season was how the historical greats in that conference, whether it was Katie joining in February, Steph Lebron, were all on footing. We've never seen them before. And like I said, when I watched the interview, I thought that was the point you were making was that was what was interesting about the season was. Is Steph Curry going to be in the play? And is Lebron going to make the playoffs? What's going to happen with the Suns adding Kevin Durant? It's not a zero sum game either, like you mentioned, like we're doing all of it. We're trying to do all of it. Trying to do all of it. And I think succeeding for the most part, because we are writing about big storylines with the Nuggets. Nuggets, look, as they sit here a week before going into the NBA Finals, they can play the card that nobody's talking about us. Like they can play that because you turn on TV. Look, the Nuggets won in a four game sweep against Los Angeles Lakers the other day. And within like two hours, the story had shifted from Nuggets win to is Lebron going to retire. And no media outlet in the world is going to cover the Nuggets win over the possibility that arguably the greatest player in NBA history has played his last game. Look, it's as simple as that. It's not going to happen. It's going to. It's a much bigger story in that moment that Lebron James is at least hinting at the possibility of retirement. It has nothing to do with how good the Nuggets are. The Nuggets are a great team and they have some great stories. Jamal Murray coming back from a torn ACL and missing the entire season is a great story. Michael Porter Jr. overcoming back injuries and becoming the player that he is is a great story. Nicole Yolkich, not only winning the two MVPs, but kind of dealing with what he had to deal with in the final month or two of the season where race was injected into the MVP conversation where Yolkich's defense was lampooned pretty nightly. He is a story. The fact that he has zoomed past his quote unquote peers, which are Joel and Bead and Janice D'Acunpo in the MVP ballot, they're a story. But in terms of the second half of the season, you're just not going to write about a Nuggets team that's cruising along over these other storylines, which are more pressing in that moment and which frankly are where the audience is in that moment. That's part of what we're doing in this job. We're going where the audience is and that's where Clippers, Suns, Lakers, to Alesha DeRee Celtics, that's where they were in those moments. For sure. And again, we talk about, again, like our people seeing everything. We literally went on this podcast earlier this week, Me You and Herring, to talk about how we think Nicole Yolkich is the best way in the world. We led that show talking about the Nuggets. We led the Goliokich. Even though LeBron made the comments that he made, we talk about Yolkich on this podcast almost every single week. I've again, you've been in LA and Boston covering those two teams. I've written about the Nuggets several times during these playoffs, including about Yolkich being on a great run, how him and Murray are the best duo in the league, including how they've answered all the questions that people had about them. So that stuff is out there. It's not like we're trying to bury it. There's a degree to which you and I can also only control who's seeing what and how people are consuming the work we do at Sports Illustrated, which again, which is why I watched the interview and its entirety and it wasn't shocking. I didn't even think it was controversial to be like the Warriors and Lakers were massive stories. And it's also like massive stories. People talk about those. It would be journalistic malpractice not to write about what's happening in Golden State over the final two months of the season, how the Lakers are meshing or not meshing over the final two months of the season, how the Suns are coming together in the aftermath of a Durant trade that gutted the roster. Like you've got to cover these things. You've got to write about these things. Of course, people are like, well, you're gonna be writing about the Nuggets now. Well, yeah, there are right now three teams left in the NBA playoffs and the Nuggets are one of them. We're gonna be writing about them. And for the record, like I've got something larger that involves the Nuggets coming out, maybe not during the finals because it's connected to a particular event. But one thing I've been working with the Nuggets on over the last month, month and a half. So we're going to be writing about them. But the reason the Nuggets are not covered or have not been covered to the degree that they would probably like and would probably deserve is because they didn't have a lot of the things that were happening that people wanted to know about, that people wanted to read about. It's a credit to them. They have been a model of consistency for most of the last few years. Kept their coach, kept their roster, drafted incredibly well. Even when Tim Connolly left, they maintained continuity in that front office, bringing up Calvin Booth promoting Tommy Bilcettis. Like they have done a fantastic job. And that deserves a pause. But as far as covering them, there are other things you have to cover too. And there are other things that are more compelling in that moment. And like a huge undercurrent of all of this is when we talk about guys like LeBron for example or Steph, they are a lot different than Yokich. And I love Yokich. I've