Mark Jones Goes Viral For Nikola Jokic Hate; Twitter Blames Nuggets Player's Whiteness
ESPN broadcaster Mark Jones doesn't seem to appreciate Nikola Jokic.
Jones' job is to call basketball games as a voice both objective and informed. Yet Mark Jones is not informed. Nor is he objective.
Case in point this past weekend:
Saturday, viral went a tweet from Jones in which he took noticeable offense to a random NBA writer praising Jokic.
The writer posted a benign tweet crediting Jokic for notifying his teammates of a key sideline signal in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. It was a clever nugget from the game.
Though it also was one that infuriated Mark Jones. He responded to the tweet with the crying emoji, called the person "bruh," and used caps to try to discredit Jokic.
According to Jones, notifying teammates of a sideline signal is "not a thing." Well, actually it is a thing. Because in the very same tweet, Jones called it a thing and credited Rajon Rondo for doing the very thing Jones said doesn't exist.
Is your mind in a blender? If not, take a look:
Jones' bizarre rebuttal to an account with 4,000 followers has over 5 million impressions, thousands of retweets, and a consensus in the comment section.
Why would a simple tweet complimenting Jokic hurt Jones so much?
According to Jones' followers, he has a long-standing issue with The Joker and white people:
There are more. You get the point.
There is even a Reddit page dedicated to Jones' tweets about Jokic.
Now, a Twitter consensus doesn't always prove a narrative true. Though in the case of Mark Jones, his history would suggest they are on to something...
We recently documented Jones' behavior. And it's quite telling:
He seems nice.
Jones' criticism of Jokic is quite strange. Consider that frantically commenting on random accounts applauding Jokic has become a common practice for him.
When he's not evading stadium police officers, that is.
Last week, Jones chimed in on a top 20 debate to tell people Jokic falls into a category with Steve Nash, another white player:
" and Steve Nash are the only 2 time MVPs never to win an NBA championship," Jones tweeted.
While factually true, such criticism is dubious.
Michael Jordan and LeBron James, the consensus two greatest players of all time, also won two MVPs before winning a championship.
Jones' cherry-picked stat would have applied to Jordan and LeBron as well had he cherry-picked a specific time in their career, as she does to knock Jokic.
What's more, Jordan and LeBron didn't win their first championships until they were 28 and 27, respectively. Jokic is 28 right now. He's in the Finals. And is favored to win the Finals.
If Jokic never wins a ring, we can revisit Jones' criticism.
Criticism that follows some odd subtweets of Jokic:
Can you imagine Mike Breen tweeting that about a player whose games he calls?
We can't say for certain why an ESPN broadcaster paid to be a neutral voice tweets criticism of only two NBA superstars, Jokic and Luka Doncic...
Did Jokic reject Jones? Was Jokic mean to him? Does Jones not like euro players? Does Jones wish he had a dope nickname like The Joker? Does Jokic not protect Jones from arena police officers?
Again, we will leave that to the Twitter users to crack the code.