MIAMI — For 56 years, from the first game the Rockets rolled out that red, white and blue ABA basketball to the first time Nikola Jokic’s magic made us believe it was no longer an impossible dream, everybody who loves hoops in Colorado has been waiting for this day.
The Nuggets are coming home to claim a championship.
And you better believe there’s no stopping them now.
Denver beat the Heat 108-95 to take a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals and move one victory away from the first championship in franchise history.
“Let’s go Nuggets!” chanted feisty fans from Colorado, shaking South Florida with Rocky Mountain thunder, while staging a takeover of the Kaseya Center.
And on this Friday night, the Nuggets did it without Jokic being their most dominant player.
“We are not scared of the moment,” Jokic said.
Although Jokic finished with 23 points and 12 rebounds, he did not score in the final 18 minutes, 29 seconds, of Game 4. sitting in foul trouble during the most crucial minutes of the fourth quarter, when Miami was desperately scratching and clawing to make a comeback.
“You know all season long, the non-Nikola minutes have been kind of a crap shoot,” coach Michael Malone said.
Malone admitted there were times when it so pained him to watch the action with Jokic alongside him on the Denver bench that he had to peek through the fingers of hands covering his eyes.
These Nuggets have grown into champs too legit to quit by discovering their swagger doesn’t have to stop when Joker takes a seat. With Denver ahead 86-76 with 9:24 remaining in the final period, the two-time MVP picked up his fifth foul when Heat center Bam Adebayo sold a flop as an offensive foul that Jokic could not believe.
Now I’m not one to waste my breath cursing referees or waste my money buying conspiracy theories, but at that moment it seemed as if the NBA might’ve been wishing and whistling for a way to extend this best-of-seven-series as long as possible.
But Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon and Bruce Brown refused to let the Nuggets succumb to negative thoughts or the fighting spirit of Jimmy Butler and the Heat.
“Our offense might not be as beautiful as it is with Nikola,” Malone said. “But the five guys out there are defending.”
For five agonizing minutes and 15 long seconds that Jokic took a seat to nurse five fouls (and take weight off a gimpy ankle he rolled early in the contest), the Nuggets stared down the challenge of Miami, allowing the Heat to cut the deficit by only a single point.
Brown scored 11 of his 21 points in the final quarter, with an aggression to the rim that Miami coach Erik Spoelstra suggested shook his players’ confidence to get defensive stops.
“Remember, when I first came into the league, I couldn’t shoot,” said Brown, forever grateful Nuggets general manager Calvin Booth gave him a shot to play point guard when the rest of the league left him wanting for offers in free agency last summer.
During this lopsided series, one point has repeatedly been hammered painfully home to Miami. When Aaron Gordon decides to go beast mode, there’s very little the Heat can do except get out of the way and wince.
Gordon, who humbly took on all the dirty jobs of a role player after being a star in Orlando, led all scorers in Game 4 with 27 points, a playoff career high. Maybe the basketball gods owed him this one. “He sacrifices himself, and that’s why I think the one upstairs gave him … the game that he had,” Jokic said.
Alex English, the leading scorer in franchise history, watched in wonder on television from afar, and took to social media to salute “the others” who carried Jokic and the Nuggets back to Denver for the most-anticipated game in team history on Monday.
“We’re just focused, dialed in and ready to do this thing,” said Murray, whose 12 assists were a testimony to the leadership and direction he offered teammates with Jokic in foul trouble.
“We’re just ready to win a championship. We have the tools to do it. It’s been on our minds for a while. We’re just locked in. I don’t think you’ve got to overthink it. We’re just dialed in, ready to win.”
Are you ready for this, Nuggets Nation?
Back in Colorado, Ball Arena was filled to capacity for Game 4, with championship-hungry fans cheering the heroics of the others on the big screen, celebrating the Nuggets’ fifth-straight victory on the road in these playoffs.
“I have to give a huge shoutout to the 18,000 fans in Ball Arena,” Malone said. “I remember when I first got to Denver, we couldn’t get 18,000 fans in that building when we were there.”
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