Denver Nuggets win first NBA title, defeating Miami Heat in five games
“It was an ugly game,” said Jokic, who exchanged hugs with his wife and brothers during the postgame celebration. “We couldn’t make shots. But at the end we figured out how to defend.”
Denver showed its jitters with history on the line, committing three turnovers on its first four possessions and losing Jokic and Aaron Gordon to early foul trouble. By the time Jamal Murray finally settled things down midway through the first quarter with a driving dunk, the excitement from Denver’s home crowd had devolved into annoyed groans.
Handed an opportunity to send the series back to Miami for Game 6, the Heat couldn’t maintain enough scoring momentum to take advantage. Miami made just two of its first 14 shots, and Butler went scoreless in his opening shift. An energetic Bam Adebayo picked up the slack with 14 points in the first quarter, though, and the Heat built a 10-point lead midway through the second.
Denver, flummoxed by Miami’s zone defense, finally made its push midway through the third. Michael Porter Jr. brought the crowd back into the game with three transition plays: a pass to set up a Murray three-pointer, a transition layup he converted after dribbling between his legs backwards and then a three-pointer of his own on the next possession. Before Porter’s three-pointer, Denver had made just two of its first 22 shots from outside.
The endgame was as tense as the rest of the contest: Butler, who had just eight points on 2-for-10 shooting through three quarters, ripped off 13 straight for Miami late in the fourth quarter. His run was boosted by a dubious foul call that nearly spoiled Denver’s celebration as the officials determined that Butler was fouled by Gordon while shooting a three-pointer with 3:21 remaining. Replays appeared to indicate that Gordon didn’t initiate contact and Butler’s right leg had swung forward.
“Those last three or four minutes felt like a scene out of a movie,” Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said. “Two teams in the center of the ring throwing haymaker after haymaker, and it’s not necessarily shot making. It’s the efforts. Guys were staggering around because both teams were playing and competing so hard. That’s what this league should be about. There’s no regrets on our end.”
The Nuggets stayed together in the closing minutes, getting a key steal from Kentavious Caldwell-Pope plus a crucial putback and two game-clinching free throws from Bruce Brown. Denver’s collective approach down the stretch, which included 10 fourth-quarter points from Jokic, epitomized a campaign in which they used their offensive chemistry and years of cohesion to defeat all comers.
“All the hard work culminated with us winning a championship,” Nuggets Coach Michael Malone said. “But I’ve got news for you: We’re not satisfied with one. We want more.”
Denver held Miami under 100 points for the fourth time in the Finals. Butler finished with a team-high 21 points, but he fell short in the Finals for the second time in his career. Adebayo added 20 points and 12 rebounds.
“I wish I could have got it done for these guys because they definitely deserve it,” Butler said of his Heat teammates, who entered the playoffs as the Eastern Conference’s eighth seed and upset the Milwaukee Bucks, New York Knicks and Boston Celtics to reach the Finals. “The one thing I’m going to take from it is how grateful I am to be able to compete with them.”
Jokic remained stoic and straight-faced throughout most of the postgame celebration, taking care to shake hands with every Heat player before attending the trophy presentation. Afterward, he was noncommittal about attending the Nuggets’ championship parade on Thursday, saying that he “needs to get home” to Serbia as soon as possible.
“We succeeded in our jobs, and we won the whole thing,” Jokic said. “It’s an amazing feeling. But it’s not everything in the world. There’s a bunch of things that I like to do. Probably that’s a normal thing. But it’s a good feeling when you know that you did something that nobody believes [in].”
In contrast to Jokic’s stony exterior, Murray choked back tears as he reflected upon his return from a 2021 knee injury that cost him all of last season.
“It took blood, sweat and tears to get back to this point,” Murray said. “Everything was hitting at once, from the journey, to the celebration with the guys, to enjoying the moment, to looking back on the [knee] rehab, to looking back at myself as a kid. It was a lot. I couldn’t hold it in.”
During an NBA regular season marked by parity, the Nuggets welcomed Murray back and quickly emerged as one of the steadiest contenders. As the Golden State Warriors struggled through a shaky title defense and both the Los Angeles Lakers and Phoenix Suns made dramatic midseason trades in hopes of climbing in the standings, Denver raced to an 8-3 start and claimed the Western Conference’s top seed Dec. 20. The Nuggets never relinquished pole position over the ensuing four months, racking up a 34-7 home record as Jokic turned in his third straight MVP-caliber campaign.
Despite boasting a fifth-ranked offense and an upgraded supporting cast around Jokic and Murray, Denver cruised along under the radar for months as teams with more internal drama or more celebrated stars dominated the headlines and national television showcase games. Questions lingered about the Nuggets’ mediocre regular season defense, Jokic’s ability to play against spread lineups in the playoffs and Murray’s consistency coming off an 18-month absence.
Past postseason losses to the Lakers, Suns and Warriors led many observers to wrongly conclude that the Nuggets might not be able to translate their consistent regular season success into a deep run in the playoffs, where adjustments, versatility and experience are at a premium.
