Almost everything about Game 1 was a nightmare for the Miami Heat: tactical mishaps, terrible outside shooting, a demonstrative size disadvantage, zero free throw attempts by players not named Haywood Highsmith, too many offensive possessions when they were willing to settle, and too many defensive possessions when they tapped out before the Denver Nuggets even had to flow into a second action.
The Heat can be better. They’ll steer clear of lazy switches and make a better effort to avoid unfavorable crossmatches in transition. They’ll (probably) get hot from behind the 3-point line, be more purposeful on offense—Bam Adebayo scoring 26 points on 25 shots is not a recipe for success—and compete for 48 minutes with the same defensive ferocity that they showed in the fourth quarter (when they held Denver to 20 points).
But if the Nuggets’ 104-93 win in this Finals opener taught us anything, it’s that Miami’s margin for error against the West’s best team is thinner than an eyelash. On a night when Denver rarely looked out of sorts, or was even pressed to adapt on the fly, Miami dominated the possession game, committed two fewer turnovers, allowed only six offensive rebounds, and watched the Nuggets shoot 29.6 percent behind the 3-point line, and still, for a majority of Game 1, found itself down double digits.
It’s easy to chalk this loss up as a make-or-miss casualty. Miami’s ability to fire 17 more shots (96 in total, its second most in these playoffs) than Denver should be applauded, especially with its seventh-highest shot quality mark of the postseason. When you go back to look at some of their misses from Thursday night, it’s fair to believe the Heat won’t go 13-for-39 from 3-point range again:
Max Strus took 10 shots, nine came from behind the arc, and zero went in. Caleb Martin, a savior in the Eastern Conference finals, finished with three points on just seven field goal attempts. Afterward, I asked Martin if the Nuggets treated him any differently, coming off the series of his life.
“Definitely think I was a little bit more passive, for sure, today,” Martin told The Ringer. “I think it was more trying to just figure it out as the game was going on. You know, they did a great job with closeouts, they did a great job giving me different looks. I’m kind of glad—not glad, obviously, I want to win, I want to play well—but sometimes it’s a good thing to happen like that, because you go back to the drawing board and, you know, you make the adjustments. So I’ll be much more prepared next game. I don’t know what that means in terms of scoring the ball or whatever, but I’ll be much more definitely prepared for the looks that they gave me tonight.”
Afterward, Erik Spoelstra’s disposition was typically confident when speaking about the off night from some of his most potent weapons. “I mean, they are not going to get sick at sea,” he said. “If they are shooters, you’re not always going to be able to make all the shots that you want.”
There’s more to this loss than just what happened behind the 3-point line. Spo knows that. “Our game is not built just on the 3-point ball. We have proven that time and time again,” he said. “We can win games. We can win [the series], regardless of how the 3 is going. But we also have ignitable guys. You see a couple go through and that also can become an avalanche. One way or the other, we have to find a way to get the job done.”
Getting where the Heat want to go against this Nuggets team is a lot harder when an entire offensive possession is lost. Highsmith gave Miami a spark off the bench on both ends, but he also had the team’s highest usage rate in the second half. That’s … weird. Wasted seconds like these, when Miami appears unsure of what it wants to run before Highsmith stumbles his way through an awkward ball screen, can’t happen:
In between a few aimless possessions like the one above, where the ball stuck and no one forced Denver to move, the Heat created some good looks by attacking pressure points, engaging Nikola Jokic defensively in multiple dribble handoffs that, even when he dropped, forced Denver’s help defenders to be at attention:
And here’s a sequence that’s quickly becoming a trademark in Miami’s playbook: Adebayo starts in the corner, swings into a quick DHO that pulls Jokic out of the paint, demands help, and lets the Heat center make a read.
Replicating these actions on a consistent basis is easier said than done. But Miami can’t win if it doesn’t play with pace and put Denver in rotation.
Beyond that, and whether they make or miss uncontested 3s, the Heat can’t afford any blips of self-sabotage. They can’t yield a wide-open Jamal Murray dunk, or send a sloppy pass out of bounds sans any pressure, or botch a coverage and allow Murray to walk into a rhythm pull-up.
“I feel like early in the game, miscommunications caused a lot of our guys to not talk enough,” Adebayo said. “Miscommunications, and a lot of guys were open in the first half.”
There were a couple of plays when the Heat missed a shot and then were so focused on getting back on defense that they didn’t pay enough attention to who they were guarding. This is fine against most teams. But when Jokic ambles up the court off a missed Jimmy Butler jump shot and finds Duncan Robinson on him, it’s DEFCON 2 even if he never touches the ball. (Sidebar: Miami’s superstar finished with 13 points and, after hitting two jumpers in the opening two minutes, never made another.)
For a feel-out game, the Heat tried quite a bit of stuff against Jokic, who pretty much had his way, en route to a 27-point, 14-assist, 10-rebound triple-double on 8-for-12 shooting. They fronted him in the post. They doubled him on the catch. They threw different bodies his way and made a concerted effort to keep him off the offensive glass. But the two-time MVP solved it all without ever really looking uncomfortable. The Heat even tried switching on his pick-and-roll with Murray, only for the obvious limitations of that plan to immediately smack them in the face:
The Heat cut the Nuggets’ lead down to nine early in the fourth quarter after its zone strung together some key stops—Denver’s offensive rating in the final frame was just 83.3—but it was eventually solved by a team that’s smart enough to ace every exam.
“We knew they’d make a run, and what’s it going to take on Sunday night?” Nuggets head coach Michael Malone said. “They’re going to come out and try to jump all over us and take control of the series and that game early on, and we have to be ready for that.”
Of course, Malone is right. The Heat won’t back down. They’re a basketball team of T-1000 androids, shape-shifting and resilient. Cut off an appendage and something new with Gabe Vincent’s face on it will grow in its place. “Second half we played more like ourselves,” Martin said. “Made better plays, played better defense, got more stops, made more shots. We looked more like ourselves the second half.”
That might be true. But Denver’s edge was clear in Game 1, as a group with more talent, size, and resources. There’s a decent chance Game 1 will be the Nuggets’ least efficient night in this series.
If the Heat want to bounce back and make these Finals competitive, they’ll need to brush against perfection. Their execution, intensity, and shot-making will have to be at a 10 just to give themselves a chance. That’s the bad news. The Nuggets are daunting. Every possession is a physical grind and a mental hurdle. The good news? The Heat wake up every morning hoping for that exact type of fight.
