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How Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic found his voice and conquered final frontier of his basketball maturation

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:30:48 GMT

The Nuggets had just shredded the Lakers’ vaunted defense, and Nikola Jokic’s basketball soul was satisfied. But in trying to assign a word to Denver’s surgical 30-assist, five-turnover showing in Game 3 against Los Angeles in the Western Conference Finals, Jokic stumbled into a rare misstep.“Not poison,” he said before a reporter coaxed an apt description out of him.“Contagious,” said Jokic, settling on a plausible through line for someone speaking a second language.“I love it. I think that’s the best brand of basketball.”Now eight years into his Hall-of-Fame-bound career, Jokic is more comfortable speaking than he’s ever been. With his singular intuition and preternatural court vision already established, the final frontier of Jokic’s basketball maturation was always his voice.With it, he could share his wisdom and wield even more influence over the game than he already did. Late in Game 3, Jokic tapped into it.That’s when Jokic took over the timeout huddles and explicitly c...

Nuggets Journal: In reaching NBA Finals, Canada’s Jamal Murray a “pioneer” in more ways than one

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:30:48 GMT

The first question Jamal Murray fielded on the eve of Game 1 of the NBA Finals elicited a transcontinental fist pump.Frankly, it was more a statement than a question. Murray was told of a watch party in his hometown of Kitchener, Ontario. Even just the mention of his hometown brought immense joy to the Canadian’s face.“I’ve had a lot of friends text me about the watch parties, gathering around,” Murray said. “The support has been crazy back home. That means a lot, especially from a small town like Kitchener. … Be back there in the summer, see my friends and family. But, yeah, no one from Kitchener has made (it) this far, so it’s nice to be a pioneer in that sense.”One could call Murray a pioneer simply by choosing basketball over hockey, high tops over skates.To hear Murray explain it, there was never really a conflict.“I always loved basketball,” he said. “Couldn’t afford the equipment for hockey at the time. Basketball was the easiest thing to give me. Yeah, I ju...

How journaling helped Nuggets’ Michael Porter Jr. handle anxiety surrounding injury, contract

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:30:48 GMT

The source of Michael Porter Jr.’s anxiety and anguish was both inhibiting him and supporting him, but he only considered it one of those ways.A brace he wears on his left leg is the byproduct of the three back surgeries that have hindered various junctures of his career. Porter hated it. Then he learned to live with it by writing about it.“I used to be very upset and mad that I didn’t feel like I was playing out there the way I wanted to play. I always looked at that brace as a downfall,” the Nuggets sharpshooter told The Post. “Journaling made me thankful for it.”As MPJ prepares to make his NBA Finals debut Thursday as a starter for the best team in the West, he’s reflected on the methods that galvanized his return from a chronic injury — first and foremost, a practice he calls “gratitude journaling.” Throughout the season, his father has noticed “a measure of peace” in Porter that was unfamiliar in recent years. The playoffs are proof. Porter enters the Finals vs. the Miami Heat ...

Deadly crash prompts closure on SB 710 Freeway through South Gate

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:30:48 GMT

A violent crash left one person dead and prompted the closure of the southbound 710 Freeway through South Gate Thursday morning. The crash occurred around 1:10 a.m. near Imperial Highway and initially involved two vehicles, a California Highway Patrol officer at the scene confirmed. Both vehicles came to a stop against the center divider and showed significant damage.An unidentified woman was found unconscious and not breathing when officers arrived at the scene, the officer said. Investigators are trying to determine if the woman had been ejected from her vehicle or got out before being struck by another car.She was pronounced dead at the scene.The driver of the other vehicle involved in the initial crash was not injured and was being questioned by investigators. At least two other cars that became involved in the incident after the initial crash were part of the investigation. The crash caused an hourslong closure on the southbound side of the freeway. It was unclear when the lane...

Facebook owner Meta threatens to pull news content in California if bill to pay publishers passes

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:30:48 GMT

By Samantha Delouya | CNNMeta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, threatened to remove news from its social media sites in California if the state passes a bill requiring big tech companies to pay news outlets for their content.In a statement posted on Twitter, Andy Stone, Meta’s communications director, called California’s Journalism Preservation Act “a slush fund that primarily benefits big, out-of-state media companies under the guise of aiding California publishers.”“The bill fails to recognize that publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platform themselves and that substantial consolidation in California’s local news industry came over 15 years ago, well before Facebook was widely used,” Stone said.The bill, sponsored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, requires digital companies such as Google and Facebook to pay local news publishers a “journalism usage fee” whenever their news content is used or posted on those platforms. The bill also requires...

