Miami – The Miami Heat, the team that loves to prove everyone wrong, the team that thinks they’re not hopeless even when they are, find themselves in a new kind of jam now.
It’s not that Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets pulled off the Heat to win Game 3 of the NBA Finals 109-94 on Wednesday night. Well Well He is That is, because you never want to lose a game in the finals, especially at home.
But don’t look at it that way. Take a step back and look at the landscape.
What you’re seeing is a team that started this season phenomenal 11-3…but has now won only twice in the past seven games, thanks in part to Boston’s historically-swinging three-series collapse. You see a team that looks more like a No. 8 seed than one that beat the Bucks, Knicks, and Celtics, respectively.
It’s not over, of course. Game four is Friday Night in Miami. Win that and the series is back up at two games apiece, and we all know the bleaker it gets for this team, the more this team seems to thrive.
And after…
However, if the Heat can win this series, it will be more daring and cunning than pure talent. Perhaps that’s why, in his post-game comments, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra continued to mince what was lacking in his team’s performance that night.
“I think sometimes for us, when we lose a lot of those physical battles — play effort, loose balls, rebound fights — that’s who we are,” Spoelstra said. “And sometimes that can affect the flow of the rest of the game.”
5 Notes: The Nuggets regain home court advantage behind Nikola Jokic’s historic night
The Heat lost those fights. It wasn’t even close. Follow ups? Nuggets, 58-33. points in the paint? Nuggets again, 60-34. It’s not that the Heat never got in, because Denver only took two more shots in the paint than Miami (48 to 46). Call it physical, call it intimidation or call it bad luck, but while Denver was shooting 62.5 percent in the paint, Miami was shooting just 36.9 percent.
“We didn’t offer much resistance,” Spoelstra said.
Jimmy Butler, who finished with 28 points on 11 of 24: “I missed some points that I usually make.”
Butler, Adebayo didn’t get much support
Bam Adebayo added 22 points and 17 rebounds, which sounds like a good start if you’re building on a Heat win on clay. It was too bad because of the amount of clay supply.
Caleb Martin came off the bench, scored eight points in the second quarter, but finished with 10. He Still He was the third highest scorer in the tournament. Miami only committed four turnovers all night, but with a support crew this flat, it didn’t matter.
The truth is, for Miami to have any chance in this series, it will either have to find a way to manage Jokic and Jamal Murray or crack down on the supporting cast. On Wednesday night, the Heat did neither. Jokic scored 32 points, 21 rebounds, and 10 assists for his third 30-point, 20-rebound triple-double in playoff history. Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are next on the list with a team.
This is the type of Uncharted Territory monster that Jokic is.
“He’s 7-foot-tall and can do pretty much everything,” said Kyle Lowry of the Heat.
It is time for everyone to realize this. Jokic is a two-time NBA Most Valuable Player. If you know that, you probably watch a fair amount of basketball. Maybe because he’s playing in Denver, which hasn’t made a splash on the big stage yet. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s a Serb, not an American. But Jokic did not enjoy the notoriety (let alone endorsement) befitting a man of his talents. who do you know Maybe after these finals, he’ll be hanging out with Chuck.
Murray, as Spoelstra pointed out, is the perfect complement to Jokic. He emerged at 32, though the killer might have been Christian Braun, as he came off the bench late and scored 15 points, thus matching his approximate age, based on the look of his adorable face.
Nuggets determined not to let this one slip away
Put it together and it equals an 82-68 Denver lead going into the fourth quarter.
“Hi,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone tells his team during the break between quarters. “The first two games, they won the fourth quarter. Tonight, we won the fourth quarter.”
They did, 27-26, which was enough to send the fans towards the exits with about three minutes remaining. The problem was, with 75 seconds left, Adebayo missed a jumper that would have cut the lead to seven and would have made the fans bang on the doors to get back into the ring.
It doesn’t matter. Spoelstra had already pulled all of his starters except for Adebayo, and it seemed like he swung that there was only one day between games and Game 4’s starters offered Miami’s best long-range hope.
“I’m in the game. I’m in the game,” Adebayo said, a surprised reporter apologizing as he asked for a reaction to the crowd that beat the traffic.
It was the kind of night that was uncommon for heat. A night they kept looking for a spark they never found.
As Spoelstra said after Game 6 of the Boston Series, they have 48 hours to find him.
Sports reporter Hal Habib can be reached at hhabib@pbpost.com And she followed on Twitter @employee
This article originally appeared on the Palm Beach Post: The Heat look like a team that lost ground in a home loss to the Nuggets