Shawn Marion Compares Nikola Jokic To Dirk Nowitzki 👀

All right, Sean Marin was a terrific NBA player, had some great years with the Suns, played for the Miami Heat, won a championship with the Dallas Mavericks in 2011 when they beat Miami. I got to spend some time with him in Salt Lake City. He still looks like he can play, and he joins us now. Sean, it's Frank Isola, Brian Scalabrine. How are you doing this morning? Good morning, guys. How y'all doing, man? Good. Really good. So, Sean, you think about all the NBA games that have been played, regular season, playoffs, finals. No teammates had ever had, both had a 30-point triple-double, and it happened last night. How about the performance last night of Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray, and that win? Man, that's a special duo, man. Take your hats off to them. That's a special duo. That was an amazing game to watch. I missed the first quarter because I was at my son's baseball game, but I was able to catch the second quarter. They're special. Let me ask you, you were with the Dallas Mavericks team where Dirk Nowitzki, an international player, was playing absolutely out of his mind. One of the best finals performance I've ever seen. Now, against the Heat, there's some similarities here, and then Jokic is doing the same thing. What was that like with Dirk back in the day, and do you see some similarities between the two? You know what? Dirk is a different kind of player. Joker, he has a full arsenal in offense, you know what I'm saying, which a lot of people don't have, you know what I'm saying, in the league, though. There's very few guys that have a full package of scoring the way he does, and that's a runner, that's a post game, regular post game with a hook shot, that's a mid-range game, and then that's a three-point game. You can't name five guys in the NBA that can do that, and that's what I'm saying. Dirk is a special dynamic. Dirk is the epitome of a perfect, you say, jump shot, man, and when I tell you he was knocking that ---- down anywhere he was, and that's his game. Dirk ain't the type of guy to put the ball on the floor and doing all that other stuff. He ain't doing none of that, you know what I'm saying, but he's going to knock that jumper down, and that's what, man, it was just, you had to sit back in awe and just appreciate how deadly he was at making that 15th and 17th putt and then making the threes, you know, and it's actually great and beautiful to watch. Talk with Sean Marin, former NBA player. So you have Jokic from Europe, you have Jamal Murray from Canada. You played with a legendary European player, Dirk. You played with a legendary Canadian player in Steve Nash. You think the fans, the American fans, the American players, American media, do you think people are a little bit more accepting of them? It seemed to be like everyone would try to find ways to knock them. It still seems like some people try to find a way to knock Nikola Jokic, but do you think everyone is a little bit more accepting of the international players? I mean, basketball players are basketball players. Where you're from doesn't even matter, man. Basketball is universal, man. I'm not getting to decide what country somebody came from or not. Our last, what, five MVPs have not been from this country, so what are you talking about? That's a relevant statement. What the statement right now is Denver has a very dynamic team and they have a full roster of guys that complement each other very well, you know what I'm saying? And Miami Heat is playing great basketball this year as well. I mean, congratulations to them for making it to the finals. Being an AC, getting to the finals, man, you know, I played in Miami. I love the culture there and Pat Rowley and Spolen, they're doing the thing there. And, you know, they got high at the right time for 3.1. That's one of the things that people don't really emphasize and talk about. Hot teams sometimes can win championships. You know, sometimes it's not always the best team that wins championships. Sometimes a hot team can win a championship. Right now, a hot team, Miami is a hot team that made it to the finals right now. And they've been playing very well because they've been shooting the ---- out that three ball. But Denver is one of the teams that I've watched throughout this postseason that can win any kind of way. And that's very rare. And what that means is that they don't have to make threes to beat you. So, I mean, I've watched them play the beat up half court game. I've watched them play the transition game. I've played all matches of the game. And they've shown you that they have a whole complete team. And that's why they're in the finals as well. Sean, walk me through when you're in the NBA finals. And like last night, Christian Brown was out in transition getting easy baskets, cutting to the rim. As a player, did you just go into a game and saying, okay, like these are some of the ways that I could be effective? Does the games, every game, does it take a life of its own and figuring out different ways to be effective? I mean, you can go through from spot of shooting at times you've made threes to running out in transition to hitting the offensive glass. How do you pick your spots and with a magnitude like this in the NBA finals? Well, energy solved it all too. A lot of times a lot of guys don't go out there. Some guys are playing with more energy than other guys. Who wants it more? It gets to the point right now, especially in the seven game series, teams can make adjustments for the first three to three to four games or whatever, or even five games. You can even say you can make adjustments to this game. But if you go to a seven game, that means adjustments are pretty much out the door now. So who wants it more? But some teams don't have the depth or have the ability to make adjustments based off their personnel they have on the teams. You can try to jump it up as much as possible. You can change coverages. But when you've got a complete team and guys are just facilitating the ball the way they want to, it's almost impossible to do anything with it when you've got nobody to match up with you one-on-one. Like a lot of times, it's not as hard as everybody making scenes. I know the narrative for the media is to create any kind of story behind why a team did this, why a team didn't do that, and what somebody's doing. No, no. I'm a firm believer you don't make adjustments in post-season until somebody stops you from doing what you were doing. And quote-unquote, I don't think Denver really had to do anything in game two. They did though. They changed up. They didn't come out the same way and do exactly the same thing they did in game one. And you could say that's a token to Miami and how they started the game so aggressively and stuff. But I'm like, why change up? If you won playing a certain way the first game, why not come back and do the game the same time the second game? That's the thing about the games and stuff. I'm looking at stuff. I'm like, why is he not doing this? So is there a reason for this guy not being the same aggressiveness as he was the first game? Or because they switched lineups up? Why