A Miami team that scrapped and clawed its way into the NBA Finals and stole home-court advantage from the Denver Nuggets thanks to physical play in Game 2 looked unrecognizable during its Game 3 walloping back in South Beach on Wednesday night.
After a 109-94 defeat sent the Heat spiraling into a 2-1 deficit, Miami is now on the ropes: another loss at home in Game 4 on Friday will swing all the momentum in Denver’s favor with the series returning to the Mile High City for Game 5.
And only one of the 36 NBA Finals series to reach a 3-1 status has ever seen a team overcome the deficit to win the title: LeBron James’ 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Heat hope to avoid those circumstances with a victory on Friday, and according to All-Star Jimmy Butler, there’s no tactical adjustment that can save this series.
“I feel like we’ve just gotta come out with more energy and effort, and that’s correctable,” Butler said after hanging 28 points on 11-of-24 shooting on the Nuggets in Game 3. “That’s on us as a group. No Xs and Os can fix that. So come out, dive on the floor, get loose balls, get rebounds and maybe, just maybe, it would have been a different game.”
The Nuggets out-rebounded the Heat, 58-33, in Game 3 after winning the rebound margin by just seven in both Games 1 and 2 combined. And after posting 41 points with just four assists in Denver’s Game 2 loss, Nikola Jokic finished with 32 points, 21 rebounds and 10 assists on Wednesday night.
The Heat, however, regressed in the team’s approach to defending Jamal Murray, who exploded for a game-high 34 points to go with 10 rebounds and 10 assists of his own.
The pair became the first duo in NBA Finals history to record a triple-double in the same game.
“It’s a great duo. Their games really complement each other,” Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra said of Jokic and Murray. “You have one guy who really can score in a lot of ways. Another guy that sets great screens, hand-offs, and if the ball gets back to him, he can get a bunch of people involved.”
The Heat also allowed 15 points off the bench from rookie guard Christian Braun, who shot seven-of-eight from the field in his 19 minutes on the floor. Miami turned the ball over just four times the entire game versus 13 giveaways by the Nuggets, but Spoelstra harped on the lack of grit as the reason why his team now trails in this series after a convincing victory in Game 2.
“We’re at our best when we’re winning those battles first,” he said. “So you can just check that box: the physical battles, 50-50s, ball in the air, ball on the floor. We win those battles, we figure everything else out along the way.”
The Heat remain a resilient basketball team. Despite the longstanding myth that role players always perform better at home, the Heat got just 10 combined points out of starters Max Strus and Gabe Vincent. Bam Adebayo finished with 22 points and 17 rebounds, and the bench trio of Caleb Martin, Duncan Robinson and Kyle Lowry accounted for all 28 points from the second unit.
That wasn’t remotely enough — not against the Denver high-powered offense — and with Tyler Herro’s status still up in the air due to a broken wrist he sustained in the first round against the Milwaukee Bucks — it’s a long shot for the Heat to be able to match the Nuggets’ scoring power.
That’s why this series is going to have to be a dogfight. If it’s not, the ensuing games will be mere encores of Game 3. And if the Heat drop Game 4 at home and fall into a 3-1 deficit with the series swinging back to Denver, well, they may as well not even board the plane.