DENVER – Don’t tell Erik Spoelstra that his Heat hit the magic number Sunday night in an effort to slow down the best player in the world.
In the Nuggets’ 111-108 loss to the Heat in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, the series-tying 1-1 defeat with the move to Miami, Nikola Jokic scored a game-high 41 points. This was the third time that Jokic had scored at least 40 goals in this postseason. The Nuggets have lost all three of those games during the postseason and their total is now 13-4. In those high-scoring games, Jokić averaged seven assists — including a season-low four demesne after Sunday’s postseason — a steady fall from his average of 10.5 per game.
The Heat turned a two-time MVP into a scorer and reaped the benefits. Easy like that. right?
“Yeah, that’s ridiculous—that’s the untrained eye that says something like that,” Spoelstra said afterward. “This guy’s a great player. You know, twice in two seasons he’s been the best player on the planet. You can’t just say, ‘Oh, make him scorer.’ That’s not how they play. They have a lot of different actions that put you in danger. We have to focus on What we do. We try to do things the hard way, and he asks you to do many things the hard way. He has our full respect.”
Nothing is easy when it comes to defending Jokic. He is the only dominant offensive force in basketball because he can be whatever the game needs.
It is very difficult to plan. He is a basketball expert. It is a nice. You will never stop him; You’re just trying to slow it down.
“If you take a few passes away, he’ll score,” said Heat forward Kevin Love, who started Game Two after not playing in the Series opener. “You try to take that away and double-team, and he’ll pass the ball. He’ll bury you under the hoop if you switch. He’s so smart that you just try to make it hard on him and take the other X-factors out of the game.”
In Game 2, no other Nuggets player scored more than 18 points, and even that total got a late fourth-quarter rush from Jamal Murray. Ground heat crept in, restricted cutting lanes, and generally made it difficult for Denver players to find rhythm. There wasn’t as early a blast from Aaron Gordon as there were a few nights before when he scored 12 points in the first quarter. Michael Porter Jr. continued to struggle from within 3 points (3 of 17 in the series). Murray did not find the same freedom to explore the floor as he did in the first game. Outside of a stellar bench-driving rush to start the second quarter, Denver struggled to find steady punt opportunities, which have been a key component to their offensive success in this playoffs.
Nuggets coach Michael Malone likes to describe Jokic as someone who “don’t fight the game.” On Sunday, the match asked Jokic to score. The MVP is twice bound. In two brief periods at the end of the first and third quarters, Jokić scored a total of 12 points while being directly guarded by Cody Zeller, a Miami backup who gives off great size and strength when faced with the superstar Denver center. At the end of the third quarter, Jokic scored on Zeller four times in a span of five possession. That set up Jokic’s 31 points on the night and gave Denver an 83-75 lead entering the fourth quarter.
Joki was a scorer who had been doing well up to this point. The offense was generally tap because little of what Joki was doing was forced. Looks like the nuggets were in control.
“He did what he was supposed to do,” said veteran Jeff Green. “When he had to be aggressive, he was aggressive. He makes the right play, he sees the pitch well. I don’t think what they did took him away from getting an assist. If he’s going to be that aggressive, other players can figure out how to be effective on the court. It’s not about him.” It’s just us waiting to try and get the Joker to figure out how to get the ball to us. We have to figure out how to be aggressive. It starts with the defensive end and then we move to the offensive end.”
It was the defensive end that spoiled everything for the Nuggets in the fourth quarter of game two. Miami started the period tied at 13-2, as Denver allowed only a handful of three-pointers during that period that were the cause of the collapse of every medley. The Heat recorded seven consecutive possessions to start the period. It was a dreadful showing by the Nuggets that gave them few opportunities to outrun their offense. It’s hard to run through a defense, especially a strong and well-trained defense like Miami, who always has time to adjust itself. The best option in this scenario was often Jokić’s solo recording.
“They put us in their rhythm, and we didn’t want to play that way,” Jokic said.
Teams want to limit Joki’s ability to engage his teammates. Early in his career, the famous Denver center said he grew up wanting to be a good passer because an assist makes two people happy. So it only makes sense that he would start off with some joy from the Nuggets offense attempt To make Jokić drive get the bulldozer and cut scoring for everyone else.
Only, as Spoelstra pointed out bluntly, doing so just isn’t an option the defense can easily make and implement. For the Heat, the work they were able to do defensively on Sunday was aided by them shooting 17 of 35 shots from 3-point range, many of them coming from the wide-open kind of looks they just didn’t make in Game 1. That’s their biggest problem. Nuggets are at this critical stage in the series.
“It was definitely a disconnect,” Mallon said. “It was definitely a breakdown in our game plan, and we weren’t nearly as disciplined as you have to be in the NBA Finals.”
Much of the remainder of this series will be played in the half court. Miami is very defensively good in transition to give Denver free rein to run. So the Nuggets need to more efficiently counter the face-zone defense that Miami has deployed in this series. They began to find answers late in the fourth quarter, when Murray sensed three defenders closing in on him and passed him to Gordon for a 3-pointer that cut the lead from 12 points to nine. And when Murray moved to the perimeter of the field after Jokic’s attack rebounded, he caught a cross from the middle and hit a long-range shot that reduced the lead to three points.
“We screwed up a lot of things that could be controlled,” said goalkeeper Christian Braun. “We know that’s not who we are and we’ll have him back for the next game.”
Joki will adapt to whatever Heat throws at him after that. But if the game again demands that he light up the scoreboard, it doesn’t have to be the kiss of death for the Nuggets.
“I trust Nicola,” Malone said. “He’ll read the game. He’ll read how he’s guarded, and he’ll also choose his positions that he knows. No matter how he guards, we need him to score and be aggressive and look to score. Whether it’s 41 points, just four assists, or 25 points and 15 assists, Nicola, The only thing I trust in him is that he will do the correct reading over and over again.”
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(Photo by Nikola Jokic and Aaron Gordon: AAron Ontiveroz / Getty Images)