It’s not the altitude. It’s the Nuggets.
It’s appropriate to make that distinction after an early look at the 2023 NBA Finals, when the Nuggets ambushed the Miami Heat early on, when Denver thrived with its two-time Kia MVP as a secondary option, when a team that entered to Finals unbeaten at home in postseason… remained unbeaten at home in postseason.
Game 1 went to the Nuggets, 104-93, and with plenty of emphasis, leaving the Heat looking for more answers than oxygen.
The best way to sum up what just happened at Ball Arena is to state the obvious: The Nuggets looked like the No. 1 seed and the Heat looked like the No. 8 seed. Those are the facts, and that was the reality Thursday. That the Nuggets could win a game without leaning too heavily on Nikola Jokic was a salute to his poise and perhaps a blow to Miami’s ego.
This was, for the most part, a 48-minute push-up by the Western Conference champs. A franchise that made its first appearance in The Finals proved, quite clearly, that it belonged. The game plan from coach Michael Malone and his staff was solid and the players’ execution was spot on.
As for the heat? Well, Bam Adebayo was pretty good out of midrange. And…and…well, that was the extent of the damage. There were too many missed shots (poor Max Strus fought a losing battle on his 3-pointer) and they didn’t respond enough when the Nuggets took the game by the throat in the first half, leading by 17 at halftime.
And so, here we are. There is a public tendency to make sudden statements after a game: therefore, the Nuggets could sweep and the Heat are in deep trouble; so goes the anticipated noise. Expect 48 hours of that talk, though, as you know, life comes fast to teams in the NBA Finals. One game means nothing to the next.
The Nuggets will say they won’t get too high, even when they started at 5,280 feet above sea level, and the Heat will say it’s impossible to fall harder than the thud that echoes from the Rocky Mountains.
With that said, here are five takeaways from Game 1:
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1. No jokes: the nuggets are complete
Nikola Jokic talks with Grant Hill, Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley and Matt Winer about their great Game 1, the Nuggets’ close bond and more.
Let’s put this season, this playoffs and Game 1 in the right perspective: Jokic is no longer dragging a bunch of fringe players around. He did it for two seasons, leading those teams to the playoffs, winning a pair of MVPs for his early exit woes. He was riding with Austin Rivers, Will Barton, Bones Hyland and Facundo Campazzo. No offense to any of those guys, but they’re not Michael Porter Jr., Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon.
Right now? While it’s true that Jokic averaged a near triple-double in the first three rounds this spring and won the Magic Johnson Award for Western Conference Finals MVP, this isn’t Michael Jackson leading the Jacksons. Jokic has the luxury of picking his spots because Murray (18 of 26 points in the first half) has been incredible, and getting behind him at midrange became a signature move.
Others, like Bruce Brown, have been more than enough. In Game 1, the Nuggets Other than Jokic were in such a rhythm that Jokic just shrugged and kept passing the ball to them (10 assists in the first half alone). On one possession, Jokic established an inside position on little Kyle Lowry, waved his hand up … and Brown motioned for him to take a 30-foot shot for him, swaying in celebration.
So Jokic made just 12 shots (earning a portion of his 27 points at the free throw line), delivering the mandatory triple-double. And at no time were the Nuggets so nervous that they had to activate the Joker Alarm to rescue them.
“It’s hard to tag everyone, as opposed to just one or two,” Murray said. “We make you have to be locked in defense for the whole game. I think tonight was just a great example of it could be anyone’s night and anyone’s room, maybe not your room. That’s just Nuggets basketball.”
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2. Gordon good at both ends
Aaron Gordon’s aggressiveness from the jump altered the look of the game.
The most impactful player on the court, all things considered, might have been Aaron Gordon. He burned those 36 minutes on both ends of the court, assigned with Jimmy Butler’s defense and also choosing to assert himself offensively. As a result, Gordon marked his arrival, and if it continues like this, Denver will be hard to beat.
Keep in mind that Gordon has had the toughest defensive assignments of anyone in these playoffs and probably in recent memory. He had Karl-Anthony Towns in the first round, then Kevin Durant, then LeBron James, now Jimmy Buckets. There is no rest for the weary. Each of those players presented different challenges and Gordon stood his ground. Neither did irreparable damage, nor did Butler (13 points) in Game 1.
