On May 15, Beijing time, the NBA playoffs continued, the Denver Nuggets hosted the Timberwolves, and after four quarters of fierce battles, they finally defeated their opponents 112-97, winning three games in a row after two consecutive defeats at home, rewriting the series score to 3-2, and half a foot has stepped into the door of the Western Conference finals.
Prior to the game, Jokic received his third regular season MVP trophy on the spot, perhaps as a buff to the trophy, and he played 41 minutes, hitting 15 of 22 shots, scoring 40 points while grabbing seven rebounds and dishing out 13 assists, without a single turnover. The stats show that when he was on the floor, the Nuggets outscored their opponents by a whopping 21 points, the highest plus/minus in the game.
Jokic's brave performance immediately pushed Gobert on the opposite side to the forefront, and related entries even rushed to the hot search list in the United States. Although the latter hit all 7 shots in the 40 minutes he played, shot 100% from the field, and got a double-double of 18 points and 11 rebounds, he was still ridiculed by fans as "Mr. Yoo's toy".
The reason why Gobert has been ridiculed by the crowd is not only because he has not limited Jokic many head-to-head matches, but also because of his special identity - the winner of the best defensive player of the season. In the previous NBA official DPOY voting results, Gobert received 72 first votes, 24 second votes, and 1 third vote, and won the award with a cumulative score of 433 points, compared to Wembanyama, who ranked second in the overall score, only got 19 first votes, with a total score of only 245 points.
It's worth mentioning that this isn't the first time Gobert has won this honor, as this is the fourth time in his 10-year career that he has been named Defensive Player of the Season since he landed in the league in 2013, the most in the league, and he is undoubtedly the best defensive player in the league in terms of honors.
However, even so, he still looked helpless against Jokic, who scored eight of the nine shots he faced Gobert in this game. There are a variety of scoring methods, including back-to-back pushes, frontal breakthroughs, hooks under the basket, and even step-back jumpers, all kinds of offensive play, which played Gobert so much that fans jokingly called it "Gobert Eight Plays with Teacher Yorobert".
Looking back a few days ago, the Denver Nuggets lost two consecutive home games, and at that time, both fans and the media touted Timberwolves President Connelly to the sky, believing that the latter was born in the Nuggets and knew Jokic's technical characteristics very well.
Now that a wave of three consecutive defeats has passed, I wonder if the fans who held this view at the beginning should change their course and change the direction of the wind?