2022/3 season thread

The US media going way overboard on Jokic’s retaliation foul from a dirty play from cheap shot artist Markieff Morris last night. Laughable.

Ffs I’m watching more of this crap now, people actually defending Morris, and completely downplaying what he did - incl. Spoelstra. As I said above, it was LeBron he hit these same “pundits” would be talking a completely different story if Morris hit LeBron or several other players. I also have to wonder how much race is playing a part in this.

At least Shaq and Barkley are talking some logic, backing Jokic

It's not just Jokic, there's still this anti-European bias and "all Europeans are soft" narrative in some quarters. What I'm find more disturbing in recent years - and perhaps this is reflective of how more divisive American society in general has become is there does seem to be some sort of anti-white undercurrent coming from some quarters, incl. some players too I might add. And we saw this in some of the commentary around this.

This is not an anti-LeBron post regards this example, but if we're honest we all know if a hardman/enforcer hit LeBron as a reigning MVP in the air in the chest and knee like Morris did Jokic, these same pundits would be screaming from high-heaven to ban him for the season. When Jokic - rightfully IMO - retaliates he's now the villain - WTF? Spoelstra's comments too were laughable in that "Morris make a take foul". That's NOT a take foul, not by any means.

Jokic had to hit back there. If he doesn't he becomes a target for cheap shots for the rest of the year and the word becomes he's soft and you can get him off his game through cheap shots. Also, as anyone who has played the game knows Morris knew exactly what he was doing there. He made a bitch ass move to try and show how tough he was. Well it backfired spectacularly and he has no-one to blame but himself. But this is part of the narrative Miami are trying to create for themselves this year that they're the hardest/toughest team in the league. Bottom line is that Jokic play doesn't happen if Morris behaves.

Totally agree on your point re. Jokic is not "cool" enough for some of these people to be MVP. They don't really want an unathletic (relatively) fundamentally sound team-player with zero interest in publicity or social media being MVP. They want a high flying dunking ad-making insta-hun 2K cool dude.

I'm glad to see there's more people now defending Jokic and criticizing Morris, but let's just say the first wave - esp. in some quarters - was all very much framed in a disturbing way.