Maybe it was the thin air. Perhaps it was fatigue in their 21st game since the end of the regular season. Or just an inevitable reversion towards normality for the postseason’s greatest overachievers.
Whatever it was, it was quickly clear that anyone tuning in to the first game of the NBA finals on Thursday in the hope of witnessing a stirring mountain tale starring a brave band of odds-defying underdogs should have switched off the game and streamed The Sound of Music instead.
The most flagrant cause of the wide margin of victory was the Miami Heat’s failure to rack up enough points from distance, especially from open looks early in the game.
How many three-point attempts did the Heat miss? Well, count the number of car commercials during the breaks in last night’s broadcast and double it. That’s roughly how many. Put it this way: if this series goes seven games, you can forget about the US meeting its Paris Agreement climate commitments.
Miami’s one-third conversion rate – 13 from 39 attempts – was below their lamentable regular-season average of 34.4%, the fourth-worst in the league. Max Strus went 0 for 9. Yet before this game, Erik Spoelstra’s side were the best shooters from afar in the playoffs, making 39%. They couldn’t atone from the free throw line at Ball Arena – remarkably, they were restricted to only two attempts, the fewest in playoffs history.
The Denver Nuggets dominated from start to finish in front of their fans in the franchise’s first ever NBA finals game. At one stage Denver led by 24 points. The deficit was cut to a mere nine points in the last three minutes – for a couple of seconds. It was exciting, in the way that a plate of broccoli might seem exciting if the only other food in your house is a bag of brussels sprouts.
The 11-point difference in Denver’s 104-93 victory even felt a tad meager given the extent of their superiority. Always competing, not quite competitive, the visitors scampered and sweated but the Nuggets smoothly kept them at arm’s length with an oleaginous ease that seemed almost condescending.
With 27 points, 14 assists and 10 rebounds, Nikola Jokić notched a triple-double in his finals debut. Where was the Serbian’s putative rival for series MVP? Jimmy Butler was virtually irrelevant.
The 33-year-old, who sold outrageously overpriced coffee in the 2020 lockdown bubble and is now reportedly trademarking plans for a beverage range, entered the venue wearing a T-shirt that read on the front “Take Us There”. He didn’t. Butler did lead the Heat with seven assists, but contributed only 13 points, his lowest tally of this postseason. This was not the Playoff Jimmy who’s been so instrumental in the Heat joining the 1998-99 New York Knicks as the only other eighth seed to reach the finals.
This was Passerby Jimmy, a passive performance (by his pugnacious standards) that impelled a reality check rather than the continued suspension of disbelief invited by Miami’s improbable toppling of the Milwaukee Bucks, Knicks and Boston Celtics to reach this showpiece. No longer, on Thursday’s evidence, do Miami loosen while their opponents tighten.
After all, the sixth-seeded 1994-95 Houston Rockets are the only team seeded below fourth to have ever won the championship. After all, while the Heat beat Boston in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals as recently as Monday, relaxed and rested Denver hadn’t played since 22 May. And prior to Thursday, Miami had won only one of the previous 10 meetings between the teams.
“We shot a lot of jump shots, myself probably leading that pack, instead of putting pressure on the rim, getting lay-ups, getting to the free-throw line,” Butler told reporters.
With Butler decaffeinated, Bam Adebayo impressed on offense, top scoring for the Heat with 26 points. He was, however, less successful at his primary (and virtually impossible) task, keeping Jokić quiet.
Ominously for Miami, Jokić took only three shots in the first half yet provided 10 assists as Denver racked up a 17-point lead. “I don’t need to shoot, and I know I don’t need to score to affect the game,” he said afterwards on ABC. He was admirably aided by a 26-point night from Jamal Murray.
The 28-year-old two-time league MVP melds the surgical and the sublime like no one else. “Nikola never forces it,” the Nuggets coach, Michael Malone, told reporters. “He’s going to just pick you apart.”
On the positive side for Miami, at least they carved out some opportunities to miss. More clinical shooting, allied to their ever-present intensity, will make the task much harder for Denver in the coming games. “I love those looks that those guys get,” Spoelstra said, calling his players “ignitable. … I love it when they see a couple, two or three go down; that can turn into five or six.”
Also, the back of Butler’s pre-game T-shirt bore the message “Four More [wins]”. That’s still the case, so he can re-use it for Game 2 on Sunday.
On the other hand, the second meeting is also in Denver, where the Nuggets are now 9-0 in the postseason this year. If the words on Butler’s top still hold true after that game, it’s hard to see how Miami, for all their experience and resilience, can ultimately prevail against a better team with the best player.
