DENVER — In the biggest game in Denver Nuggets history, veteran center DeAndre Jordan had a second-half message for star point guard Jamal Murray during a timeout.
“Go win this game,” Jordan was heard saying on the broadcast. “Twelve minutes, bro, and you in history.
“Immortal.”
Murray, Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets heeded the call for history, doing what they have done this entire magical postseason and adapting to any obstacle or defensive wrinkle thrown their way.
After opening Monday night’s Game 5 of the NBA Finals missing an abysmal 20 of their first 22 3-point attempts, the Nuggets came up with championship-winning plays in the final minutes to bring home the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy for the first time in the franchise’s 47 years in the league.
From Jokic’s basket inside with 2:24 left to Bruce Brown‘s putback with 1:31 to go to Kentavious Caldwell-Pope‘s steal off a Jimmy Butler pass with 27.1 seconds remaining, the Nuggets made big play after big play in a hard-fought 94-89 win over the Miami Heat at an overjoyed Ball Arena.
“The job is done, and we can go home now,” said Jokic, who completed an unstoppable postseason by scoring 19 of his 28 points in the second half to go with 16 rebounds and four assists and won Finals MVP honors. He immediately went to shake hands with Heat players after the buzzer sounded.
“They are a great team. … An amazing team that I respect a lot,” Jokic said of the Heat. “It was an ugly game; we couldn’t make shots. But in the end, we figured it out, how to defend. They scored [89] points, and that’s how we won the game.”
His two-man partner, Murray, also came up with some big baskets late, scoring 10 of his 14 points in the second half to go with eight assists and eight rebounds.
“All the hard work, all the sacrifice, all the dedication, all culminated with us winning a championship,” Denver coach Michael Malone said on the championship podium. “But I got news for everybody out there: We’re not satisfied with one. We want more. We want more.”
After scoring a total of 18 points in the previous three games and shooting just 3-for-22 from behind the arc in the Finals, Michael Porter Jr. finally found his game, delivering 16 points and 13 rebounds. And it could not have come at a better time, as the Heat made everything a struggle for the Nuggets in the first half.
As has been the case in these Finals, the Nuggets were more than just Jokic and Murray. Aaron Gordon delivered an emphatic block on a Kyle Lowry jumper with 6:58 to go and the Nuggets up by three that defined how Denver was going to do whatever it took to deny Miami a season-saving win.
Then Caldwell-Pope buried just the team’s fourth trey of the night to give the Nuggets an 86-79 lead with 4:06 left.
But Butler and the Heat would erase that deficit with one final run. While down one with a chance to make a go-ahead basket, Butler picked up his dribble inside and looked for someone to pass to. He threw the ball to Caldwell-Pope, the Nugget who brought championship experience with him from his Los Angeles Lakers days.
Caldwell-Pope would hit two free throws to push the lead to 92-89.
Butler tried one final time to save the Heat season, but his 3 ricocheted off the rim and into Brown’s hands to start the Mile High City celebration.
This night was a culmination of incredible patience by the Nuggets franchise: building around Jokic and Murray; waiting for Murray and Porter to recover from serious knee and back injuries, respectively, that kept them out for extended periods over the previous two seasons; and not making significant changes to the coaching staff or personnel.
“I feel really fortunate that our journey has been one of patience, one of drafting really well and developing those players,” Malone said Sunday, on the eve of Game 5. “And then adding the right pieces around them.
“Everybody does it differently. Some teams want to mortgage their future and go get the surefire player, the All-Star. For us, there’s never been a rushed mentality. That starts with the ownership. The Kroenke family has been phenomenal since day one allowing this thing to play itself out and not overreacting to other bumps in the road. I think there are other teams in this league that are looking at how we have done it, smaller-market teams, how we’ve done it. I think more teams will try to kind of make this a blueprint.”
For Jokic, this championship stamps his status as the best player in the NBA. After winning two regular-season MVP awards, there was still doubt in some corners about whether he is the best player in the game.
Jokic finished the postseason with a combined 52.9 points, rebounds and assists per game, the second most in NBA history, according to ESPN Stats & Information research.
This story originally appeared on ESPN
