NBA Finals Takeaways: Nuggets’ stars show they’re ready for biggest stage

An NBA Finals featuring two teams that weren’t expected make it this far. 

The Miami Heat, because they won just 44 games in the regular season, lost their first play-in game and were trailing with three minutes to go in the second one before they came back against the Chicago Bulls, earned the eighth seed and embarked on one of the most unprecedented playoff runs in league history. 

And the Denver Nuggets, because while they absolutely were supposed to be here — they were the No. 1 seed in the West — as a franchise they’ve never made the Finals, and all season long there was skepticism that the Nuggets could translate regular-season success. Instead, they needed just 15 chances to win 12 games and swept the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals. 

They wasted no time showing that they meant business in Game 1. They jumped out to an early lead and pushed it to 24 points during the third quarter. The Heat worked to make things interesting as they used an 11-0 run to start the fourth quarter — sparked by a pair of triples by old friend Kyle Lowry — and cut the Nuggets lead to 10. Jokic got Denver back on the board with a nifty pass to a cutting Jeff Green. The Heat were able to get as close as nine on a triple from Haywood Highsmith with 2:34 to play, but that was as near as they got in a 104-93 win that gave Denver a 1-0 lead in the series and improved them to 9-0 at home during the post-season. Denver shot 51.9 per cent from the floor and had 29 assists, even while shooting just 8-of-27 from three. Miami shot 40.6 per cent from the floor and 33.3 per cent from deep. Nikola Jokic finished with 27 points, 14 assists and 10 rebounds while Jamal Murray had 26 points and 10 assists. The Heat were led by Bam Adebayo, who finished with 26 points, 13 rebounds and five assists. 

Takeaways from Game 1:

Of course Jamal Murray balled out

Leading up to the Finals I had a chance to speak with some of the Kitchener, Ont., kid’s coaches from early on his basketball path and they were unanimous: the guy who so thoroughly raised his game in the NBA playoffs is the same player who rose to the occasion for so many signature moments as a young player making his way up. So, it’s no surprise that Murray was locked and ready for his first NBA Finals game, given he has averaged 27.7 points a game on nearly 60 per cent true shooting in the playoffs. It’s incredibly rare for a high-volume scorer to improve his scoring average by 7.7 points over his regular season average (20.0 for Murray) and actually improve his efficiency. Murray was at it again against Miami, yo-yoing in the two-man game with Jokic, controlling the entire game while doing so, or floating into open spots while the Heat were watching the Nuggets centre, only to have him find the Nuggets’ second-leading scorer wide-open.

Murray had 18 points on 8-of-12 shooting, to go along with four assists and four rebounds in the first half. No one was surprised.

“One thing I do know about Jamal, if he has a bad game or somebody is doing something to take him out of his game, he’s going to figure it out,” said Nuggets head coach Michael Malone — with some prescience — before the tip. “I think in just these 15 games that we’ve played in this post-season, I think we’ve seen that quite a few times in each round. Teams think they’ve kind of figured him out or an individual defender may think they’ve figured him out, and then Jamal will just go into a 23-point fourth quarter or score 30 points in the first half, whatever it may be. I have all the confidence in the world that Jamal is going to be ready for this stage.”

Malone was right, but he wasn’t exactly going out on a limb. It’s what Murray does.

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Jokic doing his magic (Johnson)

It’s impossible to properly defend someone who can eviscerate your team without scoring. Nikola Jokic didn’t take a shot during the first quarter. It wasn’t because of anything the Heat were doing — they defended him straight-up, mostly. It was more so because the big Serbian basketball genius was in the mood to move the ball and get his teammates easy looks. He had six assists in the first quarter and didn’t score until there were 3.3 seconds left in the opening period. It only happened because Jokic stole the ball and it ended up in the hands of Aaron Gordon, who quickly shovelled back to Jokic for the score.

Denver led 29-20 after 12 minutes, was shooting 1-of-6 from downtown but had connected on 12-of-16 of its two-point attempts. Jokic had his fingerprints all over everything. If he wasn’t making plays that directly led to easy buckets for his teammates, the attention he demanded created easy mismatches, such as hulking six-foot-eight Aaron Gordon posting up at the rim against six-foot-two Heat guard Gabe Vincent. The Nuggets led 59-42 at halftime and Jokic had 10 assists in 19 minutes to go along with 10 points on three shots. Just absurd.

No Heat from three

A season ago, the Heat were the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference before losing out on a chance to advance to the Finals after a seven-game series to the Boston Celtics. They led the NBA in three-point percentage.

This past season, they barely made the post-season and — with largely the same roster — were 27^th in three-point shooting. But then the playoffs started, and the Heat reverted to last season’s form as they were leading the playoffs in three-point shooting.

In a related story, they were the second No. 8 seed to make the Finals in NBA history, and the first after a full 82-game season. The Heat were trailing 84-63 to start the fourth quarter and were shooting just 7-of-27 from three. How did they make the game interesting? They shot 6-of-12 from deep in the fourth quarter (to 0-8 by Denver). They will need more of that more often to make this series interesting. 

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All-around team effort

You kind of knew the Heat were going to be hard-pressed to come back when late in the third quarter they doubled Jokic before Murray could even make an entry pass. Jokic had a defender in front of him and lurking behind. There was nowhere to put the ball. Murray shrugged and slid the ball over to a wide-open Bruce Brown, who nailed his second triple of the game — both on wide-open looks out of Jokic double-teams — to put the Nuggets up 79-60 with 2:51 left in the third. It was the story of the game, and even though Denver’s stars were having huge games themselves, the Nuggets’ role players stepped up. Michael Porter Jr. made big plays defensively, grabbed 13 rebounds and chipped in 14 points. Gordon dominated early and had 16 points on 10 shots, and then Brown and a great stretch in the third quarter. The Nuggets are a team.

OK, he’s not perfect

The gap in Jokic’s nearly perfect set of basketball skills is that he’s simply not a very good defender. He tries to be in the right spot most of the time and he’s an excellent defensive rebounder, so the Nuggets do finish possessions well, and no centre is better at grabbing and going than Jokic. But defending the rim or defending one-on-one is not his strength. The Nuggets finished third from last in the NBA in opponent’s field-goal percentage in the restricted area. So, it’s no wonder that Heat centre Adebayo looked like he could score at will Thursday night. The Nuggets were determined to stay home on Heat shooters, leaving Jokic defending Adebayo in space. The agile Heat centre took advantage.

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