2023 NBA Finals

24 thoughts on championship-clinching Game 5 of 2023 NBA Finals

Instant observations and the best of NBA Twitter from the Nuggets' championship-clinching Game 5 of the 2023 NBA Finals as it happened in Denver on Monday.

Brian Martin, for NBA.com

Nikola Jokic delivered a Finals and playoff run that was unmatched in NBA history.

The Denver Nuggets are 2023 NBA champions after a thrilling and hard-fought 94-89 win over the Miami Heat in Game 5 of the 2023 NBA Finals. It is the first championship for the Nuggets since joining the NBA as part of the NBA/ABA merger in 1976. Larry O’Brien served as NBA Commissioner when the Nuggets joined the NBA and now 47 years later, the Nuggets hoisted the Larry O’Brien Trophy for the first time as league champions.

1 – What a game! It may not have been the prettiest basketball ever played, but Game 5 was a classic as the teams battled for the full 48 minutes. It felt more like a Game 7 than a Game 5, which was key for the Nuggets to match the desperation of a Miami team playing to keep its season alive. The play was frenetic and sloppy at times, but in the end the Nuggets made enough plays down the stretch to win the title on their home floor.

2 – Coming as little surprise, Nikola Jokic won the Bill Russell Finals MVP award in a unanimous vote. As has been the theme throughout the Finals, Jokic made more history on Monday, becoming the first player to ever lead all players in points, rebounds and assists in a single postseason.

3 – Once the final buzzer sounded and the realization sank in that the Nuggets had won the title, the emotions took over for Jamal Murray, who battled back from an ACL tear in April 2021 to get back to the player he was before the injury. As the Nuggets embarked on this playoff run, there was talk of “Bubble Murray” being the key to Denver making a championship run, harkening back to Jamal’s outstanding, prolific performances in the 2020 playoffs at the Orlando bubble. Yet “NBA champion Jamal Murray” did it mostly through distribution, not scoring.

4 – When Murray was interviewed by ABC’s Lisa Salters following the trophy presentation, the Ball Arena crowd erupted in cheers, acknowledging the blood, sweat and tears that Murray put into his comeback to help this Nuggets team reach its full potential.

Murray also joined some elite company with his first Finals run, becoming only the fourth player to ever average at least 20 points and 10 assists in the Finals.

5 – But this Denver title was about a team, not just their star duo. After Jimmy Butler hit a pair of free throws to put the Heat up by one point, 89-88, with 1:58 to play, it wasn’t Jokic or Murray who scored the final six points of the game to seal the victory.

Instead, it was Bruce Brown that delivered the two points that put the Nuggets up for good, following up a missed Murray fadeaway jumper with a strong offensive rebound and putback with 1:31 to play.

6 – Oh, and don’t forget about KCP. Between the third and fourth quarters, the Nuggets put out a statement that Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was questionable to return with a right wrist sprain. But with 6:42 left to play, the only Nugget with an NBA title prior to Monday returned to help the Nuggets close the game.

For the second straight game, KCP made a huge defensive play on Jimmy Butler late in the fourth. In Game 4, he stripped Butler as he made a move to the basket in the final five minutes with the Heat trying to rally to set up a Nuggets transition basket. In Game 5, Butler drove on Murray before Jokic cut off the lane and force Butler to pick up his dribble and look for an outlet. His pass was intercepted by Caldwell-Pope, who was then fouled with under 25 seconds to play and sank both free throws to make it a three-point lead.

7 – Those clutch plays were needed because Jimmy Butler and the Heat were not going to go quietly into the night. Butler had struggled all game, scoring just eight points through the first 3 1/2 quarters on 2-for-13 shooting. But once clutch time arrived, so did Butler. In a 2 1/2 minute burst from 4:29 to 1:58 in the fourth quarter, Butler hit back-to-back 3-pointers, was fouled on a 3-point attempt and made all three free throws, hit a pull-up jumper and sank two more free throws.

During that stretch, the Heat went from trailing by seven to leading by one with under two minutes to play. But the Nuggets held Butler and the Heat scoreless the rest of the way, closing the game on a 6-0 run.

8 – That stretch by Butler epitomized the Heat’s improbable run to the Finals. Miami showed resilience and confidence to put up three straight 3-pointers after being ice cold for nearly the entire game. It also showed determination to ignore the odds and fight for what you want to achieve.

9 – The Ball Arena crowd was ready to celebrate from the moment the Nuggets took the court for warmups. There’s loud and there’s one win away from the first championship in franchise history loud:

10 – The Heat made news in the lead up to Game 5, changing Tyler Herro’s status to questionable early in the day, then available once the game was getting closer to tip off. In the end, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra decided against bringing Herro back from nearly a two-month absence with Miami’s season on the line. When asked about it after the first quarter during an interview with Salters, he kept the possibility open, but ultimately never pulled the trigger.

“We are going with our usual starters, normal rotation, and we’ll see how the game plays out.”

11 – Had the Nuggets lost this game, they would have pointed to two areas of concern: 3-point shooting and free throw shooting. Denver was abysmal from 3-point range for much of the game, making only 3 of 23 attempts (13%) through the first three quarters of the game; Murray and Michael Porter Jr. both went 1-for-5, while Caldwell-Pope went 0-for-4, Brown went 0-for-5, and Jokic had the only other 3-point shot made in his three attempts.

