The Nuggets defeated the Heat on the night of this Monday, June 12 by 94-89 to complete the 4-1 and win the 2023 NBA Finals. After what happened at the Ball Arena in Denver, several were the protagonists who paraded before the displaced press to offer their impressions.
Malone: ”Tomorrow I’ll probably be hungover”
At the beginning, unleashed, joking, he said the following: “I’m enjoying this moment, so don’t bother it with some stupid question”.
“Pat Riley said something many years ago about the evolution of this sport and how you go from a nobody to an upstart, from an upstart to a winner, from a winner to a contender, and from a contender to a champion. And the last step after champion is to become a dynasty”.
“So we’re not satisfied. We’ve accomplished something this franchise hasn’t done before, but we have a lot of talented players in the locker room and I think we’ve just shown through sixteen playoff wins what we’re capable of on the world’s biggest stage.”
Great answer also when asked what will be different tomorrow for him: “I’m probably hungover”.
“Those last two minutes, the clock seemed to be moving really slowly. Then you realize what you’re about to achieve and it’s almost surreal.”
Spoelstra: “We have no regrets”
“We have no regrets. They just beat you sometimes, and Denver was the best team in this series.”
“I don’t know how long it will take me to analyze this last game, but I would say it was possibly our toughest and most competitive defensive performance of the season, and we still fell short.”
“You can learn life lessons from this game, that you can manage what people see as small failures”
Jokic: “We’ve already won, we can go home now”
Still on the track, interviewed by Lisa Salters for abcJokic left one of his phrases: “I’m fine. I’m fine. We have already achieved it. We have already won. So we can go home now.”
“I am happy for everyone. I’m happy for DeAndre Jordan, for Jeff Green, for Ish Smith. Literally by everyone. Michael Porter had three operations and still he came to help us win a championship. Jamal Murray, who had surgery and didn’t play well at the start of the season. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope brought us a title. Bruce Brown, Christian Braun… I’m literally happy for every player, for every player on this team.”
“Today we didn’t hit our shots but we still defended.”
“I felt a different energy.”
“I’m not a really optimistic guy, but it gave me hope that we could do something.”
“I think it’s really a great time to be a Serb.”
When asked if he had received any messages from Novak Djokovic, he looked at his phone and said this: “Fuck. I have many messages. I’m going to have to turn off the phone.”.
Butler: “I take the gratitude”
“I take with me the gratitude of being able to compete with these guys. I am grateful: I learned a lot, they taught me a lot. I would have liked to achieve it for these guys, they deserve it. But what I’m going to take with me is my gratitude for competing with them.”
“I have great teammates who compete with me and who give us options to win a Ring, something that I still think we will do as a team here, as a franchise, in the city of Miami”
“I think we did enough to win, we defended well and we were able to win. You don’t have to score a hundred points to win a basketball game.”