If someone told you on good authority that sharpshooter Michael Porter Jr. and one-time NBA champion Kentavious Caldwell-Pope would shoot a combined 5-for-22 from the field—and just 2-for-14 from three-point range—over Games 2 and 3 of the NBA Finals, that would’ve been fair reason to suspect that the Nuggets would drop both games.
Instead, Denver came within a Jamal Murray three-point try of sending Game 2 to overtime and created an insurmountable lead midway in the third quarter of Game 3 in large part due to the efforts of rookie wing Christian Braun, who took over the contest at times Wednesday.
Braun repeatedly took advantage of a Heat defense preoccupied with stopping Murray and two-time MVP Nikola Jokić by sneaking undetected along the baseline for back cuts and duck-ins. He also had a pair of enormous plays in transition during the second half—one coming off an interception he took the other way for a dunk—that fed the Nuggets loads of momentum on the road, where Denver had struggled this postseason.