The Nuggets were 2-for-5 from 3-point range in the fourth quarter: one by Murray in the opening minute of the period, which pushed Denver’s lead to four and forced a quick Heat timeout. The other came from Caldwell-Pope with just over four minutes to play as the Nuggets had to match the 3-point barrage coming from Butler.

12 – The other missed scoring opportunities for the Nuggets came at the free throw line, as Denver shot just 13-for-23 (56.5%) for the game, their worst performance from the foul line this entire postseason by nearly eight percentage points.

Of course, getting the win renders those struggles meaningless, but had Miami finished their rally and this series had to go back to the 305, the Nuggets would have been kicking themselves the entire plane ride.

13 – Speaking of kicking yourself over a missed opportunity, the Heat have to feel like they let a game they should have won slip away. Miami led 51-44 at halftime, but it felt like it should been up by double digits based on how poorly the Nuggets were playing. Murray had more turnovers (three) than made baskets (two) in the first half, coming off a game in which he finished with 12 assists and zero turnovers. Murray summed up the situation perfectly at the end of this mic’d up clip from the first half: “We’re in a good spot. For everything we’ve done offensively, we’re in a good spot.”

14 – Bam Adebayo was a bright spot for the Heat in the opening half, nearly posting a 20-10 game in the first 24 minutes alone.

However, the second half was a different story for him, who had just two points on 1-for-7 shooting and three rebounds while playing 23 of 24 minutes.

15 – During the regular season, Porter shot 41.4% from 3-point range, which ranked 18th in the NBA. However, that jumper abandoned him in these Finals, as went 4-for-28 (14.3%) from 3-point range, including a 1-for-6 showing in Game 5.

However, the clinching game proved to be Porter’s best overall performance of the series, as he finished with 16 points on 7-for-17 shooting (6-for-11 on 2s), 14 rebounds and three assists in 34 minutes, his most since Game 1. And the one 3-pointer he did hit in Game 5 was a big one; it came with 1:31 remaining in the third quarter to give the Nuggets a 69-66 lead, their first lead since it was 18-16 in the first quarter. For Porter, it was his first make from deep since the 3:50 mark in the first quarter … of Game 2.

16 – Have to give a shout out to Mike Breen for calling his 100th career NBA Finals game. ESPN celebrated the milestone by putting out this 100 second clip of classic Breen “BANG” calls and some of his other standout calls from past Finals prior to the game.

Ironically, Game 5 did not give us a “BANG” call. I thought he was tempted to yell it when Murray hit his 3-pointer early in the fourth quarter, but he remained silent. My guess is that Breen was saving the “BANG” for later in the game. And Butler’s flurry of 3-pointers was another opportunity; had Jimmy made that heat-check corner 3 where he was fouled by Gordon and earned free throws, that would have been deserving of the trademark call.

17 – We discussed the Nuggets’ struggles from deep, but we also have to mention Miami’s struggles from the paint. They opened the game shooting just 1-for-8 inside the paint — again not taking full advantage of Denver’s slow start — before putting together a string of layups and shots at the rim to boost that percentage. But at the end of the game, Miami shot just 41.5% in the paint — 15-for-21 (71.4%) in the restricted area, but just 7-for-32 (21.9%) from the rest of the paint further from the rim.

18 – We have to call out a couple of individual plays that will be seen on highlight reels for a while. The first was this between the legs dribble by Porter on a transition drive to the basket for the finish.

This sequence was set up by a great defensive play by Jokic to poke the ball away from Gabe Vincent as he got set to rise up for a jumper in the paint. Porter made the recovery and went 1-on-2 against the Heat transition defense, hit the around-the-back, between-the-legs crossover and finished the right hand on the left side to tie the game.

19 – Then there was this ridiculous block by Gordon on a Kyle Lowry jump shot attempt with just under seven minutes to play in the game. Gordon stayed close to Lowry as he drove toward the lane and pulled up from 21 feet. Gordon swallowed the shot with his right hand and emphatically slammed it to the court where it was recovered by Christian Braun to give Denver the possession, up by three points.

20 – How much did Jokic want to close out this series on Monday? Take a look at the emotion he displayed on the bench during a Nuggets time out in the second half. It’s rare to see Jokic show that level of anger toward his teammates in a game, but you can’t argue with the results after Denver closed the game out. 

21 – NBA fans remember the famous Kobe Bryant press conference, when a reporter asked why he wasn’t happy being up 2-0 and Kobe responded with a classic line: “Job’s not finished.”

 

Now we can add this classic line from Jokic: “The job is done. We can go home now.”

22 – First, we got to see Jokic celebrate the title with his family, then we got to see his brothers tossing Nuggets coach Michael Malone in the air in a GIF that will be part of Nuggets lore for a long time.

 

23 – When it was time to select the Finals MVP, there was no doubt as to the winner as Jokic was the unanimous choice of the 11 voters inside Ball Arena. The 41st overall pick in the 2014 NBA Draft had a Finals for the ages in his first appearance on the championship stage.

24 – After winning back-to-back league MVPs and being a finalist for a third this season, critics of Jokic pointed to his lack of playoff success to attempt to lessen his accomplishments. Now he’s added the Bill Russell Finals MVP trophy and brought the Larry O’Brien trophy to Denver for the first time ever, Jokic and the Nuggets earned quite a mic drop moment for any critics that remain.

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