Bad pass destroys the Heat’s dream
Jokic leads Denver Nuggets to first NBA championship
6/13/2023 5:46 am
The Miami Heat have been waiting for an NBA championship for ten years, and the Denver Nuggets have never been champions. That changes thanks to an outstanding Nikola Jokic. The team from Colorado wins the final round in the fifth game.
The Denver Nuggets won the NBA title for the first time in their history. The basketball team around the again strong leader Nikola Jokic won 94:89 against the Miami Heat and thus achieved the necessary fourth victory in the fifth game of the final series. Miami lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2020 and to the San Antonio Spurs again in 2014 in the NBA Finals and has to wait ten years after the last championship so far for its fourth success.
The Nuggets quickly turned a 0-5 early in the game into a 12-5, but then lost the thread and were seven points down at 44-51 at the break. Only towards the end of the third quarter did the hosts regain the lead. In the final quarter, the game was wild for minutes, in the meantime the two teams missed a total of ten shots in a row and their game lacked any structure.
As Miami had chances for a second win in the closing minutes, a miss by Jimmy Butler with 28 seconds left gave Denver the lead and a three-point lead. The best scorer of the game was Jokic, the Serb had 28 points and 16 rebounds. “It was a great effort from the team,” said Jokic. “There are so many factors. I’m just happy. It feels good. The job is done, we can go home now.”
“We want more”
Jokic was also named Most Valuable Player of the Final Series. With his little daughter on stage, Jokic accepted the award. With an average of 30.2 points, 14 rebounds and 7.2 assists, the 28-year-old topped the entire NBA playoffs in the five games against the Heat, as before. No one had more points, assists or rebounds in the playoffs than the Nuggets center, who had twice been voted Main Round Most Valuable Player in his career.
“We believed in each other. Yes, trophies are something. But our team chemistry will survive here when we finish our careers,” said Jokic. His trainer Michael Malone announced further title wins by then: “We are not satisfied with one thing. We want more,” he called out to the fans.
Denver had finished the main round at the top of the Western Conference and prevailed in the playoffs against the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Phoenix Suns and the Los Angeles Lakers. The Miami Heat only made it into the playoffs in eighth place – and then threw the Milwaukee Bucks, the New York Knicks and the Boston Celtics out of the competition as underdogs. There were no comebacks like in the previous rounds for Miami in the final against Denver.