8 seed, which is the seed next to the Heat’s name in the bracket. I don’t think you’ve got to overthink it. “We’re just ready to win a championship,” Murray said. The worst thing the Nuggets could do is give the Heat any room to breathe. Spoelstra said the same thing before this series began. If not for the 2021 knee injury to Murray, which cost him all of last season (and the 2021 playoffs), they believe they already would have been to the finals. The Nuggets believe they were built for this. That’s what makes me happy, that guys didn’t relax.” “I like that we didn’t relax (in Game 4). A loss at home in Game 5 sends the series back to Miami for a Game 6, where it would be a lot to ask of the Nuggets to win for a third time. The Nuggets would be wise to keep the tremendous poise and focus they showed this week in Miami. By the time we are getting on that plane, all we’re thinking about is get this thing back to Miami.” “It’s going to be a gnarly game in Denver that is built for the competitors that we have in our locker room. We’ve done everything the hard way, and that’s the way it’s going to have to be done right now, again. “You probably shouldn’t sleep tonight any amount of time. “I told the guys, feel whatever you want to feel tonight, it’s fine,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. The morning after falling behind 3-1, you look at the big picture, and if there is a bottle of whiskey by the bed, you take a swig. So on Monday, Miami will have to make 3s and have to get back to the idea where Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon aren’t as effective as they were in Games 3 and 4.īut the technicalities are a discussion for another day. Otherwise, they’ve been chucking rocks at the rim and allowing at least two Nuggets to burn them pretty badly. If we’re going to focus on the technical part of this, the one game the Heat won in this series, they limited everyone not named Nikola Jokić, and they made 17 3s. Otherwise, we did all this for no reason.” And then we are going into Monday and do what we said we were going to do this entire time and win. We are going to continually fight, starting tomorrow, to get better. “We are in a must-win situation every single game, which we’re capable of,” Butler said. This would primarily be up to him and the role players ahead of Love in the pecking order (safe to say Gabe Vincent and Max Strus can’t combine for two points again if the Heat are to stay alive). Butler had his best game of the finals with 25 points, seven boards and seven assists in Game 4. This one would be on Jimmy Butler, who is not LeBron, but is the closest the Heat have to anything like him. If we’re being honest, Love, who had one of his better games of the postseason on Friday with 12 points and four boards, will have an ancillary role at best if the Heat are to become No. But LeBron James decided by the time he got on the plane for the Bay for Game 5 that history was possible. When Cleveland pulled it off against the Warriors, virtually no one outside the Cavs locker room thought they could do it when the series reached 3-1. There have only been 13 teams in NBA history to recover from a 3-1 deficit in the playoffs, regardless of round. Just get it done by any means necessary and figure the rest out.”įor that matter, two other Cavs teams were down 3-1 in subsequent finals to the Warriors and lost both times. It’s just one possession, one quarter, half to half. You really just have to take it one possession at a time. “Has been done before, in a conference final and final. “We know that anything can happen,” Love said after the Heat lost Game 4, at home, 108-95. So, even though this is so rare - 35 of the 36 teams to fall behind 3-1 in a finals did in fact lose that series - Love’s existence in the 2023 series is a good enough reason to entertain the idea of history repeating itself.
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