Nikola Jokic’s iron fist

The magic of the Miami Heat stayed in Denver. It is, this one from Erik Spoelstra, a team that plays in these playoffs in a sort of alchemical communion that does not admit gray: either it grips the rival with its mortar of defensive variants and takes out the scythe from the line of three or it sinks with a crash. With hardly any middle ground. It handles few variants of talent, few versions beyond that of the suicide command. When it works, and boy is it working in these playoffs, the Heat turn opponents into caricatures and gain psychological edge advantages that they prey on like vermin. When it doesn’t work… there’s no left anything. An infinite downhill.

Y the day it was supposed to work, it didn’t work. And there is not much more to say, surely. The Nuggets won (94-109) a game that they had to win. They responded to the first one to their sinking on Sunday, recovered the home court factor and took the hinge point: with the Finals 1-1, the winner of the game 3 is champion 80% of the time. But beyond the mathematics, it remained to be seen how the Nuggets managed frustration, those doubts that consume every theoretically superior team every time they hit it against these Heat. The vertigo of having to take the mallet out of your track, where in regular season they lost more games than they won. All responses were positive. This is a team prepared to be champion, ends up being it or not. And now, after returning the Finals to the course of the first game, they are once again favorites. Maybe, clearly favorites. Tomorrow Friday, in fact, they can leave the tie shivering, cases cases sentenced.

and is that this is, finally and above all, Nikola Jokic’s team. A superior player right now, impossible to explain. And surely destined to reign.

The Heat’s impossible shell blew up in the third quarter, in which it went from 49-55 to 63-82 with an ominous silence eating away at the Kaseya Centerwhich hosted a Finals game for the first time since 2014. The game entered the rhythm and style of the Nuggets, and there is no possible option for the Heat, who live on short circuits, ghost dynamics. With the engine in the gears that suit those of the Rockies, there is no discussion. Nikola Jokic scored 12 points on that night-changing tear, and we’ll see if the Finals. And he finished, you have to read it several times to believe it, with 32 points, 21 rebounds and 10 assists. The first 30+20+10 in the fight for the ring. And the fifth in the playoffs… but three are his, two in this 2023. The others, by Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. This time there will be no debate about whether the magician from Sombor, an enlightened player right now, threw a lot or a little, if he was more facilitator o aggressor: he did everything, all the time and everything well. Beside him, Jamal Murray came out of the reverie of three days earlier with a formidable first half, in which put in flour to his team and responded to the initial blows from the Heat, who hit stand. The Canadian scored 20 fundamental points, hacks of pure talent, before the break, AND finished with 34, 10 rebounds and 10 assists.

A couple in NBA history

Jokic y Murray son the first teammates with a triple-double of at least 30 points each in the same game. In all of history and in all the games that have been in the NBA. They, Of courseThey have also done it in one of the Finals. They are also the first on the same side with at least 30 points and 10 assists per head in the playoffs since Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter in the 1992 Blazers, who lost to Michael Jordan in the Bulls’ second ring.

With warrior finesse, Jokic and Murray unloaded an incessant rain that soaked to the bones to some Heat whose plan first got stuck, then capsized and finally jumped into the air with a roar whose shock wave will be difficult for it not to reach tomorrow’s game. The work ahead of Spoelstra is colossal, and he will have to start by rallying a battered, battered army. His idea was good, the presentation promising. but they failed too many things, allowed too much logic and they went to limbo too many triples (11/35). When Jokic has 9 or more assists, the Nuggets win. If the Heat do not reach 35% in triples, they pass them canutas. This time the two things coincided and those from Florida are already up to their necks in water. This is a 2-1 that seems like something more than that, a kind of two and a half to oneIf you understand what I mean.

Jokic and Murray, their night for history, served as lifeguards for their team, a constant presence. They did what they have to do Super stars in a night of long knives. They made up for the concentration errors (again) of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and They left in anecdotal another dark game by Michael Porter Jr, denied in the shot and desperate in defense. The talent of the franchise playersanchor and goalkeeper, bought time for Aaron Gordon to find his positions under the rim, against smaller forwards, and cleared the field which he then dove into the open grave. rookie Christian Braun (22 years old), who put energy and a smile from ear to ear at the funeral of a sunken rival, without answers. Without scythe and without zombie powderwithout comeback in the last quarter. When the 63-82 became a disturbing (although not so much) 70-82 with almost the entire last quarter to play, Murray and Jokic slammed the door for the final time (72-94, seen and not seen). Not today, for all the hell. Not today.

The rebound made a bloody difference (33-58), an extra possession for the Nuggets with which the Heat are left without a calculator. After losing only one ball in the first half, and playing very physical and with clear ideas but little success, there was no foothold this time. nor triples of the undrafted (bad Vincent and Strus, late Robinson), no zones nerve-wracking No mind games. Jokic and Murray handled each other with divine superiorityruled all the cardinal points of the party.

In the all-star war, Bam Adebayo (22+17+3) did what he could. He lacked precision, but it seems like an abuse to demand much more of him seeing what he has on him with Jokic. Jimmy Butler, with fewer excuses except for that foot that is surely worse than he says, was below what his team needs, far from that version of worker superhero that we haven’t seen for a long time. He finished with 28 points, but had little momentum when the game was going tight. AND many shots fell short again, too many from good positions in the area. An ominous affair, if the Heat want to hold onto this 2023 Final that once again points unequivocally towards Denver. And more if Spoelstra does not invent something, whateverfor tomorrow’s game. Almost a checkmate.