How Nuggets and Heat are preparing for Game 3 of the NBA Finals | SportsCenter

The Nuggets traveled to Miami for game three tomorrow night. We got you covered on this story. The Nuggets have won three straight on the road, but it has been a struggle defensively. They're outscoring opponents by 10 at home and allowing just over 103 points per game. On the road, their defensive rating increases and so does their points allowed per game. They face a Heat team that had another come-from-behind victory in game two. The Heat have seven double-digit comeback victories, tied for the most in the last 25 playoffs. I don't pay attention to stats, not gonna lie. I've said that all along. As long as we win, everybody's playing great. If we lose, and I hope we don't do that too often, everybody can blame me for whatever reason. Not worried about it, but nobody can blame anybody for anything whenever we win. You know, they're a really intelligent team, really smart, they have really smart players, Jimmy, Ben, Kyle. As a team, they know what they want to give up or whatever. They're really intelligent from the coach to the players. We've been in positions like this before. I mean, it's the first loss in seven games, I think. So we're not doing a bad job. We just gotta refocus, sharpen our mentality, and like I said, be more deliberate on both ends of the floor and we'll be fine. Sounds like Jamal Murray is taking advice of Michael Malone after Sunday night's loss. Senior NBA reporter Brian Windhorst joining us now with much more. Wendy, what key this Heat team defensively on Sunday night? Yeah, Kevin, there's been a lot of focus on what the Heat have done to Nikoli Jokic, but their game plan was really more targeted at Jamal Murray. They switched Jimmy Butler to be his primary defender and the effects were profound. Murray was not able to get as much space. He had 35 fewer touches in game two than game one. That led to eight fewer points and seven fewer shots, and that included his fourth-quarter fury. So as the Nuggets prepare for their strategy for game three, look for some new wrinkles in their offense to be able to get Butler off the ball or at least to get the ball into Murray's hands more to get that really difficult-to-stop two-man game between Jokic and Murray revved back up. Okay, from the offense to the defense from Denver, they allowed the Heat to shoot an astounding 49% from three in game two. Open shots, they didn't make them in game one. Open shots in game two, the Heat made it. So what is Denver doing to try and rectify that before tomorrow night? Yeah, the Nuggets had what I have to imagine was a pretty nasty film session here in Miami this morning where Michael Malone showed them 17 different clips where he felt that they had breakdowns on defense to allow the Heat clean shots, whether it was focus, whether it was strategy, whether it was just plain laziness. He felt that it led to more than 40 Heat points, and he is promising that that film session which where the players were encouraged to openly call each other out and deal with the situation, he is pretty much assuring that he is going to see a different level of effort in game three tomorrow night from his team. Oh, young Masuk who's with the Nuggets and Nick Friedel who's covering the hometown Heat. Let's start with Denver here. The Nuggets have had nearly 48 hours to digest Michael Malone's blunt message about their lack of effort in game two. Oh, what are the players saying about turning the corner going into tomorrow night? Well, first of all, Kev and Elle, we are missing you here at the beautiful cleat in Key Biscayne. Okay. But I'm not... Nick and I are not the only ones that have gotten out here in Miami. The Denver Nuggets upon arriving in South Beach went out and took a field trip, if you will. One player told me they got on a bus. It was players and select coaches, and they were wondering where they were going. It took an hour to get to Jeff Green's South Florida home. Upon getting there, they said they had a beautiful dinner. Jamal Murray said they were able to forget about game two. He said the place was so far away, he joked it was in Narnia. I don't know if there's a Narnia in South Florida, but this is where the team bonded, and they are resilient. They feel like they've bounced back several times in this postseason, now facing a 1-1 challenge going into game three. They're confident they can turn things around. They're going to need Michael Porter Jr., hopefully, to feel good vibes from that dinner. He's shooting three for 17 from behind the arc so far in the finals. Porter Jr. said today that if he gets the same looks, he's confident he's going to be able to knock them down. He just needs more intensity and more energy, especially on the defensive end as well, and I would also expect that he's going to be cutting to the basketball and not settling for just outside shots. And keep in mind, Denver was outscored by 15 points in game two when Porter was on the floor, enjoying his best life at his home. Elle, to you. Yeah, Miami was enjoying their best lives downtown. Three-point shooting rebounded significantly for Miami from game one to game two. They made a higher percentage of their open looks from deep. Overall, they hit 17 threes. That's their most in any finals game in franchise history and hit nearly 49% of their attempts after shooting just 33% from behind the arc in game one. As we say hello to our NBA reporter, Nick Riedel, who joins us there to talk more about the Heat. We knew that Miami would have to bounce back from deep. I mean, it didn't get much worse than in game one, but it did beg the question of how potentially