Patience and Edge

Sean McLaughlin
June 14, 2023

Congratulations to the 2023 NBA Champion Denver Nuggets!

I’m a total bandwagoner, having never watched a Nuggets game in the eleven years I’ve now lived in Colorado. My first Nuggets watch was the first playoff game this year. And I watched every game the rest of the way.

My timing was pretty good.

What has stood out the most to me in the interviews and press I saw and read last night and this morning following the Nuggets win is how their journey to the top required tremendous patience and a focus on their edge.

And more patience. More sharpening of the edge. And then a little more of both after that.

The Nuggets organization knew they were building a winner. But it would take time. Time for the stars to develop. Time for injuries to heal. Time for missing pieces to be added. And time for the stars to align.

And while the rest of the basketball world was focused on sexier teams on the coasts, the Nuggets were quietly building a juggernaut – a nearly 10-year overnight success story that began taking shape following the drafting of Nikola Jokic from Sombor, Serbia (where?) in 2014 and Jamal Murray from Kitchener, Canada (where?) in 2016.

What gave the Nuggets the fortitude to press forward?

The Nuggets believed Jokic’s unique skills offered an edge that few players brought to the game. Size. Toughness. Unselfishness. Good shooting. Amazing passing. And an unbreakable mindset. And they believed that Murray was the perfect star complement to tie it all together.

They had an edge and they pressed their bets.

But it took patience for the edge to materialize over the long term.

Can’t we relate?

We traders might have a strategy or a system with an edge. But that’s no guarantee that it won’t experience a bit of up and down in the short term and the occasional run of consecutive losses. It is nearly statistically certain that this will happen.

But if we stick to the process, keep our heads on the big picture, and execute, execute, execute, it’s also statistically likely that our edge will result in wins over time.

Patience and edge. They go hand in hand and we can’t win the big prizes without a healthy mix of both.

Trade 'em Well,

Sean McLaughlin
Chief Options Strategist
All Star Charts, Technical Analysis Research

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