DENVER — It’s not the altitude. It’s the Nuggets.

It’s proper to make that distinction after an early glimpse into the 2023 NBA Finals, when the Nuggets ambushed the Miami Heat from the get-go, when Denver thrived with their two-time Kia MVP as a secondary option, when a team that entered the Finals undefeated at home in the postseason … remained undefeated at home in the postseason.

Game 1 went to the Nuggets, 104-93, and quite emphatically at that, leaving the Heat reaching for more answers than oxygen.

The best way to summarize what just happened at Ball Arena is to state the obvious: the Nuggets looked like a No. 1 seed and the Heat looked like a No. 8 seed. Those are the facts, and that was the reality Thursday. That the Nuggets could win a game without leaning too heavily on Nikola Jokic was a salute to their balance and maybe a blow to Miami’s ego.

This was, for the most part, a 48-minute flex by the Western Conference champs. A franchise making its first appearance in The Finals showed, rather clearly, that it belonged. The game plan by coach Michael Malone and his staff was sound and and the execution by the players was sharp.

As for the Heat? Well, Bam Adebayo was pretty good from mid-range. And … and … well, that was about the extent of the damage. There were too many missed shots — poor Max Strus waged a losing battle with his 3-pointers — and not enough of a response when the Nuggets took the game by the throat in the first half, leading by 17 at the break.

And so, here we are. There’s a public tendency to make snap declarations after one game: Therefore, the Nuggets might sweep and the Heat are in serious trouble; so goes the anticipated noise. Expect 48 hours of that chatter, even though, as you know, life comes at teams fast in the NBA Finals. One game means nothing to the next.

The Nuggets will say they won’t get too high, not even when they started at 5,280 feet above sea level, and the Heat will say it’s impossible to fall any harder than the thud reverberating in the Rockies.

With that said, here are Five Takeaways from Game 1:

1. No Joke: Nuggets are complete

Let us put this season, these playoffs and Game 1 in the right perspective: Jokic isn’t hauling a bunch of marginal players anymore. For two seasons he did, tug-boating those teams to the playoffs, earning a pair of MVPs for his early-exit troubles. He was running with Austin Rivers, Will Barton, Bones Hyland and Facundo Campazzo. No offense to any of those guys, but they’re not Michael Porter Jr., Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon.

Right now? While it’s true that Jokic averaged nearly a triple-double through the first three rounds this spring and won the Magic Johnson award as Western Conference Finals MVP, this isn’t Michael Jackson fronting the Jacksons. Jokic has the luxury of picking his spots because Murray (18 of 26 points in the first half) has been blistering, with his mid-range turnaround step-back becoming a signature move.

Others, such as Bruce Brown, have been more than good enough. In Game 1, the Nuggets Other Than Jokic were in such a groove that Jokic just shrugged and kept feeding them the ball (10 assists in the first half alone). On one possession, Jokic established inside position on little Kyle Lowry, waved his hand high … and Brown waved him off to drill a 30-footer instead, shimmying in celebration.

So Jokic took only 12 shots (getting a chunk of his 27 points at the free-throw line), delivering the obligatory triple-double. And at no point were the Nuggets so flustered that they had to pull the Joker Alarm to bail them out.

“It’s hard to guard everybody, instead of just one or two guys,” Murray said. “We make you have to be locked in on defense throughout the game. I think tonight was just a great example of it could be anybody’s night and anybody’s quarter, maybe not your quarter. That’s just Nuggets basketball.”

2. Gordon good at both ends

Aaron Gordon’s aggressiveness from the jump altered the complexion of the game.

The most impactful player on the floor, all things considered, might’ve been Aaron Gordon. He burned those 36 minutes on both sides of the court, assigned with guarding Jimmy Butler and also choosing to assert himself offensively. As a result, Gordon stamped his arrival and, if he keeps this up, Denver will be hard to beat.

Keep in mind that Gordon has had the toughest defensive assignments of anyone in these playoffs and probably in recent history. He had Karl-Anthony Towns in the first round, then Kevin Durant, then LeBron James, now Jimmy Buckets. No rest for the weary. Each of those players presented different challenges and Gordon held his own. None did irreparable damage, nor Butler (13 points) in Game 1.

“I’m definitely going to be sitting in my rocking chair when I’m 79, 90 years old, talking to my kids like, ‘back in the day I locked these guys up,’” Gordon said.

