The Miami Heat managed to leave Game 2 with a big win over the Denver Nuggets, bringing the series to Miami for Games 3 and 4 with homecourt advantage for the series.
Nikola Jokic scored 41 points in Denver’s loss and only dished out four assists. This led to a pretty rudimentary question from Ramona Shelbourne about the Heat turning Jokic into a scorer, something Erik Spoelstra shut down immediately.
“That’s ridiculous. It’s the untrained eye that says something like that. This guy is an incredible player. Twice in two seasons, he’s been the best player on the planet. You can’t just say, ‘Oh, make him a scorer’. That’s not how they play, they have so many different actions that just get you compromised. We have to focus on what we do, we do things the hard way, and that requires us to do many things the hard way. He has our full respect.”
Erik Spoelstra shut down Ramona Shelburne's question about turning Jokic into a scorer or a passer quickly pic.twitter.com/PxcWQNN5w4
— CJ Fogler 🫡 (@cjzero) June 5, 2023
There are some patterns with Jokic’s scoring and Denver’s results that would indicate Shelbourne may have had a point when she asked the question. The Nuggets are 0-3 in games Jokic has scored more than 40 points in the playoffs.
His assists dropping to four after a string of triple-doubles show that his playmaking impact was lesser than what we had seen in Denver’s great run of wins in the postseason.
Cutting Off The Circulation For Denver?
The Heat have a strong defensive ethos that is built by playing out of a zone. The Nuggets are struggling to answer the zone effectively and end up having cold spells followed by hot spells, different from their trademark consistent offense throughout a game. Miami relied on some great shotmaking to pull this win off, but Denver’s lack of effort came back to haunt them in this close loss.
The Heat defense has done a great job of not giving easy openings to the Nuggets, and they will rely on doing the same in Games 3 and 4 on their own home court. If Jokic cannot create consistently for the rest of his teammates, it usually means that teams have set themselves up in a way to not let him have that impact or because his teammates aren’t making shots. Game 2 was a mixture of both.
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