Krugman: How wind power became woke in the eyes of Texas Republicans

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:30:48 GMT

The world is experiencing an energy revolution. Over the past 15 years or so, huge technological progress has, in many cases, made it cheaper to generate electricity from solar and wind power than by burning fossil fuels. The Inflation Reduction Act — which is, despite its name, mainly a climate bill — aims to accelerate the transition to renewables and also to electrify as much of the economy as possible; this effort, if it works quickly enough and is emulated by other countries, could help us avert climate catastrophe.Even before the act started to take effect, however, America was experiencing a renewable energy boom. And the boom has been led by a surprising place: Texas.To be fair, California has more solar power, and a lot of geothermal electricity, too. But Texas dominates in wind power. Texas, whatever its flaws (which are many), is a place where things can get built, and that has included a lot of wind turbines.You might think, then, that Texas politicians would be celebrat...

9-hour police stand off in Monterey County ends with suspect fatally shot

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:30:48 GMT

A person suspected of shooting a Monterey County Sheriff’s deputy has been fatally shot, ending a 9-hour standoff in Salinas.The suspect had exchanged gunfire with law enforcement officers through much of Wednesday afternoon according to a statement from the County of Monterey. Several attempts were made to resolve the standoff peacefully, the statement said,  however, “the suspect continued to fire on law enforcement. Return fire was initiated and at 5:45 p.m., the suspect was fatally injured.”The person, who has not been identified by authorities, is suspected of opening fire on a sheriff’s deputy making a “routine call” Wednesday just before 9 a.m. in the East Market and Sun Street area of Salinas. The wounded deputy was rescued from the scene by fellow deputies and Salinas Police officers and taken to the Natividad Medical Center where surgery was performed. He is expected to survive said Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto.  Nieto would not identify the deputy except to say he i...

Opinion: I’m in my 40s, have never owned a smartphone and don’t want one

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:30:48 GMT

I’ve never had a smartphone or used social media, and I’m in my 40s, so when I see young people like 17-year-old Logan Lane and those in her “Luddite Club” take a stand and pause the technology that’s been in their lives since birth I am in awe.Poverty made me a late adopter. I had no computer throughout college nor any phone — not even a landline — in my early 20s. My boyfriend’s family lived nearby and I could use theirs when I needed one. In 2006, I bought my first cellphone, a prepaid Nokia brick phone, to coordinate my father’s cancer treatment while away from home, and finally committed to a monthly plan 11 years later, in 2017.When people discover I don’t have a smartphone, they expect me to give them a sermon on technology’s ills or they congratulate me for going off the grid. I correct their misconceptions that I avoid technology. With a computer and Wi-Fi, I use the internet for email, news and research; Zoom for remote teaching, meetings and medical appointments; YouTube ...

Alleged neighbor spat in Santa Cruz County leads to attempted murder charges

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:30:48 GMT

SANTA CRUZ — The Pleasure Point man charged with attempting to murder his neighbor during a dispute remained held without bail after a hearing Wednesday morning.A defense attorney for Cody Arnold, 31, withdrew his request for Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Syda Cogliati to set bail after reviewing a pretrial public safety assessment report ordered in the case, he said.Arnold is charged with criminal threats, vandalism and shooting his neighbor in the chest April 7 on the 2800 block of Lakeview Drive.Leading up to Wednesday’s hearing, Assistant District Attorney Emily Wang also opposed having bail set in the case. According to Wang’s filing, Arnold’s neighbor reportedly yelled at Arnold to slow down as he drove quickly through the neighborhood on the evening of April 7. Arnold reportedly had a reputation for playing loud music and driving fast through the area, she wrote.Separately that night, the neighbor called Arnold’s father to complain about Arnold’s driving, as his fath...

Ancient mastodon tooth fossil found on Santa Cruz County beach

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:30:48 GMT

APTOS — Who said the tooth fairy doesn’t deliver? Sometimes it just takes a couple hundred thousand years.The Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History added a breathtaking ancient artifact to its collection this week after an almost 12-inch tooth belonging to a mastodon – a mammal from the last ice age similar in appearance to the woolly mammoth – was discovered washed up on a beach in Rio Del Mar.Museum Visitor Experience Manager Liz Broughton said the prehistoric molar was first discovered, appropriately, near the mouth of Aptos Creek on a misty morning last Friday by Jennifer Schuh, a visiting tourist with ties to the area. Fascinated by the object but not recognizing exactly what it was, Schuh snapped a picture before leaving it where it had come to rest and shared the photo on Facebook.A fossilized mastodon molar found near the mouth of Aptos Creek this week. The tooth is estimated to be less than 1 million years old. (Contributed – Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History) The po...