When Peyton Watson said he always had Nikola Jokic’s back, we didn’t think he meant as a landing pad.
“I knew it was Joker, because he’s the only one who was gonna be able to hold me up there,” the Nuggets wing explained late Thursday night when asked about his viral block late in Denver’s wild, wooly 115-109 victory over ESPN’s east-coast darlings, the Boston Celtics.
“And thank God, because he saved us both. I was just kind of like, ‘I hope I didn’t hurt him.’ But I’m glad that I was able to make the play (and) that we both came out of it alive.”
Want to see how a man-crush goes from a crawl to a sprint in about 1.3 seconds? Find the clip from 5:55 left in C’s-N’s. Watch Watson fly in from just east of Abilene, hop over top of the Joker in the paint to swat away Jaylen Brown’s layup. Then catch his belly-flop onto the presumptive MVP’s neck, using the Joker’s shoulders as a buffer before he rolls onto the parquet floor.
Here’s the TikTok challenge for you hipsters: Share Watson’s block with your friends. See which ones can refrain the longest from either gasping at the sheer audacity of the kid — or from laughing out loud at a 21-year-old who wants to so win so badly that he simultaneously ignores his safety, Sir Isaac Newton and the best hoopster on the planet.
“It’s like poison,” Jokic would say of Watson, his pitchman partner for Hotels.com. “He poisons you with his energy.”
Boston wanted no dang part of that venom, never mind the smoke. The 6-foot-8 Watson finished with 11 points — his first double-digit scoring night since Feb. 22 — as the icing on a cake of four rebounds, two blocks, a steal and a 3-point make over 17 daredevil minutes off the bench.
“I was surprised to see that much green in here tonight,” Watson said of the Chowdahs. Then he grinned. “But I hope they beat the traffic.”
In a see-saw, chippy, nip-and-tuck game with two NBA Finals contenders scrapping in front of a gloriously amped, gloriously packed — albeit with too much emerald for Michael Malone’s liking — Ball Arena, Watson turned one of his best Bruce Brown impersonations yet. That’s a compliment, dropped with a chef’s kiss from 5,280 feet.
And the timing couldn’t have been better. The Nuggets have been conducting a season-long audition to nail down a tag-team partner for Christian Braun (who added a quietly pesky, and familiar, seven points, six boards and four fouls) in the “Postseason Agitator” club.
Nuggets-Celtics, with Brown (41 points) and Kristaps Porzingis (24 points) trading hot streaks on one side while Jokic (32 points, 12 rebounds, 11 dimes) and Aaron Gordon (16 points, nine boards, a gazillion wicked dunks) did the same on the other, teased the kind of rematch that should have those pesky network bean-counters salivating in May. If the basketball gods are just, they’ll giveth in a few months what Jimmy Butler and Caleb Martin tooketh away during last spring’s Eastern Conference Finals.
And if they’re kind, they’ll give us Thursday’s Watson. After waiting to flip the switch earlier in the week against Phoenix, the Nuggets (43-20) had their give-a-you-know-what meters cranked to 11 from the jump with Boston, even as the Celtics (48-14) slapped, elbowed and hacked away in the the Restricted Area like it was a UFC octagon. Malone squeezed the kind of team-first, basketballs-to-the-wall, take-no-prisoners endeavor that makes Lakers and Warriors fans cringe — That used ta be us! — as they doomscroll.
Elite teams shave off their rough edges when the stakes ramp up, on the stages where the lights burn hottest. Buoyed by P-Wat, the Nuggs’ bench, its Achilles heel, routed Boston’s by a margin of 28-10.
“I mean, I was proud of him, because in the first half, he had zero rebounds, and we were getting hurt on the glass,” Malone said of Watson, who’ll look to bring that same juice against Utah (28-35) on Saturday evening.
“So (in the) second half, he gets four defensive rebounds, had some tremendous defensive possessions, blocks at the rim. When Peyton’s at his best, he’s using his size, length and athleticism to be a disruptor defensively.”
When he’s hitting jumpers, whether fired from mid-range or beyond the arc, Watson’s hell on wheels. A matchup nightmare.
After an 0-for-5 evening from the arc against the Suns, the former UCLA star knocked down a 25-footer off a feed from Jokic with about a minute left in the third quarter that pushed Denver’s lead to 87-78.
“I like to think that nothing’s out of reach,” said Watson, who puts up 700 shots a day, a grinder to the last. “I shoot for the stars. Always been a big dreamer.”
A tailwind of pixie dust is blowing at the kid’s back again, rising to meet the moment. Poison never tasted so sweet.