The Denver Nuggets have won the first game of the National Basketball Association (NBA) best of seven finals series. The 104:93 home win against Miami Heat on Thursday (local time) was ultimately a clear thing, as Miami was only able to reduce the deficit to under ten points briefly in the final minutes, but remained inferior for long stretches of the game in Denver.
The Nuggets around their best player Nikola Jokic, on the other hand, made a successful start to their first NBA final series. Jokic had a triple-double from 27 points, 14 assists and ten rebounds. His teammate Jamal Murray contributed 26 points and ten assists. “We have great respect for this team. We just wanted to land the first punch. They won their first away games and we didn’t want that to happen,” said Jokic.
“The most important thing right now is to win a game. I know I don’t need to score to dominate a game. It’s a great win for us.” In the first three quarters, Jokic only had five shots at the basket. Looking ahead to the second game on Tuesday night, the Serb said: “We’re not giving up, they’re not giving up. It’s going to be an interesting series.” It takes a team four wins in the finals series to win the NBA championship.
Nuggets stay in rhythm in the final
In Heat, Bam Adebayo was the best shooter with 26 points, Jimmy Butler had 13 points. Except for 5: 4 and 7: 6 early in the first quarter, the guests had no lead, they were noticeably inferior to the nuggets. Although Denver was nine days off after beating the Los Angeles Lakers 4-0 in the Western Conference Finals and Miami were still active against the Boston Celtics three days earlier, the Nuggets had the better rhythm and looked more alert.
