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Denver Post beat writer Bennett Durando opens up the Nuggets Mailbag periodically during the season. You can submit a Nuggets- or NBA-related question here. To follow up on your tweet, what are Nikola Jokic’s top five passes? — Alex, Sloans Lake There’s probably a longer project to be done someday ranking Jokic’s greatest dimes when he’s a little closer to the twilight of his career. For now, I think it’s a fun exercise to pull from memory without combing through highlight compilations, because you shouldn’t need a refresher for the best of the best, right? My tweet asserted that Jokic’s lefty, no-look, behind-the-back pass to Peyton Watson in Memphis this week was a top-five pass by the Serbian center since I’ve covered him. It was a completely arbitrary number in the moment, but I think it belongs on the list — again, the time period here being the three full seasons I’ve been on the Nuggets beat. I aimed for a variety of types of passes. Regrettably, I couldn’t single out any one look-away bounce pass in transition, the kind where he “leads the receiver” through traffic like an NFL quarterback would. Also, one honorable mention goes out to his pass in Miami last season, when he caught a long outlet pass on the run and immediately tossed it backward over his head as his momentum carried him out of bounds. He drew two defenders with him, and the pass hit Aaron Gordon in stride for a dunk. 5. No-look skip pass at the Garden: Jokic loves slinging these to the weak-side corner. And Madison Square Garden just makes everything cooler, doesn’t it? The center caught an entry pass at the right elbow from Gordon, who went into a split action with Russell Westbrook. Jokic’s head was fully facing the strong side of the floor, the right side. His eyes were focused on the primary action, which often results in a slip cut to the rim by Gordon. Perhaps knowing this, the Knicks’ back-side defender was creeping in pretty far to cover the paint. And knowing that, Jokic was able to blindly catapult the ball over his right shoulder, across the court, between four defenders, to Christian Braun. The 3-pointer was good. Jan. 29, 2025. 4. Game-icing assist to Watson: It’s not often that Jokic’s cheekiest passes occur with a minute remaining in a game. That adds some allure to his latest work Monday, the aforementioned lefty bounce pass out of a double-team with his back to the basket. The ball almost grazed Santi Aldama’s leg, but was so perfectly thrown that it left Aldama feeling a draft instead, softly landing in Watson’s hands. His layup gave Denver a nine-point lead and cemented a win over the Grizzlies. Nov. 24, 2025. 3. Touch pass improv in Hollywood: His floor-mapping intuition in the halfcourt offense might be his greatest strength, but Jokic loves playing unpredictably in the open floor as well. In Game 4 of a first-round playoff series against the Lakers, he was running up the right side without the ball in transition. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope tried to loft a pass over Jokic’s head from behind him, but the big man didn’t know where the ball was until it landed in front of him. Like a soccer player one-timing a through ball to his teammate, Jokic simply tapped the ball with his right hand, and it gracefully sailed over a defender to Michael Porter Jr. under the basket. April 27, 2024. 2. Fooling Brook Lopez: Jokic has thrown countless lobs and no-looks from the paint to Gordon on the baseline. It’s the diagram for many of his best passes. This one is twice as good in slow motion because of how thoroughly Jokic wrong-foots Lopez, a generational defender who was roaming the back line for Milwaukee. Jokic drove into Kyle Kuzma with his left hand, then started to spin the other way, only to flick the ball back over his right shoulder once his back was to the basket. Thinking the pass going to the perimeter, Lopez jumped the opposite direction while Gordon was cutting to the rim behind him. March 26, 2025. 1. The 70-foot alley-oop: Also in…

A man accused of causing a high-speed Aurora car crash that killed a 71-year-old woman was convicted of vehicular homicide, the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office said Tuesday. Taylor Marcus Douglas, 31, was found guilty of vehicular homicide and reckless driving by an Arapahoe County jury on Thursday, court records show. Vehicular homicide is a felony and reckless driving is a traffic offense. The crash happened around 3:30 p.m. on April 15, 2024, when Janis Camfield and her husband were leaving a dialysis center and turning onto South Chambers Road near East Center Avenue and were t-boned by Douglas. Witnesses told police Douglas, who was driving a black Nissan Altima, was weaving in and out of traffic and speeding before the crash. Crash data collected from his car showed he was traveling at 98 mph seconds before the crash and investigators estimated he was traveling at 73 mph when he hit the Camfield’s SUV. Related Articles 2 killed in metro Denver crashes on I-25, East Jewell Avenue Seattle teen arrested in fatal head-on crash in southwestern Colorado Man killed in Aurora street racing crash with suspected drunken driver Arvada man gets 12 years jail time for fatal Aurora hit-and-run Suspect in fatal Denver hit-and-run at 16th Street drove onto sidewalk, hit victim Camfield’s husband was also severely injured in the crash. Douglas faces a maximum of six years in prison when he is sentenced on Jan. 16. In a statement, District Attorney Amy Padden said she supports “increasing penalties for these offenses to ensure greater accountability and justice.” “Every victim and every grieving family deserves a justice system that treats vehicular homicide cases with the gravity it warrants,” Padden said. “My office continues to have productive conversations with legislators to pursue reforms that hold offenders fully accountable for these preventable tragedies.” Douglas was represented by the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, which does not comment on criminal cases. Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, Associated Press They go by names like @TRUMP_ARMY— or @MAGANationX, and their verified accounts proudly display portraits of President Donald Trump, voter rallies and American flags. And they’re constantly posting about U.S. politics to their followers, sounding like diehard fans of the president. But after a weekend update to the social media platform X, it’s now clear that the owners of these accounts, and many others, are located in regions such as South Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. Elon Musk’s X unveiled a feature Saturday that lets users see where an account is based. Online sleuths and experts quickly found that many popular accounts posting in support of the MAGA movement to thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers, are based outside the United States — raising concerns about foreign influence on U.S. politics. Researchers at NewsGuard, a firm that tracks online misinformation, identified several popular accounts — purportedly run by Americans interested in politics – that instead were based in Eastern Europe, Asia or Africa. The accounts were leading disseminators of some misleading and polarizing claims about U.S. politics, including ones that said Democrats bribed the moderators of a 2024 presidential debate. Related Articles FBI seeks interviews with Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, other Democrats who urged U.S. troops to defy illegal orders Some DACA recipients have been arrested in the Trump’s immigration crackdown Trump allows more foreign ag workers, eases off ICE raids on farms Trump administration plans to review refugees admitted under Biden, memo obtained by The AP says White House circulates a plan to extend Obamacare subsidies as Trump pledges health care fix What is the location feature? Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, announced Saturday that the social media platform is rolling out an “About This Account” tool, which lets users see the country or region where an account is based. To find an account’s location, tap or click the signup date displayed on the profile. “This is an important first step to securing the integrity of the global town square. We plan to provide many more ways for users to verify the authenticity of the content they see on X,” Bier wrote. In countries with punitive speech restrictions, a privacy tool on X lets account holders only show their region rather than a specific country. So instead of India, for instance, an account can say it is based in South Asia. Bier said Sunday that after an update to the tool, it would 99.99% accurate, though this could not be independently verified. Accounts, for instance, can use a virtual private network, or VPN, to mask their true location. On some accounts, there’s a notice saying the location data may not be accurate, either because the account uses a VPN or because some internet providers use proxies automatically, without action by the user. Which accounts are causing controversy? Some of the accounts supported slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk as well as President Donald Trump’s children. Many of the accounts were adorned with U.S. flags or made comments suggesting they were American. An account called “@BarronTNews_,” for instance, is shown as being located in “Eastern Europe (Non-EU),” even though the display location on its profile says “Mar A Lago.” The account, which has more than 580,000 followers, posted on Tuesday that “This is a FAN account, 100 % independent, run by one guy who loves this country and supports President Trump with everything I’ve got.” NewsGuard also found evidence that some X users are spreading misinformation about the location feature itself, incorrectly accusing some accounts of being operated from abroad when they’re actually used by Americans. Investigators found several instances where one user created fake screenshots that appear to suggest an account was created overseas. It’s not always clear what the motives of the accounts. While some may be state actors, it’s likely…

By DEE-ANN DURBIN, Associated Press The Campbell’s Co. said Tuesday it has placed one of its executives on leave while it investigates claims that he made racist comments and mocked the company’s products and customers in an audio recording. Martin Bally, Campbell’s vice president of information technology, was named in a lawsuit filed last week by Robert Garza, a former Campbell’s employee. The lawsuit was filed in Michigan, where both men live. Campbell’s is headquartered in New Jersey. In the lawsuit, Garza claimed he met with Bally in November 2024 to discuss his salary. During the meeting, which Garza allegedly recorded, Bally described Campbell’s as “highly process(ed) food” and said it was for “poor people.” Related Articles FBI seeks interviews with Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, other Democrats who urged U.S. troops to defy illegal orders Some DACA recipients have been arrested in the