Yet Denver answered every one of those questions convincingly during its 16-4 run to the title, the fastest championship path since Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and the Warriors went 16-1 in 2017. The Nuggets dispatched the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round in five games, knocked out the Suns in six and swept the Lakers in the Western Conference finals before their five-game Finals triumph over the Heat. By the end, the Nuggets’ run had the air of anticlimax: They never trailed in a series, won 10 of their last 11 games and went 10-1 at home.
This newfound dominance was a result of improved defensive intensity — the Nuggets rose from 15th in the regular season to fourth in the playoffs — and Jokic’s brilliant orchestration of the league’s most efficient postseason offense. Murray proved to be a reliable scorer and distributor regardless of how much defensive attention he commanded, and Denver got timely contributions from all of its main rotation players at some point along the way.
After Porter and Caldwell-Pope each enjoyed outside shooting flurries in the early rounds, Gordon materialized as the X-factor against the Heat thanks to his forceful rim attacks and diligent defense on Butler. Rookie guard Christian Braun and Brown, a backup guard, each took a turn delivering game-changing performances against Miami.
Denver’s egalitarian approach delivered a long-awaited championship and provided the ultimate validation of Jokic’s unselfish approach to basketball. The Serbian center registered 10 triple-doubles during the title run, and he handily outplayed a series of formidable interior opponents: Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns; Phoenix’s Deandre Ayton; Los Angeles’s Anthony Davis; and Miami’s Adebayo.
Too big and too skilled to handle one-on-one on the block, Jokic forced Denver’s playoff opponents into impossible predicaments. If they committed too much attention to him, he found Porter and Caldwell-Pope for three-pointers, tossed lobs to Gordon and found Braun for backdoor cuts. If teams tried to single-cover Jokic, he proved deadly at the rim with layups, in the paint with floaters and from beyond the arc with high-arcing three-pointers that led LeBron James to compare him to Larry Bird.
Judged by Player Efficiency Rating, Jokic’s postseason play was comparable with the best runs from Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal and James, and he joined Tim Duncan and O’Neal as the only centers to be named Finals MVP in the past 25 years. Murray believes his longtime pick-and-roll partner is just getting started.
“[Jokic] won his first MVP, and his numbers were better with the second MVP,” Murray said Sunday. “His numbers are [even] better now. I think there’s more to come actually. I think we haven’t seen a side of Jokic that we are going to see: just pure dominance, all the way, the whole game — even more than he has been.”
The 28-year-old joined Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki and Giannis Antetokounmpo as single-team stars who led the organizations that drafted them to a championship. Given that the Nuggets drafted Jokic, Murray, Porter and Braun, Malone said Sunday that their path to the title could become a “blueprint” for other small-market teams that are trying to remain competitive in an NBA landscape that is often driven by superstar trade requests.
Indeed, Denver’s edge in continuity proved crucial against each of its first three opponents as Minnesota, Phoenix and Los Angeles had shaken up their rosters with major trades over the past 12 months.
“I feel really fortunate that our journey has been one of patience,” Malone said. “One of drafting really well and developing those players, and then adding the right pieces around them. Some teams want to mortgage their future and go get the surefire player, the all-star. For us, there’s never been a rushed mentality. That starts with the ownership. The Kroenke family has been phenomenal allowing this thing to play itself out and not overreacting to other bumps in the road.”
Now that Jokic has reached the summit, it’s worth remembering that his individual development required a healthy dose of patience. Taken with the 41st pick in the 2014 draft, he waited a year before coming to the NBA. Facing doubts about his weight, conditioning and a Coca-Cola habit that reportedly reached three liters per day, Jokic hardly took the league by storm. He scored just two points in his Oct. 28, 2015 debut at 20, and he didn’t become a full-time starter until midway through his second season.
The pace of his rise picked up from there as he earned his first all-star selection in 2019 and his first MVP award in 2021. Still, Jokic’s reluctance to self-promote, engage deeply with the media or chase major sponsorship deals delayed his full embrace by television talking heads and casual basketball fans, much like Duncan and Kawhi Leonard before him.
After choosing not to campaign for his third straight MVP honor, Jokic finished second to Joel Embiid. Rather than use the snub as motivation, Jokic appeared annoyed when asked about the voting, saluted Embiid’s stellar season and said any critics of the Philadelphia 76ers center’s selection were “mean.”
But a wider recognition of Jokic’s immense abilities started to develop this postseason as he drilled clutch jumpers, dished an endless array of beautiful passes and outdueled megastars such as James and Durant in front of healthy television audiences. Nearly nine years after ESPN aired a Taco Bell commercial as he was being selected in the second round of the 2014 draft, Jokic spent the past two months overtaking Antetokounmpo, Curry and others to become the best player in basketball.
“My journey,” he said this week, with a devout self-deprecation that has become his trademark. “I don’t think it’s that interesting.”