“I’m definitely going to be sitting in my rocking chair when I’m 79, 90, talking to my kids like, ‘back in the day I locked these guys up,’” Gordon said.
The bonus for the Nuggets was that Gordon took some assertive pills and attacked the basket right after the opening jump. This was new and somewhat unusual; Gordon spent much of the postseason giving up to Murray, Jokic and Porter. But he scored 12 of his 16 points in the first quarter on all but one shot. Soon after, the Nuggets took control and the lead for good.
“I think Aaron Gordon is a prime example of someone truly selfless,” Malone said. “He understood that Jamal and Michael came back this year healthy that his role was going to change. He never fought against it. He’s embraced it since day one of the season… (Miami) was changing early on and I felt like he was really big in terms of sitting in front of the rim, scoring in the paint and finishing at the rim. And again, just the effort from him on the defensive end was just another example of how important he was to our group.”
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3. Roll call for Miami role players
After losing Game 1 to the Denver Nuggets, can the Miami Heat bounce back with a few tweaks?
When asked the other day about the talent around him, Jimmy Butler said he didn’t call them role players: “I call them teammates.” What a classy response from the Heat’s certified Main Guy, but the lights are now even brighter and the truth is out.
So what happened in Game 1? Those undrafted, unannounced teammates turned to their lightweight resumes, for once. It was pretty unusual to see, just because those same players have spent the last two months making a lot of teams look like fools for letting them go in the draft or giving them up.
Strus was, let’s say politely, a disaster, an 0-for-10 nightmare from the field (including 0-for-9 on 3-pointers, which included some airballs). Even Rocky, the Nuggets’ mascot, scored a shot, from half court, by lobbing it behind his head during a timeout (the crowd went wild). Strus has trainer Erik Spoelstra’s green light, but that light would flash red every time he let her fly. It will be interesting to see if Spoelstra makes any adjustments regarding Strus, who also struggled in the East finals.
But it wasn’t just him Thursday: Caleb Martin, who averaged 19.3 points on 60% shooting (49% from deep), including a 26-point Game 7, came within one vote of being named the most outstanding player in the leagues. eastern end. In this Game 1, he went 1-for-7 for three points and never got going. Duncan Robinson? He missed five of six. Butler said “we’ve got to get more layups,” but Spoelstra didn’t sound too concerned.
“They’re fine,” Spoelstra said. “I mean, they’re not going to get sick in the sea. If they are shooters, you are not always going to be able to make all the shots you want. So you have to find different ways to impact the game. Our game isn’t just about 3-ball. We can win games. We can win series, regardless of how the three of them go.”
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4. Are the Nuggets 1 too much for the Heat?
This has been a treacherous and magnificent postseason run for the Heat. Treacherous, in the sense that Miami faced the East-leading Milwaukee Bucks, then the New York Knicks, then the Boston Celtics, all higher seeds who brought more star power and kept home court.
So again: Is Denver one more mountain? This seemed evident on Thursday when the Nuggets were able to call on a handful of players and put up solid results. Denver is not the winner of the West by accident. And the Nuggets were determined all season … there’s no fluke here. As for Miami? When those 3-pointers didn’t fall on Thursday, the Heat didn’t have a Plan B. They rushed to find solutions and came up with none.
Perhaps this is where the journey stops, where the task of delivering one upset after another finally catches up with a team with only one All-NBA player and one All-Star this season.
“We have a big goal in mind,” Murray said.
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5. Denver is where the ‘Ball’ bounces
Charles believes that Denver’s altitude is a hoax. But will that affect the Miami Heat?
Here’s a fact: With the Nuggets having home field advantage, Miami has to win at Ball Arena at least once. This is also a fact: Miami has won at least one road game in every series so far.
Oh, one more fact: The Nuggets have proven to be invincible at home, and that distinction was kept intact during a game of The Finals.
One of the reasons the Nuggets are hard to beat at home? They are hard to beat, period. But other than that, maybe we’re just witnessing one of those seasons where a team runs the table on their home court. Their arena belched with noise and resounding support Thursday and showed just how much that atmosphere perhaps played a role in rousing the home team throughout the postseason.
“I reminded our group, if they didn’t know, that Miami went into Milwaukee and won Game 1,” Malone said. “They went to the Garden in New York City and they won Game 1. They won Game 1 in Boston. So we didn’t want them coming in here taking over the series on our court.
