Fire up the fire trucks and clear the parade route. After 47 years, the first NBA championship is Nuggets history is guaranteed.
The rest of the Finals is a mere formality, requiring nothing more than three more victories and 1,000 mea culpas from every knucklehead who doubted Denver.
“Three more to go,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone told me Thursday as he walked back to the Denver locker room after a 104-93 victory against Miami in a game not as close as the score would indicate.
If this dominating performance was any indication, all the Nuggets need to do is keep chips on their shoulders and competitive snarls on their faces, and those three W’s will be a foregone conclusion.
Game knows game. In defeat, Heat president Pat Riley, who has won nine NBA championships as a player, coach or executive, sought out Malone in the hallway of Ball Arena to offer a warm handshake, paying the respect to the Nuggets that knuckleheads like Nick Wright from Fox and Kendrick Perkins from ESPN have been painfully and ignorantly slow to demonstrate.
The Heat is an upstart No. 8 seed from the Eastern Conference that wears Cinderella slippers but carries a sledgehammer. Three times Miami had gone on the road to open a series in these playoffs, and three times, against Milwaukee, New York and Boston, the feisty Heat had stolen Game 1 on the road.
Not this time, Cinderella.
“Have we lost Game 1?” asked guard Jamal Murray, rubbing his chin, demanding I recite the history of how his Nuggets have taken control of series against Minnesota, Phoenix and the Los Angeles Lakers from the jump.
“No,” I told him.
That’s the answer Murray wanted to hear.
“I think we’re doing good,” he said, a hint of a sly grin forming in the corner of his mouth.
Do you believe in omens? During this playoff run by the Nuggets, Nathaniel Rateliff has been texting his buddy Malone photos from the music studio as the Night Sweats put the finishing touches on a new album.
Any guesses who sang the national anthem? “I made sure to walk over to halfcourt to give Nathaniel and everybody in the band a hug,” Malone said.
From the moment Rateliff sang the final words of an oh-so-Colorado version of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Game 1 of the Finals was no sweat.
After center Nikola Jokic made two free throws to put the Nuggets ahead 8-7 a little more than three minutes into the first quarter, they never trailed again
How to describe these Nuggets, who during a 13-3 run through the playoffs have trashed Karl-Anthony Towns, dispatched Kevin Durant, humbled LeBron James and are now threatening to do all that and more to Jimmy Butler and the Heat?
Well, to steal a line from Rateliff, this Denver team is a son of a …
Jokic is the No. 1 player in the world, but on a night like this, when Joker doesn’t even have to the best player on the court for his team, the Nuggets can’t be beaten.
With Miami center Bam Adebayo aggressively denying entry passes in the low post to Jokic early in the evening, the two-time MVP was all too happy to stand on the perimeter and feed teammate Aaron Gordon, then delight in watching him play bully ball against smaller Heat defenders.
Murray carried the scoring burden through as the Nuggets built their lead to as many as 24 points. But, in the end, there were Jokic’s fingerprints all over the box score and this victory, with yet another triple-double in this playoffs, grabbing 10 rebounds, dropping 14 dimes and needing only a dozen shots to score 27 points.
Prior to tipoff, Malone likes to give the Nuggets a pop quiz on the game plan.
“He didn’t ask me nothing,” Jokic said.
And the Heat has no answer for the best player on the planet.
Miami’s arms are too short to box with Denver’s championship destiny. In a matchup against the Nuggets, it doesn’t require hours studying the videotape to conclude:
The Heat is just too small, y’all.
Go find where you stashed your favorite folding chair in the garage, Nuggets Nation.
You’re going to need a comfy seat for the victory parade.
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