Daily Times

There´s no NBA player who is a bigger fan of harness racing than Denver´s Nikola Jokic. He owns horses, goes to tracks whenever he can and even accepted one of his MVP awards while riding around at his farm in Serbia. He knows the stretch run often decides races. And the same holds true in the NBA, which is entering its stretch run.

The All-Star break is over, games resume on Thursday and the defending champion Nuggets – along with a slew of other contenders – are hoping that this is the time when they can start hitting their best stride. Denver is coming out of the break in fourth place in the Western Conference, three games back of No. 1 Minnesota.

“We don´t try to listen to what people say,” Jokic said. “We know what we are capable of. And it´s working for us. So, I don´t know what people are saying, that we are not good. I don´t say that we are the best, but we are not bad.”

They were the best last season. This season, the best won´t be crowned until June, of course. The next couple of months are all about jostling for playoff position – or in some cases, fighting for playoff spots.

It´s not the second half – what people commonly call the period after the All-Star break – but rather the final third of the season. The league is exactly two-thirds of the way through the season, 820 games down, 410 games to go. It’s the time of year when playbooks tend to get tweaked a little and things get a little more serious.

Paul George of the Los Angeles Clippers knows the playoff push is underway. But as a veteran, he also knows that the most important game is always the next one.

“Can’t look too far ahead,” George said. “Take it one game at a time. Because that´s what you tend to do, second half of the season, start to look ahead and look forward to playoffs and just trying to get to the playoffs. But we just got to take it one game at a time.”

Boston has the NBA´s best record and sits high atop the Eastern Conference, Minnesota and Oklahoma City – a pair of surprises – are first and second, respectively, in the West and some teams with championship pedigrees like Golden State and the Los Angeles Lakers are hoping their pre-All-Star momentum carries over now.