GameTime Reacts to Nuggets Winning Championship | 2023 NBA Finals

The Miami Heat threw every punch they had, but the Denver Nuggets are 2023 NBA champions. This franchise has waited longer than any other in league history to win it for the first time. But here in June, the Larry O'Brien trophy is now a mile high. Welcome in, everybody. It's game time live at the finals presented by YouTube TV. Great to have you with us here on the confetti-covered floor at Ball Arena. Here with NBA champions Isaiah Thomas, Steve Smith, Brendan Haywood, I'm Matt Weiner. Game five was a grind, as you would expect in a do-or-die situation with Miami on the floor. Brendan, there was nothing pretty about this, unless you're a Nuggets fan, right now. Yeah, the game wasn't pretty, but a lot of times these situations, it isn't going to be pretty. Both teams know each other well. They're playing hard. They're scrapping. They're getting after everything. There's a lot of pressure. There's a lot of moments. We saw a lot of missed shots tonight. But at the end of the day, the Denver Nuggets were able to make enough plays, whether it was offensively or defensively, to be able to pull out this game. Well, it came down to the first couple games where the Miami Heat couldn't rebound with the Denver Nuggets. And then the best player on the floor was the best player on the floor, and that was Jokic. If you look at his shooting percentage, look at his rebounds, look at the way he made plays down the stretch. Timely plays, took advantage of the zone, posted up against the zone. Everything was in the paint for Jokic and the Nuggets, and they won the grind-out game like Brendan Haywood talked about. As usual, he took what was given to him. He hit 12 of his 16 shots. Jokic goes for 28, 16 boards, 4 assists, and he is the Finals MVP. Not only is he the Finals MVP, but I love the way he's brought the big man back. And the way he's played, the way he's conducted himself throughout this season. He's had an MVP season, MVP of the Finals, even though he didn't win MVP of the regular season, he was right there. I mean, he's been fantastic the whole year. Nikola Jokic and Michael Malone have been spending a lot of time together over the last eight seasons. That's Jokic's brothers celebrating with Coach Malone. That is awesome. What a great scene. A lot of those here tonight. Denver's been waiting a long time to celebrate again. This franchise began as an ABA team in the 1960s. Came over as one of four teams in the merger from the ABA after making the ABA Finals. But never even a Finals trip in the NBA until this spring, and now an NBA championship. And we'll get into this later. But a team that should contend for years to come because their core group is all well south of 30 years of age. But for now, it is time to celebrate the nuggets of five-game win over the Miami Heat. Game as they were. Denver, it was pretty obvious from the beginning of this series, was a better team. We always talk about the Heat culture and how hard they play and how together they play. But they ran into a team that played just as hard, that plays just as together, but they happen to have the best player on the floor. And so with Jokic making plays down the stretch, whether that was in the zone or whether it was surprisingly his defensive plays as well, stepping up on screens, getting his hands on balls. They were able to overtake Miami simply because at the end of the day, the talent won out. Yeah, I mean, so much talent on this roster. But I think also people don't realize so much size at every position. If you look at the Denver Nuggets, from point guard all the way to Jokic, massive. Eric Gordon, people don't realize Michael Porter Jr. is 6'10". And give him a lot of credit today. A double-double, didn't shoot the ball particularly well, but found a way to make an impact on the glass, points in the paint for him. He struggled shooting it, but he came up with a big game with a double-double when he had 16 points and 13 rebounds. When you talk about that size, where it really shows up is in the rebounding category. You know, I rebounded Miami 57-44, using their size, using their length. And, you know, in that fourth quarter, the defense really held Miami to 18 points, and that's what showed up for them. Just 38 points in the second half for Miami, who again struggled during the regular season with offense. Found lightning in a bottle in the early rounds, particularly against Milwaukee. And stunning the number one seeded Bucs, but offensively just couldn't hang with Denver in this series. Yeah, listen, at the end of the day, we know this team. They play very well defensively, and they scored at times. But they reverted back to who they were in the regular season when we talk about what happened in this series. Denver started playing real-life defense. They started paying attention to detail. And I think the size that Smitty and Isaiah were talking about on the rebound, I think it bothered them defensively. Those closeouts from Aaron Gordon, they look a little bit different. Michael Porter at 6'10". KCP getting those passing lanes, they were able to close out, take away