is that? I'm still doing the same thing. Until you stop me from doing something, I'm not adjusting my game for nobody. Yeah. Don't you think they need more out of Michael Porter Jr.? He did play well in game one and they won. I thought he had a good game in terms of hustling, getting rebounds, diving on the floor for loose balls. But he's still struggling to score. Do you think in order for them to win, he's going to have to have a good game here somewhere? Yeah. This is why I say starting five only is going to take you so far. Your bench has to play a significant part in you winning the championship. And you saw what Chris Braun did. The first question you asked was what Chris Braun was doing out there. And he was in transition. He was attacking the basket. He was doing all this stuff. And he was doing stuff Michael Porter was doing. Michael Porter Jr. right now is he actually played. I thought he played. Okay. I thought he played better defense last night than he did in game two. And he kept pursuing versus just hanging on screens and just giving up on screens in game two. Last night, he kept following and he was able to get some late contests and stuff. But he's selling it for his three-point shot. So how are you supposed to catch rhythm if you sell them for step back three-point shots, man? That's hard. Chris Braun coming in and taking, he's going straight at the basket. He's pump faking and he's taking what they give him. And he's being aggressive at doing it. And that's why he was on the floor more. So like, you know, it's no knock. It is what it is. That's how it plays out. But like, you know, you would think that maybe with Chris Braun doing what he wants, Michael Porter would take a note. You know what? I got to be more aggressive. And if not, he ain't going to get those minutes. That's when coaches got to make a decision on who's being the more aggressive and who's out there giving you the valuable minutes on the floor. Talk me through what you think Spolstra goes with or what the shoot around today is going to be like or what it's going to be like pregame tomorrow. Like how's he going to get this Miami Heat team to bounce back? Spol is one of the best to ever do it. And he's a motivator. Spol is probably going to go in and tell these guys, look, hey, got to say, we got it in our hands last night. Hey, shake it off. And we got to go back out here and get this up. You know what I'm saying? Our game plan, some stuff that we was doing, our zone is being is being a pretty, pretty effective at times when we needed to be effective. But we got to we got to be more aggressive and keep forcing these guys to try and turn the ball over. And we just got to react faster. You know what I'm saying? And we got we got to hit our shots. The opportunities we get, that's what keeps us in the game. We hit our shots that we always give us gives ourselves a chance because when you're making shots, your defensive gets more and more anxious. And now now now you're you're you're you're more you're more excited. And you get a little more pepper yourself, you know? Yeah. Sean, for you guys in 2011, the organization never won a championship before. Most of the guys on your team, I think just about every player had never won a title before. When you were getting close, and especially if you won that third game and now you need one more. Did the mood change at all? Did you feel more pressure? What do you remember from that when you guys were, you know, needed one more win to win a championship? Oh, we smelt it, man. You know, we knew what we were capable of doing. We just went out there and did it. You know, I think, you know, you know, during that time, you know, everybody media always picks favorites to win championships, you know, and you know, a lot of times media gets it wrong. You know what I'm saying? You always got favorite going into it. You know, we got favorite going into the series. We think this is going this is what's going to happen. I mean, they just y'all just y'all y'all there to make guests and speculations and ----. You know, people who know basketball know what their team's capable of doing know that it's or it goes around the locker rooms and with a team that that goes they can do something special that y'all can't see. Y'all can't y'all can't hear it. Y'all can't tell. We know it as players, you know what I'm saying? And we can't we can't control the narratives that y'all create on national on national on national broadcast, but we can go control what we do on that floor. And with that being said, we bought we knew what we was capable of doing. We knew we was the best team going in that series. Any series we played in, we knew we had to go out and play our game. And we showed it. And that shows you exactly what I mean by, you know, saying controlling our narrative and controlling the destination. You go look at the lineups, look at the depth we have on our team. You can't tell me ain't ain't no the only other deep, the deepest, the only deepest team in that postseason that year besides us was but that was capable of doing what we was doing was was deep enough was was Portland. And we beat them first round. You know what I'm saying? They, you know, they won six games. You can't go roster for roster and tell me that, you know, you will take somebody else's roster over ours, just because they had three current All-Stars on Miami. That's why everybody picked them to be favorite. Current, whether you're a current All-Star or not, that doesn't that doesn't matter. No, you got All-Star. This is this is why I'm talking about this game and stuff. I'm talking about All-Star pedigree. You got All-Star pedigree and guys who've been All-Stars and know what it feels like to be also they can get caught on any time. And when you got those guys in the finals with you. Oh, hey, they can have it. They can go up and have a good game. Any time in this series, they can go get you 25 to 30 points in one of the games. It ain't saying just because you're not a current All-Star, you can't go out there and get you to have no big games. And that's the narrative that everybody be bought into. Look at look at I looked at look at all the teams and situations that are the guys who's won championships, man, that they have been having that All-Star pedigree in somebody enables you to know that they're going to be there and be when you got calling them call it get their number call. They gonna be consistent all the time when you when you when you want to call a number and they able to elevate. And that's a big difference. You're still an owner, right? Don't you own? Is it a couple of teams? I know you had the team in three teams now pickleball, DC pickleball team, club, the cocks of soccer ball team and New Zealand breakers basketball. Look at you. Nice. Good to see you invest your money the right way. Hey, Sean, we appreciate the time. Enjoy the rest of the finals. Okay. No, you too. You too. Well, I wish I wish both teams the best of luck. You know, you kind of want to wish it goes to seven games because I just want I don't want basketball to get up on TV just yet. But I don't know how long it's gonna go. Thanks. Thanks a lot, Sean. We'll see you.