The foul that got Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic ejected from game 4 of the NBA Western Conference semifinals against the Phoenix Suns on Sunday is unlikely to tarnish his image as one of pro basketball’s reigning nice guys.

The misstep arguably cost the Nuggets the game and ended their playoff run. The NBA’s newly minted MVP had made a wild reach for the ball and swiped Suns guard Cam Payne in the face late in the third quarter. Jokic insisted afterward that any physical contact was unintended and that he only was trying “to change the rhythm of the game.”

Regardless, Coloradans won’t love him any less. In a sport whose superstars boast super-sized contracts and outsized egos to match, Jokic so far remains unerringly down to earth despite a mega-contract of his own. As The Gazette’s Paul Klee put it: “Nobody’s ever seen a player like Jokic. He’s a 7-foot, 280-pound center whose MVP tribute video showed mostly assists. On his MVP night, Joker had 32 points, 20 rebounds, 10 assists in his 81st (out of 81) game – then apologized for not doing more. The whole building adores him dearly.”

He’s innately modest. A true team player. Dare we say – a real gentleman?

And yet, when Colorado’s U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert dared to say the same thing – in a tweet last week congratulating Jokic as MVP – the Twitterverse erupted with howls of indignation.

The first-term Republican’s offending tweet?

“Congratulations to the Joker for being the first Denver Nuggets’ player to win the MVP award! Nice to see a gentleman receive this honor.”

As reported by The Gazette: “Accusations of racism flooded social media because Boebert referred to Jokic – the first white MVP since Dirk Nowitzki won the award in 2007 – as a ‘gentleman.'”

“Is ‘gentleman’ your code word for ‘white guy’?” bristled one tweet, typical of the fare.

A member of the Nuggets’ support staff got in on it, too: “With all due respect ma’am you can keep your congratulations to yourself… We prefer politicians who don’t help lead an insurrection or spread wild conspiracy theories.”

To put things in perspective, much of the Twitter-borne blowback wasn’t posted by constituents of Boebert’s sprawling 3rd Congressional District or even by Coloradans in general. A lot of it came from around the country, from people whose profiles often revealed strong partisan sentiments opposite Boebert’s. Not much connection to the Nuggets or basketball, but they follow the sport of politics enough to know Boebert’s not their kind. And of course, some are the usual political operatives paid to troll on Twitter. So, they pounced with all the manufactured outrage, and snark, they could muster.

But what if they’re wrong – and Boebert simply sees in Jokic the same kind of gentleman we do? Maybe all she meant is he foregoes the swagger, trash talk and, lately, political rhetoric that accompany some other standouts in the sports world?

Lacking the ability to read minds, we can’t claim to know for sure what motivated Boebert’s word choice. Just as we don’t know, to this day, why then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden referred to Barack Obama back in 2007 as “…the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy…”

But do we really want “gentleman” to become a loaded word? Coloradans, like all Americans, are tired of divisive politics. Let’s not let it divide our common language – or our love of sports – as well.