Tyler Hero could fit in, when or if he should return. What's the latest on him? Elle, we just found out from the Heat Tyler Hero is out for game three. The word came down about 45 minutes ago. Eric Spolster told us after practice he still hasn't been cleared. They are not comfortable yet with him playing in games. He's gone through contact for about a week, but he's just not ready to play. He's been out about six weeks after that injury, and it remains a question as to whether or not we will see him. What Spolster was trying to make sure everybody was clear on is if and when Hero does return in this series, don't expect that much. We're talking about a guy who has missed a lot of time, who figures to be off the bench playing maybe 10 or 12 minutes, but Spolster did not want to say any definitive timeline. He said, I'm not Notre Dame. I don't know what's going to happen. Hero absolutely would provide a little balance off the bench offensively, but the Heat are still so confident, Elle, that they'll find a way, and it's been the whole reason they've gotten to this point in the postseason, and it continues to be that belief that is the engine behind what is driving them. And Malika Andrews joins us now with much more live from South Florida. Malika, what was your biggest takeaway in your conversation with Bam? Well, certainly, it's very clear that Bam and the Miami Heat, Kevin, are so focused, not on just one more win, but getting the three more that are going to be required, as you heard him just say. They're so focused on that. But for Bam on a bio, I asked him if he's allowed himself to envision what it would mean to him celebrating with his mom. He told Marcus Thompson of The Athletic that pressure, hitting those two free throws with 48 seconds left in game two, that wasn't pressure. Pressure is what he experienced growing up on an income of $12,000 a year and watching his mom try to make it work. One of the proudest moments of his career thus far was being able to buy his mother a home. And so he said, I can't quite let myself get there yet. I can't quite close my eyes and say, yes, I can envision that because he knows just how much it would mean to him, how much it would mean to her. But he says he thinks back to that a lot when he's in these moments, when the weight of the world is on his shoulders. That's what he thinks about, the weight of the world being on hers. And he is hoping that he is going to get that embrace, embrace with her with the Larry O'Brien Trophy once the Miami Heat are the first team to four, as they've said over and over again. Plays a big role in understanding the mindset of this team. They are so mentally tough, especially in the fourth quarter. And despite winning that game, game two on the road, the Nuggets though are two and a half point favorites as we head into tomorrow night in Miami. Malika, thank you so much. We heard Mike Malone, Denver's coach, talk a lot about how that 2-2-1 pressing zone is really bothering the flow of his offense. Where specifically do you think the Heat are causing so much disruption? Slowing down pace, and I think Denver's contributing to it by not moving the right way and occupying the right areas that you need to against the zone. I think first, they're trying to make them eat some clock because Denver's initial surge is a big part of their offense. They get a lot of secondary shots out of that. So just making them eat clock coming up the floor as you see them do right here. By the time they actually reverse this ball to the top, the clock's at 15. So you've already burned nine seconds. Now, I also don't like this. Jokic just stays in the middle of the entire possession. You need the ball in the middle, but not with a guy just occupying it. You need the guys to flash into the middle. Spacing is bad. Four guys down on the baseline. Nobody lifted to the wings. So the passing angles aren't good once it does go down into the middle or the short baseline. Here again, you don't start this set until you're 16 on the clock. Again, Jokic just sort of wrestling guys in the middle of the floor, not really occupying. And then when that ball comes back to Bruce Brown, it just shows a little bit of a lack of poise. You catch the basketball, you still have 12 seconds on the clock. That's a time where you get into a gap, hit, move, get a reversal, let Jokic occupy the three areas on the floor he needs to, which is the two baseline spots in the middle of Falun. They're just not doing that, and they're playing into the hands of the Heat. Heat are phenomenal at communicating where they need to be in the zone. They practice it more than any team in the league. They play it more than any team in the league for a reason. They're good at it. But when you just stay stationary, and you're going to run Jokic to one spot the entire possession and camp him there, boy, does that bail out the Miami Heat defensively from having to talk about where he is and getting an overreaction to where he is. Now you free up guys for driving angles and three-point shots. They just didn't do that in the second half of game two. Yeah, I was going to say, the Heat are having great success with that zone defense, particularly in the fourth quarter where the Nuggets are only shooting 37% from the field against the zone. Tim, you've been a great addition to the show, but we're going to leg you go. Okay, I appreciate it. And there, and I'm not proud. You know what's sad is that I actually, like, really think about those things as well. Coming up, game three, Wednesday, 830 Eastern, ABC, game three of the NBA Finals. Remember, you can also watch it as it's streaming live on the ESPN app.