Lu Dort Could Have Ended Nikola Jokic's Season

I want to talk about one of the big stories of this past weekend, which is the flagrant foul seen around the world.

And that was Lou Dort, the Oklahoma City guard who gave a cheap shot.

I'm just gonna say it gave a cheap shot to Nikole Jokic in the Thunder game against the, against, uh, Denver.

Uh, this was viral across the internet.

Uh, Dort, after a made bucket, stopped, stuck his leg out, tripped Jokic, sent Jokic down.

Jokic got up, went understandably ballistic, came after Dort, Jalen Williams, the one with the Y.

He stepped in and, um, and, and had a little bit of an altercation with Jokic.

Jokic's face fired up.

And I gotta tell you, I, I understand.

Like, it was just like 3 or 4 games ago where Vince Williams got taken out by Tar Eason on what was kind of like a basic looking, like cheap shot type of play.

Like Tar Eason was coming running down the floor.

He had no reason to bump off Vince Williams.

He did.

Vince Williams tore his ACL.

He's now out for probably a calendar year, and it'll be a long time before he's all the way back from that.

You look at Jokic, a 7-foot, whatever, 250, 60 pound, whatever.

Guy coming down the floor, you stick your butt out, you stick your leg out, you send him, his, he went down awkwardly there.

He goes down a different way.

All of a sudden, he who has had a knee problem very recently has to deal with an extended absence and, and maybe the end of this season.

Um, let's start here.

What did you make of that play?

You're nodding with me, so I sense you agree that it was a cheap shot.

What did you think of how it played out?

There's no basketball play there.

That's the thing.

So Lou Dort has had this reputation for a while now.

The John Morant thing, I think, was the biggest one, but there's been other sort of, I was gonna say there's a, there's a whole list of guys who've gotten injured being defended by him.

There's a list of, of plays that people can point out and say this is dirty, that is dirty.

There are, there has been sort of from the Thunder like, hey, you gotta play hard, and he was trying to just defend him and all of that.

This was not a basketball play.

You said cheap shot, like, oh man, I gotta say it.

It's a cheap shot.

There is no other thing to say.

It was a dirty play.

And I think that not only do the Nuggets have the right to be upset, and not only do I just frankly not understand some of the things the Thunder have said, have said since, but I think this is going to be sort of the nail in the coffin on Dort's reputation, because, and not in terms of, you know, I think people still think, I mean, he's a lovely human being, and I think people will still think he's a great player, you know, he's a really good and, and effective player.

But in terms of His reputation of does he throw dirty plays in there.

I don't think there's any way for people to say no anymore because it wasn't a basketball play and there's people in Denver I've talked to who don't just think, oh yeah, and he's coming off a knee injury.

They thought he was going for the leg, the injured leg, and to cause him to re-injure it.

And as you point out, I mean, this is the kind of thing that that doesn't just affect one player , it affects an entire team.

And we know that the Nuggets and Thunder started the year as people being like, these are the two, if they meet in the Western Conference Finals, it's going to be a huge deal.

I mean, you could make, if you wanted to be grandiose about it, you could make the case that Lou Dort is trying to prevent that playoff matchup from even happening.

So I don't think he's thinking about all that when he's going on the court, but like, I, I don't see any excuse for it.

I don't understand at all why.

I mean, I know if.

A coach, you got to like back your player, but the language, the, the strength of the language, that wasn't Mark Dagon's finest moment that he used is, is very disappointing to me because I think he is a very good astute coach.

There is no room for that in this game, and we are dealing with so many big stars who have gotten hurt, and, and it's a, it's an assault, affront to the fans too.

I'll tell you what, Dort's lucky that.

Jokic didn't take it a step further.

If you remember when Mark Keith Morris leveled Jokic and gave him a cheap shot, Jokic came back and put Mark Keith Morris out for like the season with, uh, uh, whiplash, I think was the official, um, diagnosis there.

I mean, it was just a, a shot to him like, and Dort looked like he wanted none of that.

Like when Mars, when, uh, Jokic came walking over, Dort wanted.

Nothing to do with that.

Look, Dort is a great defensive player.

He is a physical defensive player, but as you said, this is not the 1st time something like this has happened.

This is not the 5th time, not the 10th time.

You go down the list.

I was making a list and going through some of the highlights.

He's had some issues with Kevin Durant in the past.

He had an issue recently with Victor Wambayama, leveled Wimbanyama, and again, seemed to be going.

For the legs in a way that was like very disturbing, it felt like very much like trying to take him out and try and cause a knee injury.

It looked like it.

I'm not saying it was, but that is what it looked like.

I mean, it wasn't a basketball play when he went at Wimbayama.

John Morant, that play that knocked him out.

Another one, I know that Luka Dancic, people close to Dancic have told me he hates playing against Lou Dort.

Not because he's afraid of the defense, because Luca has had some great moments against Lou Dort and that defense, but he's nervous about getting hurt.

He's nervous about getting undercut, wound up with an ankle sprain.

Like the other thing Dort does, and we've seen it, he does the move where he steps under a guy at times, which is now a flagrant foul in the NBA.

He'll stick his legs out on his own three-point shot.

Like the history, it is what it is.

And look, You're not, Dagon's not gonna go up there and say, yeah, you know, we gotta talk to him.

It's, it's not a thing.

