How I'm thinking about Nuggets vs. Heat

Nikola Jokic is inevitable. But are the other Nuggets? What happens if the Heat lock them down four times?

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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The Land of Cockaigne; Pieter Bruegel the Elder; 1567

The NBA Finals tip off Thursday at 8:30 PM Eastern on ABC. I have some preview links down below, and of course I’ll be here to recap and riff off of each game per usual.

What I’m struck by in thinking about the match-up — the dominant West No. 1 seed Denver Nuggets and the plucky, tough East No. 8 seed Miami Heat — is that there are several ways this could go right for Denver and one or two ways this could go right for Miami.

But those one or two ways are really compelling.

Can the Nuggets beat Heat? OF COURSE. The Atlanta Hawks beat the Heat this postseason. The Chicago Bulls almost beat the Heat. The Heat are capable of losing badly against anyone without much intrigue, even in the playoffs. The Nuggets dominated the plucky but flawed Timberwolves, dominated the high-firepower Suns despite Devin Booker playing like MJ, dominated the Lakers despite Anthony Davis and LeBron James putting up asychronous all-time performances.

The Nuggets can beat anybody, and the Heat can lose to anybody. There are any number of recipes in which this results in a Denver championship.

Nikola Jokic dominates from the tip and spins Bam Adebayo and Kevin Love/Cody Zeller/Haywood Highsmith/Omer Yurtseven out of the series? That can absolutely happen. Even if Denver doesn’t win the series, that probably happens. Jokic has proven his dominance this postseason, in which the Nuggets are 12-3 and an undefeated 8-0 at home. Adebayo is a phenomenal defender and Erik Spoelstra is a master magician. Jokic breaks all attempts to hem him in. He’s like Giannis Antetokounmpo in that you have to shape your gameplan to focus on him, and yet trying to stop him is futile. He’s a hurricane you can’t ignore but also can’t really do anything about. You’re just focused on minimizing the damage.

Denver can win if Jokic is merely human and Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. get hot. Denver can win with a big Kentavious Caldwell-Pope series, or a Bruce Brown series, or an Aaron Gordon disruption series. Also, Denver can win if Miami just goes ice cold for a few games, or if Jimmy Butler (finally) tires out, or if the Heat offense just grinds to a halt and starts pressing, which leads to turnovers and bad shots. If Caleb Martin starts playing like a player waived by the Charlotte Hornets two years ago instead of an All-Star. If Duncan Robinson gets attacked until he’s out of the rotation. If Jimmy Butler doesn’t get to the line. There are a million ways Denver can win this.

Miami only needs one.

The Nuggets have been dominant this postseason, something none of the Heat’s East opponents were. This has led some to indicate that this proves the West was stronger than the East, that because the Bucks and Celtics were punked by the Heat and the Sixers were in turn punked by the Celtics, by extension the Heat had a softer path to the Finals than the Nuggets. This is ahistorical. The Bucks and Celtics were much better all season than any team Denver beat in the postseason, and have done more as player cores than the Wolves, Suns or Lakers.

The Nuggets beat:

• A core with no playoff series wins (Minnesota)

• A core that played fewer than a dozen games together before this series (Phoenix)¹

• A core that had been No. 11 in the West until the last month or so of the season, which missed the playoffs entirely last year and which lost in the first round the year prior (L.A.)²

Denver gets credit for beating the teams in front of them, of course, and they beat them all handily. The Nuggets are 3-1 in potential close-out games. That’s great.

The Heat beat:

• A core that won the 2021 championship and had the best record in the NBA (Milwaukee)

• A core that … uh yeah, not very decorated (New York)

• A core that won the East last year and had the second best record in the NBA (Boston)

Downgrading the excellence of Milwaukee and Boston because Miami beat them removes credit from the Heat for actually doing the job. I think it’s simplistic to use Miami’s victories against them.

