Let’s hope Nuggets coach Michael Malone saved room in his suitcase for that timeout to take with him on the trip to Miami. Or maybe he ate it as a midnight snack. For whatever reason, Malone took home a timeout from a 111-108 loss to the Heat in Game 2 of the NBA Finals.
It is moments like this when a player, coach and team write basketball legacies. On this sad Sunday night, the Nuggets played like chumps instead of champs, failing to give the effort required to beat the desperate Heat.
“It’s the (bleeping) Finals,” Nuggets veteran Jeff Green said. “Our energy has to be better.”
Know what’s worse? This team’s mental fortitude could use a good swift kick in its tender feelings.
Nikola Jokic was as good as any MVP can possibly be, scoring 41 points. But it wasn’t good enough, because guard Jamal Murray failed to come up big with a chance to send the game to overtime on a 3-point shot at the buzzer.
“I think you guys have seen me hit that shot enough,” Murray said. “It was a good look, it just didn’t go down.”
OK, stuff happens. But because the “Blue Arrow” missed the target, Malone is open to second-guessing.
When Nuggets guard Bruce Brown collected the basketball off a missed Miami shot with 11 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, Malone could’ve called a timeout and designed a play. He instead stood back and watched Murray try to be a playground hero.
“Their half-court defense was giving us a lot of trouble in the fourth quarter. You take a timeout and let them get set,” Malone said.
While we’re contemplating the book of regrets for a shockingly unfocused and undisciplined effort by a Denver team performing on basketball’s biggest stage, would somebody kindly inform forward Michael Porter Jr. the NBA Finals allow no nights off, and a player paid an average annual salary of nearly $35.8 million is expected to show up?
MPJ was a big, fat zero in Game 2. He scored only five points and lost his focus. A player with a silky shooting stroke is now an atrocious 3-of-17 from beyond the 3-point arc in the Finals.
Yes, Porter’s game has matured from the time he was strictly a catch-and-shoot specialist, with more consistent defensive effort applauded and appreciated by teammates. But when his shot isn’t falling, the “P” in MPJ can still stand for pouting.
Malone cited players on the court “feeling sorry for themselves, for not making shots.”
Don’t know about you, but that sounded like a shot fired by a frustrated coach at MPJ.
The Nuggets are better at basketball than the Heat. But there’s no better coach in the league than Erik Spoelstra, whose demeanor is a pastel shade of Miami breezy compared to Malone’s chew-the-furniture competitiveness.
Did Spoelstra just figure out the trick to unnerving the Nuggets?
Before the revolting developments of a soggy spring evening in Colorado put my big plans to attend a victory parade in the Colorado sunshine on hold, the Nuggets were 9-0 at home and had lost only three previous times this postseason.
And know what’s wacky? Jokic’s three biggest scoring games of the playoffs have happened in three of four times Denver has taken the “L” in the playoffs.
Could it be this is the master strategy against the Nuggets? Let Joker score. Take away his passing sorcery by daring him to shoot. Then sit back and hope his teammates fall asleep at the switch.
“That’s ridiculous. … The untrained eye says something like that,” Spoelstra insisted. “You can’t just say: ‘Oh, make him a scorer.’”
Maybe that’s true, but this same counterintuitive approach worked once for the Phoenix Suns, when Jokic scored 53 in Game 3 of that series, but Phoenix prevailed to win. And way back in the opening round, Minnesota grabbed its lone victory of the opening round when Jokic scored 43 in an overtime loss.
With all eyes in the basketball universe on him, Joker is ready for his close-up. But during this loss, the Nuggets cowered in his shadow.
In a Denver locker room that thinned out quickly after a disgusting defeat, veteran Jeff Green cursed the fact intensity could be an issue in the Finals. Although the Nuggets appeared to be on the verge of blowing Miami out of Ball Arena during the second quarter, Murray said even when Denver had the lead “it felt like we were trying to climb back in the game, energy-wise and intensity-wise.”
Lack of effort? Inexcusable. “This is the NBA Finals and we’re talking about effort,” Malone said. “That’s a huge concern of mine.”
But here’s an even bigger concern: In defeat, the Nuggets seemed to be all caught up in their feelings. A postgame smoothie sat in the locker of Porter, who was nowhere to be found. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope exited through a side door. Aaron Gordon said he wasn’t feeling well.
For the first time since the playoffs began, adversity is staring Denver in the eye.
Will the Nuggets blink?
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