Nikola Jokic has gotten the Tim Duncan comparison before.
A reserved, no-nonsense leader more concerned with winning than anything else, Jokic even admitted he’d modeled his game after the legendary Spurs power forward.
“He always had a counter, but he was so patient,” Jokic said.
Between their shared pace and elite intuition, Jokic is a worthy Duncan disciple.
But veteran Heat point guard Kyle Lowry was asked about Denver’s lethal pairing of Jokic and Murray, and whether he’d ever played a combo as connected as those two.
“I’m pretty old in this game right now,” Lowry said. “I played Tim Duncan and Tony Parker. Honestly, that’s a great combination that I got the opportunity to play against. Jamal and Jokic, they’re deadly because they both can score, pass the ball. They’re big targets, and they have a great feel for each other.”
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra joked he didn’t know where to start with Denver’s two-man dance.
“You have two guys that can score 50 in a playoff game,” he said. “One guy is a triple-double machine that loves to get guys involved. You go down the list of myriad of things you can do defensively, you have to check off some things that you don’t really want to do because of both their ability to score and Jokic’s ability to create something off script.”
Earlier this season, Jokic and Murray drew the Malone/Stockton comparisons, but Parker and Duncan are just as appropriate. Even Michael Malone owes a portion of his coaching success to Gregg Popovich, who helped him land a job in Cleveland.
San Antonio West? Denver would happily take that moniker.
Miami remains unbothered: Rarely, if ever, will you hear an NBA coach whose team went to the free-throw line 18 fewer times than his opponent admit he agreed with the whistle.
But there was Spoelstra saying just that on Saturday.
“I thought the free-throw disparity was appropriate,” he said.
To alter it in Miami’s favor, expect a more aggressive approach in Sunday’s Game 2 and much less settling from the perimeter. That will begin with Jimmy Butler, who admitted he needed to drive more even though Denver has a marked size advantage, especially in the paint.
Butler, like Spoelstra, seemed to be handling the Game 1 loss relatively well.
“Well, my daughter is out here, so ripping and running with her,” Butler said. “Played a lot of Spades. Spades didn’t go too well for me yesterday, now that I think about it. I’m going to do an escape room tonight. I think my guys went and saw ‘Spiderman’ today. Just doing normal stuff, because at the end of the day, I’m as normal as they come. It’s not always about basketball. It will never always be about basketball. That’s how I regroup.”
Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis.
