Nuggets capture first NBA title by winning Game 5

DENVER — Confetti flying in Denver. The Nuggets passing around the NBA championship trophy. For decades, those scenes seemed impossible. More recently, they started feeling inevitable. And on Monday night, they finally turned into reality.

Nikola Jokic bailed out his teammates with 28 points and 16 rebounds on a night when nothing else seemed to work as the Nuggets won the NBA title for the first time in their 47 seasons by outlasting the Miami Heat, 94-89, in an ugly, frantic Game 5.

Jokic became the first player in history to lead the league in points (600), rebounds (269) and assists (190) in a single postseason (even before Monday, he was the first player to record 500 points, 250 rebounds and 150 assists in a single postseason).

He won the Bill Russell Trophy as the NBA Finals MVP — an award that he said has more meaning to him than the two regular-season MVPs he won in 2021 and ’22. “We are not in it for ourselves, we are in it for the guy next to us,” he said. “And that’s why this [means] even more.”

Unable to shake the tenacious Heat, the Nuggets missed 20 of their first 22 three-pointers and wound up 5-for-28. They missed seven of their first 13 free throws and finished 13-for-23.

Denver led by seven late before Miami’s Jimmy Butler (21 points) scored eight straight points to put the Heat ahead by one with 2:45 left.

Butler made two more free throws with 1:58 left as Miami regained a one-point lead. Then Bruce Brown got an offensive rebound and tip-in to give the Nuggets the lead for good.

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope hit two free throws with 24.7 seconds left to make it 92-89. Butler missed a three-pointer with 15 seconds left and Brown sank two free throws to put the game out of reach. When the Heat’s Kyle Lowry missed a long three-pointer and Caldwell-Pope pulled down the defensive rebound with 9.3 seconds left, the Heat didn’t even bother to foul, allowing the clock to run out.

Asked how it felt to finally be a champion, Jokic said, “It’s good. It’s good. The job is done. We can go home now.”

Ugly as it was, the aftermath was something the Nuggets and their fans could all agree was beautiful. Fireworks exploded outside Ball Arena at the final buzzer as Denver won the title for the first time in the franchise’s 47 years in the league.

“It was ugly and we couldn’t make shots, but at the end we figured it out,” Jokic said. “I am just happy we won the game.”

Bam Adebayo scored 20 points for the Heat, but Miami shot 34% from the floor and 25% from three-point range. Before Butler got hot, he was 2-for-13 and had eight points.

The Heat, who survived a loss in the play-in tournament and became only the second No. 8 seed to make it to the NBA Finals, had insisted they weren’t into consolation prizes. They played as if they expected to win, and for a while during this game, which was settled as much by players diving onto the floor as sweet-looking jump shots, it looked as if they would.

“Those last three or four minutes felt like a scene out of a movie,” coach Erik Spoelstra said. “Two teams in the center of the ring throwing haymaker after haymaker, and it’s not necessarily shot-making. It’s the efforts.”

True to the Nuggets’ personality, they figured out how to win a game that went against their type. Their beautiful game turned into a slugfest, but they reached their goal anyway.

“What I was most proud about is, throughout the game, if your offense is not working and your shots are not falling, you have to dig in on the defensive end,” coach Michael Malone said.

“That’s why basketball is a fun sport,” Jokic said. “It’s a live thing. You cannot say, ‘This is going to happen.’ There are so many factors. I’m just happy that we won the game.”

Before this season, only two teams founded before 1980 — the Nuggets and Clippers — had never been to an NBA Finals. The Nuggets took their name off that list, then joined San Antonio as the second original ABA team to capture the NBA’s biggest prize. The other two ABAers, the Pacers and Nets, have been to the Finals but lost.  

“You live vicariously through these guys,” former Nuggets great LaPhonso Ellis said as he pointed to the big scoreboard announcing the Nuggets as champions. “And to see that there, ‘2023 NBA Champions’ here in Denver, that’s so cool, and I’m honored to be a part of it.”