those open looks. And outside of game two, where Denver admittedly said we didn't come out with the right focus, outside of that, Miami didn't have any good offensive games in this series. That's right. Well, consider Bam Adebayo, who played his butt off in this series, but coming into tonight's game, was 13 of 36 from the paint. I don't know what the numbers were tonight for him, but he struggled with Denver's length, whether it was Jokic or Gordon or whoever was over there. Yeah, and again, as we said at the start of the show, Denver really had all the answers to the test. Everything that Miami threw at them, they had a counter for. Everything that Miami tried to do offensively and defensively, Denver had a counter for it. Denver really was the best team in this series. They were the best team throughout the NBA this year. And nothing they did in this series surprised us. They were just steady and consistent all series long, and this whole game proved it. Yeah, and I will say to Miami Heat, give Bam Adebayo and his whole group a lot of credit. I think for Bam, he competed on both ends. He needs a sidekick. He needs somebody with size. You better give him some relief because he had the rebound. He had the pass. He had the score. You know, they were never making excuses, but they were. I was missing Tyler Hero, Victor Oladipo. They just, frankly, ran out of gas. Playing those two playing games, I think, also hurt them as well. Well, you also saw Eric's post was struggling with who to put in when Bam wasn't on the floor, who to put in beside him. He went to Zeller at times. He went to Love at times. He wasn't sure what to do. There's just not a lot of size on that team. And he mentioned Tyler Hero. That's the storyline tonight as well. We were under the impression that he was available. Eric's post said he was available tonight for Game 5. I guess we maybe incorrectly assumed he would make an appearance at some point, but never did see Hero in a game where they, frankly, could have used some kind of shot maker. Yeah, but it's just really tough to put somebody in. In Game 5 of the NBA Finals, a closeout game, a guy that hasn't played in two months. You're talking about making sure that he has his legs underneath him. He's up to game speed, caught up on the game plan, everything else. And the guy just simply hasn't played a lot of basketball. I'm not surprised that Spoelstra didn't put him in in this type of situation, especially with the way they've gotten good minutes out of Duncan Robinson, Struess, and Gabe Vincent, and Caleb Martin, all playoffs. So, Nikola Jokic with the goggles on, the ski mask, getting a champagne shower inside here at Ball Arena. We've got much more to get to here, including guests out on the set. Nobody wants to leave inside. The place is still pretty packed with kids and Nuggets fans and family and personnel getting on the stage to get photo opportunities. Hey, man, they've got to get it all in tonight, man. Get it all in tonight. We haven't had a whole team win a championship on their home floor in a long time, man. A long time. It has been a little while. Trying to think of when that was. Milwaukee. Yeah. It was Milwaukee, yeah. After that, it was probably Gold State, right? But it was a great celebration here, though. Great celebration. Nuggets win it 94-89. It was a disastrous start for Denver, who had four turnovers in the first two and a half minutes of this game, ten in the first quarter after just eight in all of game four. And you were wondering if maybe this was going to be a game two type performance from them in terms of the focus that Michael Malone has talked about. Denver came out a little tight offensively. They were turning the ball over. But give them credit. They didn't let their bad offense make them fall asleep defensively. There's some teams that when they're not doing it defensively, they have that woe is me attitude. They put their head down and they start giving up shots. Even when the shots weren't falling, even when they were turning it over, you would see a great hustle back by guys like Contavious Caldwell-Polk to get in on those plays on some of those turnovers. So they weren't playing at a high efficiency level early on, but the hustle was there from the jump. Well, there's Nikola Jokic who's done something no player has ever done before. He led all players this postseason in points, rebounds, and assists. And keep in mind, the Nuggets only played 20 games because they only lost four times in the playoffs. Hey, Zeke, you're a Finals MVP. Is this the greatest playoff run that we've seen in NBA history? I had to go to an MVP on this one. In terms of the player. Of a player, not a team, just a player. I would have to compare this to what Shaq did. Okay. Because Shaq's run was unreal. Right. And it was something that we didn't know if we would see that type of dominance again from a center because the game was evolving and changing. But to see the Joker do this at the center position where the game right now is so heavily weighted for the small player and the perimeter player to have a center come in and do this when, you know, really everything is stacked