The Denver Nuggets have reached the goal of their dreams: After 47 NBA seasons, the team is champions in the best basketball league in the world for the first time. The Miami Heat will miss the next comeback.
The Denver Nuggets won the NBA title for the first time in their history. The basketball team around the again strong leader Nikola Jokic won 94:89 against the Miami Heat and thus achieved the necessary fourth victory in the fifth game of the final series.
The Serb Jokic was the best thrower of the game with 28 points and 16 rebounds. “It was a great effort by the team”said Jokic. “There are so many factors. I’m just happy. It feels good. The job is done, we can go home now.”
Coach Michael Malone: ”We want more”
With his little daughter on stage, Jokic accepted the award for Most Valuable Player of the Finals. With an average of 30.2 points, 14 rebounds and 7.2 assists, the 28-year-old topped the playoffs in five games, as before. No one has had more points, assists or rebounds since the end of the main round than the Nuggets center.
“We believed in each other. Yes, trophies are something. But our team chemistry will survive this when we finish our careers,” said Jokic. His trainer Michael Malone announced further title wins until then: “We are not satisfied with one. We want more”, he shouted to the fans.
Missed pass by Jimmy Butler
The Nuggets quickly turned a 0-5 early in the game into a 12-5, but then lost the thread and were seven points down at 44-51 at the break. Only towards the end of the third quarter did the hosts regain the lead. In the final quarter, the game was wild for minutes, in the meantime the two teams missed a total of ten shots in a row and their game lacked any structure. As Miami had serious chances for their second win in the closing minutes, a Jimmy Butler miss with 28 seconds left gave Denver the decider and a three-point lead.
Denver had finished the main round at the top of the Western Conference and prevailed in the playoffs against the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Phoenix Suns and the Los Angeles Lakers. The Miami Heat only made it into the playoffs in eighth place – and then threw the Milwaukee Bucks, the New York Knicks and the Boston Celtics out of the competition as underdogs. However, there were no more comebacks for the team against Denver as in the previous rounds.
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Nugget’s first NBA champion: “The job is done”
Miami lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2020 and to the San Antonio Spurs again in 2014 in the NBA Finals and has to wait ten years after the last championship so far for its fourth success.