written about him for years. He's my favorite player to watch in the league. I think one of the last national interviews he did was what's illustrated when I went out to Denver last March. But that's another part of the problem. Like LeBron and Steph are so much more front facing than the nugget stars. And part of that is, it's a chicken and the egg conversation. People say, oh, those guys aren't bigger stars because the media won't cover them. But they're also not bigger stars because, like, and this is, I think what makes Yokich unique, but he is not dropping breadcrumbs in his press conferences like LeBron. He doesn't want the media coverage. Like in the way that I think Steph works for a famously very media friendly organization. And that's not to discredit. I think what the nugget's PR team does. I think they're fantastic. I love working with them. And I'm sure they would love if Joker went out and did a bunch of interviews to get his profile up. But that's another kind of issue here. It's not just about Yokich. It's not even about that, right? Like the athlete or the player I've written the most about in the magazine over the last, I want to say, eight years has been Kawhi Leonard. Kawhi Leonard I've written about when he was on the rise in San Antonio when things were on the rocks for him in San Antonio. And I wrote about him in the magazine during that one year in Toronto. Kawhi Leonard granted me maybe like 90 seconds of access. Total, total 90 seconds. When you have an athlete that's not going to give you something, it's your responsibility to work around him. Interview his teammates, interview people that know him. I'm fine with that. In fact, more often than not, I prefer to do stories that way because I think you get an unvarnished version of the truth when you do it without athlete participation. Athlete participation is great. I'll take it when I can get it. But writing around a guy is not a problem. So that's not even it. It's just like, you know, when would you do one Yokich story? And look, that's good. You do a Jamal Murray story. Right. You do like you did Aaron Gordon. You do get Davie's called whoop-oep. That's fine. But over since February on, the Nuggets have not been a big story. They haven't. They've been really good. And maybe you can write more about how good they are. But the chief storylines were Lakers, Suns, Clippers, Celtics, Knicks, you know, those teams out there with a level of dysfunction to them for sure. Right. And this also like the Nuggets have ended up making files. If you think about it, it's like Milwaukee was in a similar boat this year. Like they've been good for a few years. Down the stretch they had the number one seed. We weren't like driving home the buck stories. And that's not to say, well, again, we talked about them on podcasts, et cetera. But it's the nature of storytelling. Like if we really want to get into it is it's when things are on an even keel, when things are going well, that's often when teams are kind of the least exciting to dig into. Like we want to dig into, you know, teams that have a lot to lose, players that have a lot to lose, players at crossroads, et cetera, which again, I took to be the point that you were making in that clip, which is why it's been, you know, kind of. Because the clip was longer than, I mean, the clip was longer than just the three minutes. Like the initial topic was has Nicole Yokech proven he's the best player in the game or isn't Nicole Yokech is the best player in the game? The answer is a resounding yes right now. He's the best player in the NBA. So Jamal Murray is the breakout star of these playoffs and he has been electric for this team, especially in the Western Conference Finals. But the Nuggets are not disrespected. They are not disrespected. They are, they are well rewarded for their success as evidenced by Nicole Yokech and Michael Malone. They are just not covered in the same way. And also this year. Also, I just want to say you and I cannot control what's been talked about on sports debate shows, on NBA halftime shows, on three game shows that's out of our purview. I would love if those, with those massive massive platforms, they did more to talk about Yokech's greatness. But again, that's, that's nothing that's not even like, it's not even exclusive to the Nuggets. I mean, the Heat have gotten the same treatment. The Heat beat New York and the ESPN post game show was all about the Knicks and how Julius Rangel is terrible. And the next day story was all about the Knicks and what do they do to change the weather, the weather in Miami was a storyline like, the weather in Miami. I mean, that was an incredible storyline. It just happens the way it goes. Just, just to put a button on this, the biggest problem the Nuggets have with, uh, that's exposure, I would say coverage is the fact that they're not on the number one cable provider in the state of Colorado. I mean, altitude is not on Comcast if I'm still reading that correctly at this point. Not since 2019. I think that's a bigger issue than national media ignoring them. They're being ignored by the largest cable provider and not being shown to a large chunk of their fan base. That to me is the biggest issue that Nuggets have to deal with right now. Absolutely, absolutely. Like, you know, it starts with, and again, I, I would get written about the Nuggets. I credit their fans. They have local outlets trying to do a great job. Mike Singer, who we both know, I think does a great