The bonus for the Nuggets was Gordon taking some assertive pills and attacking the basket right after the opening jump ball. This was new and somewhat unusual; Gordon spent much of the postseason yielding to Murray, Jokic and Porter. But he scored 12 of his 16 points in the first quarter with all but one shot at the rim. Shortly after, the Nuggets took control and the lead for good.

“I think Aaron Gordon is a prime example of somebody who’s truly selfless,” Malone said. “He understood with Jamal and Michael coming back this year being healthy that his role was going to change. He never once fought it. He’s embraced it from Day One of the season … (Miami) was switching early on and I felt he was really big in terms of sitting down in front of the rim, scoring in the paint and finishing at the rim. And again, just his effort on the defensive end was just another example of his importance to our group.”

Still on the mission 🏁 pic.twitter.com/zCFd7JzHVE

— Denver Nuggets (@nuggets) June 2, 2023

3. Roll call for Miami’s role players

When asked the other day about the talent surrounding him, Jimmy Butler said he didn’t call them role players: “I call them teammates.” What a classy answer by the Heat’s certified Main Guy, but the lights are now even brighter, and the truth comes out.

So what happened in Game 1? Those undrafted and unheralded teammates fell back on their light resumes, for once. It was rather unusual to see, only because those same players spent the last two months making a lot of teams look foolish for passing them up in the draft or giving up on them.

Strus was, shall we say politely, a mess, a nightmarish 0-for-10 from the floor (including 0-for-9 on 3-pointers, which included a few airballs). Even Rocky, the Nuggets’ mascot, hit a shot — from mid-court at that — by heaving it behind his head during a timeout (the crowd went nuts). Strus has the green light from coach Erik Spoelstra but that light flashed red whenever he let it fly. It’ll be interesting to see if Spoelstra makes any adjustments regarding Strus, who also struggled somewhat in the East finals.

But it wasn’t just him Thursday: Caleb Martin, who averaged 19.3 points on 60% shooting (49% from deep) – including a 26-point Game 7 — came a vote shy of being named most outstanding player in the East finals. In this Game 1, he went 1-for-7 for three points and never got going. Duncan Robinson? He missed five of six. Butler said “we got to get more layups” but Spoelstra wasn’t sounding too worried.

“They are fine,” Spoelstra said. “I mean, they are not going to get sick at sea. If they are shooters, you’re not always going to be able to make all the shots that you want. Then you have to find different ways to impact the game. Our game is not built just on the 3-point ball. We can win games. We can win series, regardless of how the three is going.”

4. Are the Nuggets 1 too much for Heat?

This has been both a treacherous and magnificent postseason run for the Heat. Treacherous, in that Miami faced the East-leading Milwaukee Bucks, then the New York Knicks, then Boston Celtics, all higher seeds who brought more star power and held home court.

So, again: Is Denver one mountain too many? This seemed apparent Thursday when the Nuggets were able to turn to a handful of players and received solid results. Denver isn’t the West winner by accident. And the Nuggets were resolute all season … there’s no fluke here. As for Miami? When those 3-pointers didn’t fall Thursday, the Heat had no Plan B. They scrambled for solutions and didn’t come up with any.

Maybe this is where the journey stops, where the task of running one upset after another finally catches up with a team with only one All-NBA player and one All-Star this season.

“We have a big goal in mind,” Murray said.

5. Denver is where the ‘Ball’ bounces

This is fact — with the Nuggets holding home court advantage, Miami must win at least once at Ball Arena. This is also fact — Miami has won at least one road game in every series so far.

Oh, one more fact: The Nuggets have proven to be invincible at home and that distinction stayed intact through one game of The Finals.

One reason the Nuggets are tough to beat at home? They’re tough to beat, period. But aside from that, maybe we’re just witnessing one of those seasons where a team runs the table on its home court. Their arena belched with noise and resounding support Thursday and demonstrated how much that atmosphere perhaps played a role in rousting the home team all postseason.

“I reminded our group, if they didn’t know, that Miami went into Milwaukee and won Game 1,” Malone said. “They went into the Garden in New York City and won Game 1. They won Game 1 up in Boston. So we did not want them coming in here taking control of the series on our court.”

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Shaun Powell has covered the NBA for more than 25 years. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.

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