Trump’s immigration crackdown New limits for a rent algorithm that prosecutors say let landlords drive up prices More people are addicted to marijuana, but fewer of them are seeking help, experts say Some families are ‘adopting’ turkeys for Thanksgiving instead of eating them Garza claimed that Bally made racist remarks about Indian workers, whom he called “idiots,” according to the lawsuit. Garza said Bally also told him that he often went to work high after consuming marijuana edibles. Garza said he told his manager, J.D. Aupperle, on Jan. 10 that he wanted to report Bally’s comments to Campbell’s human resources department. Garza said Aupperle didn’t encourage him to report the comments but also gave him no advice on how to proceed. On Jan. 30, Garza was terminated from Campbell’s. He is seeking monetary damages from Campbell’s. He also names Bally and Aupperle in the lawsuit, saying they were responsible for his termination. In its statement Tuesday, Campbell’s said that if the comments on the audio recording were in fact made by Bally, they are unacceptable. “Such language does not reflect our values and the culture of our company,” the company said. “We do not tolerate that kind of language under any circumstances.” Campbell’s added that the comments were allegedly made by someone in IT “who has nothing to do with how we make our food.” “We are proud of the food we make, the people who make it and the high-quality ingredients we use to provide consumers with good food at a good value,” Campbell’s said. “The comments heard on the recording about our food are not only inaccurate — they are patently absurd.”

A federal judge in Denver found Tuesday that federal immigration authorities have routinely carried out illegal arrests in Colorado, and he ordered them to better document detentions so their legality could be monitored. The 66-page decision from U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson came three weeks after four immigrants testified that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had arrested them without warrants and without first checking to see whether they were likely to flee court proceedings — a check that’s required by law. Jackson ordered Tuesday that ICE remove the ankle monitors on three of those people, one of whom is a Univerity of Utah student arrested in Mesa County in June. He also ordered the agency to refund the bail money that each paid to leave detention earlier this year, and he prohibited ICE from rearresting them without first obtaining warrants. (The fourth immigrant has received legal status and was not being monitored.) Jackson ordered ICE agents to follow the law and check — as well as document — that each person they arrest without a warrant poses a flight risk. The judge also ordered ICE to regularly turn over a random selection of arrest forms to the attorneys who filed the suit, including some with the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, so that they can monitor ICE’s compliance. Hans Meyer, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit, hailed the decision. “Our hope is that by forcing ICE to follow the law and creating accountability measures to do so, we hope that ICE will both comply and, hopefully, we’ll avoid the worst violations and excesses of immigration enforcement that we’ve seen unfold on national news on a daily basis since Jan. 20,” he said, referring to the day President Donald Trump returned to office. “That’s the ultimate purpose. That’s what we’re trying to deter.” Representatives for ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling. During a late-October court hearing in the case, the four immigrants’ attorneys pointed to The Denver Post’s reporting about the surge in recent immigration arrests in Colorado, as well as to statements from senior federal officials indicating that they planned to arrest any person they encountered who lacked proper legal status. In his order, Jackson noted that, without a court’s intervention, ICE’s pattern of illegal arrests was likely to increase. “ICE has almost doubled its headcount in Colorado this year alone, is actively recruiting and hiring many more officers, and plans to open three additional detention centers in Colorado, nearly tripling its current capacity,” Jackson wrote. “On this record, plaintiffs have shown that, without the requested injunction, there is likely to be a substantial increase in the number of warrantless arrests made without probable cause of flight risk.” ICE can conduct warrantless arrests. But agents must first determine that a person is in the country illegally and then find probable cause that they’re likely to flee. Tuesday’s ruling, an initial finding issued while the broader lawsuit plays out, does not prohibit ICE from making warrantless arrests of immigrants without proper legal status. But it requires ICE agents to follow the steps necessary to ensure an arrest is warranted and legal. Jackson declined to require that ICE agents undergo additional training, as the plaintiffs’ attorneys had requested, though he suggested he could revisit the question “should compliance with the order prove elusive.” In practice, the order will likely most impact so-called “collateral” arrests, or detentions that occur when ICE arrests someone who wasn’t the target of an operation or was caught up in a larger arrest sweep. All four of the named plaintiffs were not direct targets of ICE: Two were arrested in broader sweeps, a third was pulled over because ICE thought he was someone else, and the fourth — the college…