job for the Denver Post covering that team. Yeah, so one thing that would go a very long way for that team certainly would just be get on TVs in their local market. It absolutely starts there. And kind of the, another thing we haven't discussed that's, again, I don't think we're going to be able to unpack the intricacies of it right now. Like, has the NBA done a good enough job of putting YoCage front and center? Last year they didn't give them a Christmas game. They did this year, but they're not, they're not a team that's even shown nationally enough. So there are just so many factors that could go into it that, you know, Manx, as much as we butt heads on this podcast, I know how hard you work that it does bother me. People think like, you're against the idea of covering certain teams. I know that not to be the case. I know that not to be the case because oftentimes I pitch stories on guys I want to write about and they're like, Manx is talking to this person. So I just want to get that out there. I'm fine with any legitimate criticism. But if you think, look, put it this way. If the nuggets sweep either the heat or the Celtics and LeBron retires that night, I'm writing about LeBron. Yeah. I mean, look, that's just a bigger deal. It just is. It's a bigger deal if the all time great arguably the greatest player of all time retires. That's just the way it goes. And, you know, it's not that the nuggets don't have great stories. It's just that for the moment and for the last couple of months they haven't been as interesting as the teams that have been going through a lot in the final two or three months of the season. So I'm sorry Colorado fans. I wish you luck in the NBA finals whether you play the heat or the Celtics and you're probably going to win because that is I think the best team left in the playoffs. Yes. The Oak Beach is dominant. Murray is great. They've got depth. They're built to win. They're built real real quick while we're here. I just want to know because I was actually going to text you about it. Are you are you feeling good about the Celtics? It feels like there's something up in the Celtics Heat series doesn't it? Maybe you know a lot of people listening to this will already know the outcome of game five. The South has catch a huge break. I think with Gabe Vincent out he was what's he 17 and a half points per game shooting 58 percent 50 percent on three full of threes. Yeah. That's a huge loss. I don't think Eric's bullshit is going to go deeper into his bench either. I'm not sure who you go to at this point. I think you have to see Kyle Lowry play a lot more minutes. Jimmy Butler play a lot more minutes. If that's even possible for these guys. Duncan Robinson might get stretched out some more Max Drew's get stretched out some more. That certainly favors the Celtics. I think my guess and this could be a take that is stale and bad by the time this podcast is listened to by a lot of people. I think this comes down to game six in Miami. I think game six suddenly becomes for the Heat anyway, a game seven. I don't think they can go back to Boston and winning game seven with the Celtics having that kind of momentum. But Vincent out. I like the Celtics in game six. I do. Sorry. See we just didn't talk about the Nuggets. We're pivoted to the Celtics. We just did everything the Nuggets fans are mad about. Ah, thanks for listening. I picked Heat and six from riding with and I just had to know. My name is Clay Nukem and I'm the host of the Bear Greece podcast where we explore American stuff forgotten but relevant. I've heard it called gritty Americana that makes you think we deliver highly research documentary style episodes diving in deep with academics, anthropologists and hillbillies. For example, we did a big series on Daniel Boone. We did one on some turkey poachers in my hometown and we even did one on the Southern comedian Jerry Clower. But the best ones are the ones I'm on. That was my buddy Brent Reeves and on this podcast you're actually going to get two podcasts because Brent is on the Bear Greece feed as well. Yep, it's called this country life with me Brent Reeves. I'm going to tell you the stories that will make you laugh and teach you some country skills that will help you beat the system. It's going to be like bob lightning coming straight in your ears. Check it out on the Bear Greece podcast. I think you'll like it. Listen to Bear Greece in this country life and the Bear Greece feed on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. Hey folks, this is Brent Reeves with the Meet Eaters New Podcast, this country life. You ever wondered how to pick out a good dog, bowl up a mess of crawfish or catch catfish on a trotter line? Well, on this country life I'm inviting you into my home where in each episode I'll be telling you the story of a good hunt, close call, a hard time, a good time, whatever. And they will talk on some good country skills I think you ought to know. Listen to this country life in the Bear Greece feed on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. In a new series from the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio, this is the Fighting Pucks. We're going out on the ice with the most violent hockey team ever. That was guerrilla warfare, at its highest. Were they heroes or villains you decide? I don't know what to say and I don't want to get shot. Well, I can't tell you anything. Listen to the Fighting Pucks on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.