LOS ANGELES — It was not quite the Best Block Of A LeBron James Postseason Shot Attempt By A Wildcat Of All Time — the BBOALJPSABAWOAT, if you will, which, of course, is owned by Andre Igoudala — but Aaron Gordon’s Game 4 deflection of LeBron’s last-ditch effort to extend the Western Conference Finals was everything Gordon has brought to the Denver Nuggets rolled into one play.
Heart, determination and tenacity; teamwork, grit and selflessness; chemistry, fit and ferociousness.
It capped off a brilliant game for the former Arizona star, the latest in what has been a terrific postseason run, as everything has come together for Gordon and the Nuggets. They are healthy, clicking and rested, barreling chest-first toward their first NBA championship, with the Finals kicking off on Thursday against the Miami Heat.
And Gordon might just have been the missing piece of the puzzle for the surging Nuggets.
“The little things he does for us are big things,” Denver coach Mike Malone said after the Nuggets’ Game 3 win over the Lakers. “Aaron is a guy that is always flying under the radar.”
Imagine that. A two-time dunk-contest runner-up flying under the radar.
All about winning
For so long, to some people, that’s all Aaron Gordon was — an aerial artist.
To others, he was everything. Probably too early.
To the Nuggets, he’s exactly what he needs to be, and the difference is in every inch of Gordon’s long body. It’s in his tattooed shoulders, upright and strong, and in his face, no longer fixed into a sad frown.
As he sits at his locker following Denver’s 119-108 Game 3 win in L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena, Gordon sounds happy, finally at ease with an NBA career that once caused him such inner turmoil. Once the ill-fitting centerpiece of a young and bad Orlando Magic team, he has blossomed into the ultimate complement for arguably the best guard/post combo in the NBA in emerging star guard Jamal Murray and two-time MVP center Nikola Jokic.
He is perfectly content rotating third-wheel duties with a finally healthy Michael Porter Jr., fitting in where he needs to fit, hitting clutch shots but not forcing them, dominating the offensive glass and the team’s movie selections. He shot a career-best 56.4% from the field this season, averaging 16.3 points per game and 6.6 rebounds and narrowly missing out on his first All-Star berth.
It is a far cry from his days in Orlando, when he carried the weight of the world. Picture the Epcot Center on his shoulders. He was asked to do everything for the Magic and to be everything.
The No. 4 pick in the 2014 NBA Draft after one terrific season in Tucson, by 2017 Gordon was the face of the franchise. That year, he averaged a career-high 17.6 points per game but shot a career-low 43.4% from the field, and he was asked to guard the opposing team’s best player every night, leaving him, in his own words, “exhausted.”
On a roster bereft of talent, he was thrown into a position for which he was not a fit and with which he was never happy.
Sitting in front of his locker in those days, the stress looked like it was coming out of every pore, even if he was getting rich in the meantime.
What he learned was that shot attempts and stacks of cash and an ever-growing spotlight didn’t matter.
Fit mattered. Chemistry mattered. Winning mattered.
“I could give a s*** about numbers,” he said. “I care about one thing, and that’s winning. If you win, everybody gets love. I could give a s*** if I score 30, 40, 50, 60 or none, as long as our team wins.”
Denver Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon, left, drives the lane as Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker defends in the first half of Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals Tuesday, May 9, 2023, in Denver.
Man in the middle
There’s fit and then there is chemistry, and those two are like identical twins. They’re often confused for each other.
Fit is about style, chemistry is about camaraderie. Fit is how Gordon complements Jokic; chemistry is how Gordon compliments Jokic.
It’s one thing for Gordon to mesh with Murray and Jokic — two phenomenal passers — and to provide the correct attributes around Murray’s natural scoring ability and Jokic’s unsurpassed all-around game. It’s another thing to vibe on the floor and off, to carry just the right kind of swagger into the locker room, to talk softly and carry a big stick.
“You can like each other but not play well together,” said Zeke Nnaji, Denver’s third-year forward and a fellow Wildcat alum. “That’s the thing — we like each other, and we play well together. We have each piece we need.”
Here’s a crazy statistic: Gordon is just 27, yet he’s about to put the finishing touches on his ninth NBA season. He’ll have just turned 28 when he starts his second decade in the league, a wily old veteran still entering his athletic prime.
In a locker room that features five guys 24 years old or younger and four players 33 and older, Gordon is the man in the middle, arguably the social nucleus of the team, bonding with Jeff Green and DeAndre Jordan about bond portfolios and gelling with Peyton Watson and Nnaji about fashion.
“He’s one of our most vocal leaders, always organizing team events for us, taking players under his wing, teaching them little things here and there,” Nnaji said. “Having a guy like him is huge, and it’s a testament to how much he’s matured and how much he’s learned over the years.”
Phoenix Suns forward Kevin Durant, right, shoots over Denver Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon during the first half of Game 4 of the Western Conference semifinals Sunday, May 7, 2023, in Phoenix.
Ego checked
Two nights before helping complete a WCF sweep of the Lakers with a 22-point, six-rebound, five-assist Game 4 effort, Gordon does not fill the stat sheet. Far from it. On this Saturday night, he’ll have just seven points, four assists and three rebounds. But he’ll impact the game in so many other ways.
He spends most of the night guarding LeBron and Anthony Davis, two of the league’s best players. He sets hard screens and drops a well-timed shoulder or two. He hits a wide-open deep 2 to make the score 22-10, then gets a dime from Jokic on the ensuing possession and finishes with a layup.
Gordon is not perfect, of course — he gets caught sleeping when LeBron and AD connect on an alley-oop right over the top of him — but he’s always active. In the third quarter, he has a particularly impressive sequence, snagging an offensive rebound that leads to an MPJ 3-pointer; then, two Lakers possessions later, he flatly rejects a Rui Hachimura layup attempt.
They weren’t the plays of the game — certainly not like the BBOALJPSABAWOAT of two nights later — but they caught Malone’s attention.
“If you want to talk about one guy that really embodies a huge part of our culture about being selfless, Aaron Gordon is a tremendous poster child for that. He has checked his ego at the door,” Malone said. “He knew coming into this year with Jamal and Michael back that his role would be different, and he never fought that. Rather, he embraced it. He said, ‘OK, I want to win a championship, I want to help everybody in this locker room win a championship, and for me and us to do that, I have to be the best version of myself within this role — defending, rebounding, offensive rebounds, making plays for other people.’ His impact throughout the Minnesota, Phoenix and now Lakers series is tangible.
“We would not be in this position if it wasn’t for Aaron Gordon’s play, his attitude and just how unselfish he is.”
LeBron James heaped praise on Nikola Jokic following the Denver Nuggets’ series sweep over the LA Lakers.
