By: Damoy Rowe
The Denver Nuggets were too hot to handle for the Miami Heat throughout the NBA finals matchups. If you had asked the basketball fraternity at the start of the season which two teams they expected to make the finals, it would not have been these two.
Miami were never expected to make it this far, and though Denver had looked like champions for much of the season and qualified for the playoffs as the No. 1 seed, people still did not expect them to clinch this year’s title. Meanwhile, in contrast to the upstart Heat, who had to overcome the odds to qualify for the NBA finals as a No. 8 seed, both defied expectations and gave fans and neutrals a finals experience that we will be talking about for a while.
Denver sealed their first ever championship in Game 5 of the series after beating Miami 94-89 after 47 years in the league without a finals-winning experience. Before this season, Denver had advanced to the conference finals four times in franchise history (1978, 1985, 2009, and 2020), losing to the Los Angeles Lakers on each occasion. The capital city of Colorado was led by two-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić. The Nuggets overcame a 10-point deficit in the second quarter to close out the series 4-1. The Heat have always had a strong fourth quarter throughout the finals, and this time was no different. They threatened to make a comeback of their own in the final minutes before a costly turnover by Miami star Jimmy Butler gave Denver crucial free throws.
Though basketball is a team game, the Denver Nuggets definitely owe their star man Nikola Jokić a big thank you. His phenomenal performance throughout the season, but especially in this year’s finals, proved to be the turning point for the franchise to help them make history. The Serbian All-Star completed an unstoppable and historic postseason run by scoring 10 of his 28 points in the fourth quarter en route to being named NBA Finals MVP. A much-deserved achievement after averaging 30.2 points, 14.0 rebounds, and 7.2 assists across the series. The Serbian All-Star, who was a second-round pick in the 2014 draft, also became the lowest-drafted player to win a Finals MVP. Denver’s title catapults him into the conversation as one of the all-time great NBA centers. Jokic also is now the first player to lead all players in points (600), rebounds (279) and assists (190) in a single postseason. He is just 28 years old; talk about mind blowing.
As I said earlier, basketball is all about a team, and the dynamic duo of Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray were just superb. Murray averaged 21.4 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 10.0 assists a game in the finals after missing the entire 2021–22 season with a torn ACL. Talk about a perfect way to comeback. Finally healthy and whole, Jokic and Murray proved to be a tandem that opponents could not contain this postseason. They are the first pair of teammates in NBA history to average 25 points, five rebounds, and five assists in a single postseason.
The Nuggets might have gotten here the boring and patient way by not making significant changes to the coaching staff or personnel like other franchises did when things didn’t go their way. Their patience and willingness to do things their way paid off, as they are sitting on the mountaintop of NBA success. Denver’s win leaves Phoenix, Utah, Brooklyn, Orlando, Indiana, Charlotte, Memphis, Minnesota, New Orleans, and the Los Angeles Clippers as the 10 current franchises still waiting for their first NBA championship.