This is a long way of saying that the Heat are capable of beating anyone. They have already beaten two teams that were on paper better and more decorated than the Nuggets. So any idea that it’s just ludicrous to think Miami can win this? I find that unconvincing. Miami can do this.

How?

I think it comes back to the last few years of the Denver Nuggets. Jokic is incredible. I think there’s now a strong case that he’s the best basketball player in the world. You just … can’t do anything with him. And no one has been able to do anything with him for like four or five years! He’s universally dominant on offense at a level we rarely see from anyone — peak Durant, Curry, peak Miami and 2nd-tour Cleveland LeBron.

And yet, last season with Jokic playing just like this, the Nuggets were the No. 6 seed and were destroyed in the first round by the Warriors.

In 2020-21, with Jokic playing like this, the Nuggets were the No. 3 seed and got swept easily out of the second round by the Suns.

In the bubble, with Jokic playing masterfully, the Lakers blasted them out of the Western Conference Finals in five after the Nuggets went seven against the Jazz and Clippers.

This is all to say that Jokic has been a megalith for years now, and this is the first time Denver has gotten this far. Why? Because ultimate team success requires strong contributions from more than one player. The Nuggets were missing two of their top four players last season, so of course they fell far short. The Nuggets were missing their second best offensive player in 2021, so of course they fell far short. The Nuggets didn’t have defense-first complements like Aaron Gordon in 2020, so of course they fell just short. There are valid excuses in every dominant Jokic season as to why the Nuggets only got as far as they did. It’s really not a knock on Denver — I don’t think you can point to a single series they have lost in the Jokic era that they should have won.

But all this history is a roadmap to how the Heat beat the Nuggets: you create a new valid excuse for Denver by preventing Murray and Porter from being Murray and Porter.

Trying to stop Jokic is a fool’s errand. Jamal Murray? You can make offensive life much more difficult for him, and you can run actions to try to wear him down on defense. (Miami has shown no compunction at torturing targets with Jimmy Butler isolation. They did it to a limping Jayson Tatum in the second half of Game 7.)

Trying to stop Jokic is a fool’s errand. Michael Porter Jr.? That’s tough due to MPJ’s combination of size and athleticism, plus his reliable range and much improved consistent effort. But I bet Spoelstra and his staff have some ideas. I’ll say this: I think MPJ has been hugely improved this season, but he’s not an All-Star level player. And while he’s shot well throughout his playoff career, it wouldn’t be a shocker if he struggled in his first Finals series with an ace defensive team trying to slow him.

Denver hasn’t won at this level in recent years due to missing Murray and/or Porter, even with Jokic playing like a god. So what happens if Miami causes Denver to get lesser versions of Murray and Porter? Locking up Jokic seems impossible. Locking up Murray and/or Porter? That seems more feasible, especially when you consider that you don’t have to do it successfully seven times … you just need to do it four times in seven games.

However, you also need to get enough offense to take advantage of those defensive victories, and that’s where Miami has had the most trouble all season long, including at times in the New York and Boston series. Assuming Butler figures prominently in the Murray resistance and that Adebayo has, uh, a significant defensive workload, it’s going to be up to the Caleb Martins and Gabe Vincents and Duncan Robinsons and Max Struses and Kyle Lowrys and maybe Tyler Herros to get buckets against a team with some strong individual defenders and a good overall system. Miami is always capable of putting up 80 in a night, so limiting the damage beyond Jokic isn’t a sure win. At the same time, we have seen Miami get its offense cranking at a high level long enough to win games and series.

To me, that’s how this series shakes out: if Miami can limit The Other Guys enough to turn this back into Jokic vs. Everyone, they have a chance to win four games. They did it to Boston (Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart, Al Horford) and they did it to Milwaukee (Jrue Holiday, Brook Lopez, Khris Middleton). Jokic as the centerpiece is a different beast because in addition to getting his own lunch he’s going to be working to feed Murray, Porter and Aaron Gordon against Miami’s will. We’ll see how well that works.