He's just not gonna do that.

But to say what he said, which was, every time somebody is tripped, we expect it to be a flagrant too, is nonsense.

That is nonsense.

This was, and you framed it right, this was the, the nail in the coffin of Lou Dort is considered a dirty player by the referees.

Like he is going to get.

The same kind of reputational treatment that someone like Draymond Green has gotten.

Uh, Dennis Rodman, if you want to go even further back.

Just these guys that have been doing this over and over and over again.

I was texting with some league people because I was asking like, do you think he's getting suspended for it?

Like, no, it, it just hasn't risen to that level yet.

But this is, we see this.

Like we're aware of, and our referees are aware that this stuff is going on.

I just like watching Dork, like how he responded to it.

Like he thought, he was like, that wasn't a foul.

Like , he was acting like he was there to take a charge.

From Jokic, who moves at the speed of like a busted pickup, backward.

Yes, like I mean, it, it didn't, none of it made sense.

Like he just, uh, look, this should be a wake-up call for Dort and the Thunder because they need him to succeed in the playoffs.

I love Cason Wallace.

Alex Caruso's obviously invaluable, but Lou Dort defensively is the head of the snake with that, uh, that team.

He's got to be out there on the floor for his allotted minutes or they're gonna be in some trouble there.

And the way the league is looking at him, you do something like this in the playoffs, that flagrant 2 is gonna come faster than a flagrant 1.

You can mark my words on that one.

Yeah, and, and look, I, he's an undrafted guy.

He's had to scrap for everything.

I get a lot of it.

He is, you know, obviously a defensive specialist and, and so in his mind, it's, you know, take the ball, take the hit, take the whatever, but you can't do this, first of all.

And I also Wonder if this is a little bit growing out of the mentality of the Thunder of you can't call them all, right?

I mean, the Thunder in general, and this is hardly the first team we've seen do this, have the Detroit right, you can't call them all, so they're constantly fouling people because that is a tactic in the NBA.

I, I don't.

Even think that's dirty.

That is just what people do is it's the idea of like, well, if we're fouling up and down on every play, you can't call them all, so we're going to get away with more defensively.

And if that's the ethos on the team, and you're an undrafted scrappy guy, I can see where some of this, like the, the moral line gets a little faded, but.

But he's not an undrafted scrappy guy anymore.

He's like an all defensive level guy.

He's got a nice contract and he's gonna get another big one.

Like, like making plays that have a high likelihood of injuring someone as opposed to basketball plays.

That's, I don't, I mean, I think that is extremely egregious, don't you?

Like you're talking about messing with someone's like life, career, the whole team, fans of that city.

Like I just, you're talking about setting a guy like, and again I bring back the Easton play because that was a dirty play, man.

Like that there was no need to take that shot on Vince Williams.

Now Vince Williams, who's a young guy.

Not making a ton of money.

He's faced with a surgery.

He's faced with a long rehab.

He's faced with not knowing what kind of player he's going to be when he's going to get back.

Like Jokic is fine financially.

Jokic is all that, but like you take him out and he twists that knee the wrong way.

The Nuggets are done for this year.

They're probably done for next year because the whole thing, like that, this has got to go through your mind in situations like that.

And again, I hope this is now.

Look, Dort has to keep playing physically.

He's not the most fleet of foot guy.

Like he is not defensively great that way.

He's defensively great because he's a dog, because he's in your grill and he's, he's bodying up with you, but he's got to know where the line is.

He's got to, and this was the most glaring statement the NBA has made that we're aware.

We know what this guy is doing, so we're going to penalize, penalize with a flagrant two.

Yeah, I just, I, I.

Again , off the court, he's a lovely guy.

So I, I've been a friend of the podcast, sat down here on the show before.

I, I just, I don't think that he is a person who walks around in his day to day life being like, I want to injure someone and cause them a year of problems, but on the court, you cannot behave like that.

You cannot.

It is just to me it's more egregious than a lot of other things.

He wasn't, I remember him telling me when he was on the show a couple of years ago that he wasn't a defensive specialist in college.

Like that.

He was a good defender, but it wasn't like what he was necessarily known for.

He evolved into this because he came in undrafted, got the call from Sam Preston on draft night, came in, had to play for the Oklahoma City G-League team, had to develop a skill.

And defense, rugged physical defense is a skill, but he's got to know where that line is and Oklahoma City's season may depend on it.

I mean, taking, and again, I want to divorce this conversation now from Lou Dort and just say that if you are a player out there who is regularly taking cheap shots and is constantly accused of this, I think that is worse than point shaving.

Like I think it is worse than the like, oh my God, this minor player, you know, it's usually who are we talking about in the current FBI investigation, so and so who's a 2nd year player, I mean a second team player, you know, he, he acts out with a knee injury or leg injury and he has only 10 points instead of the 16 he was supposed to the over-under was on.

That does not impact the game of basketball nearly as much as taking out a major star with a cheap shot, and I just think that this should be given, and again, I'm divorcing this from Lou Dort specifically, but in general, I wish the NBA was harder on this.

I think that in this specific case, it should be a suspension, and I wish that it was always a suspension because I , I just think it's a much bigger deal to the overall health of the game if guys, and it's also just a terrible thing to do to someone else.

It's terrible.

Yeah, I can't disagree.