against the big man, you know, it's pretty impressive. He keeps barging into more and more exclusive clubs. He's now one of just ten players in NBA history with multiple regular season MVPs and a Finals MVP on his resume and he's 28. You know, man, Brendan asked the question. I would agree with Isaiah. It's been some dominant performance. I don't know if we've seen anything this efficient. I mean, you talk about a Finals closeout game. Yeah. It's 12 for 16. Yeah. I mean, most big guys are getting dunks. I don't know if he got a dunk in this series. For him to be able to have this type of touch, it was guard-like, Zeke. Yeah, yeah. You talked about it. You said that we go from Shaq to Wilt to Isaiah. We compared him to littles, mediums, smalls in every era, which is special because he's still young and I see more hardware in his future, big-time hardware. Well, it's hard not to. He was 12 of 16 tonight and, as usual, took whatever was available to him. I don't know that he forced a shot the entire series, which, again, there are folks out there who haven't watched a ton of Denver basketball. They'll be watching now. This is who Nikola Jokic is. Yeah. And so this is why at the beginning of the season, and it was never anybody on our network, but when people were saying this guy was stat-padding and things of that nature. Who said that? I won't tell you say who, but it was a lot of people. It really infuriated me because when I watched him play, as a big man, I marvel at what he's able to do. He doesn't force shots. He takes them when they're there. He'll pass up a good shot to get a great shot. There's times where he could easily shoot a floater, but he understands the importance of getting Aaron Gordon that lob dunk. Aaron Gordon has to play all this hard defense. Let me reward my guy and give him a quick dunk real quick so he feels good. You got to feed your dogs if you want them to hunt. Jokic understands that, and offensively, he's as skilled as anybody from the post position that we've ever seen. Yeah, not only is he skilled, but he's a great teammate. Yes. Not only is he a great teammate, he's become a great leader. And, you know, when you have that leadership, good teammate, and then he's your best player, then he's putting the work ethic in also behind it. You really laid the foundation for, you know, some success for a long time. And when you look at Murray, you look at Malone, and you look at Jokic, right? They got the coach, they got the one, and they got the five. So they really have everything lined up, you know, for the next couple of years, and you can kind of build around that. I mean, they got it going on here in Denver. You know, I would add, Isaiah, they have a lot of youth. Yes. These guys are still young. And I also would look at is, going back to Jokic, to Brendan and to what both of you guys said, it's so crazy to see a guy not need a lot of touches to be able to be this effective. Even at the center spot, you see people asking for the best part, and rightfully so, the best players. But he's able to get other guys shot, make other guys feel good, and still get his 30, 20, and 10. I haven't seen anything like this. And have the gravity that we talked about during the Steph Curry Championship years, where the opposing defense has to react to wherever he is on the floor. How often did you see, during the finals, some smaller heat defender bent over at the waist, trying to keep Jokic from getting inside the free throw line? And those are the tough things. There's a lot of guys that want to go out there and shoot those step-back jumpers and face-up that are big men, but Jokic is willing to go out there, run the court hard, roll to the basket hard, seal inside, get big. Those things matter. Little things become big things. If you want to be a champion, you have to be complete, especially as a big, and you still have to be able to dominate in that paint. I know we love the three. It's the three-point era. But when you can go ahead and dominate inside that charged circle area, that means something. I don't think big men get any more pleasure out of disrespecting a little man just trying to guard him. For sure. I mean, because it's disrespectful for a small man to try to guard a big in the paint. And then when a big actually lets that small guy know, not only am I bigger than you, but you're in my area, you're in my zone, and I'm going to punish you. And we saw Jokic do that this whole series. Every time he was matched up with a smaller person, Matt, as you said, and I'm sure they'll show pictures of that smaller guy like trying to hold Jokic off, with all that weight leaning on him, right? I don't think the league now is going to continue to do that with him. Now, they may do it with other centers, but with Jokic, he's making you pay. It's important when your bigs know how to play big. There's some guys that are 7'1", that never go inside. Yeah. It's important when your bigs know how to play big because when they switch to pick and roll, you can throw it inside, dominate, and then when they start doubling, triple-teaming you, you spray to the perimeter, and then you get those easy threes.