The Heat equalized the score! Still not completely limited Jokic But the Nuggets still need to reflect

Originally compiled from: The Athletic

Written by Nick Kosmider

原标题：No, the Heat haven’t solved Nikola Jokić, but the Nuggets still have soul-searching to do

The Heat who won G2 are actually far from getting Jokic, and the Nuggets' loss of G2 is not Jokic's poor performance, but more that the team has problems and urgently needs to adjust and reflect.

DENVER — Don't tell Eric Spoelstra, whose Heat miraculously slowed down the world's best players on Sunday night.

In Game 2 of the NBA Finals, the Nuggets lost 108-111 to the Heat, tied the series 1-1, and the game will continue to the Heat's home court. In this game, Nikola Jokic scored a game-high 41 points. This is the third time Jokic has scored at least 40 points in the playoffs. The Nuggets have lost a few games in the playoffs and currently have a 13-4 record. In those high-scoring games, Jokic averaged seven assists per game — including a playoff low of four on Sunday — down sharply from his 10.5 assists per game.

The Heat limit Jokic tissue works extremely well

The Heat turned the two-time MVP into a scorer and benefited from it. It's that simple. Right?

"Yes, it's ridiculous – it's like what a ball blind would say." Spoelstra later said, "This guy is an incredible player. You know, twice in two seasons, he was the best player on the planet. You can't just say, 'Oh, let him be a scorer. "That's not how they play. They have a lot of different ways to play and they all make you compromise. We must focus on our work. We try to do things the hard way, and he will force you to do a lot of things the hard way. We have full respect for him. ”

Defending Jokic is no easy task. He has the most dominant offensive power in basketball because he can be the man any game needs him to be.

It's hard to make a tactical plan for him, he's a complete basketball expert, and he's a great master of the game. You can never stop him; You can only try to slow him down.

"If you block some passes, he'll score," said Heat forward Kevin Loew, who played in Game 2 after not playing in the series opener. "When you try to limit him, give him a pinch shot, he will pass. If you change defenses, he'll run you over the basket. He's so smart that you can only try to make his race tough and then take the other X-factors out of the game. ”

In Game 2, no other Nuggets player scored more than 18 points, and even then, Jamal Murray hit a wave at the end of the fourth quarter. The Heat contracted on the inside, limiting the path of entry and making it harder for Nuggets' role players to find rhythm. Gordon didn't score 12 points in the first quarter, as he did on previous nights. Michael Porter Jr. continues to struggle beyond the three-point line (3-of-17 from the series). Murray didn't attack freely on the court like he did in the first game. At the start of the second quarter, the Nuggets' bench players played an impressive burst, but beyond that, they struggled to find consistent conversion opportunities, which was the main reason for their offensive success in the playoffs.

Nuggets coach Michael Malone likes to describe Jokic as someone who "doesn't fight for the game." On Sunday, the game called for Jokic to score. And the two-time MVP did the same. In the two brief periods leading up to the first quarter and the end of the third quarter, Jokic scored 12 points under the direct defense of Cody Zeller, Miami's backup center who had no advantage in height and strength against Denver's supergiant center. At the end of the third quarter, Jokic scored on Zeller on four of his five offensive runs. That gave Jokic 31 points that night and helped the Nuggets lead 83-75 into the fourth quarter.

Jokic did well at that point as a scorer. The offense went well overall, as Jokic was difficult to contain. The Nuggets seem to be in control.

"He did what he was supposed to do," veteran Jeff Green said. "When he has to be strong, he puts in a strong performance. He's playing well and he has a good vision on the pitch. I don't think what they did cost him the opportunity to get assists. If he can continue to be aggressive like that, other players can know how to play on the pitch. We're not just waiting for Jokic to find a way to give us the ball. We have to find ways to become more aggressive. We start on the defensive end and then we bring aggression to the offensive end. ”

In the fourth quarter of Game 2, the Nuggets' defensive end was destroyed. The Heat started the quarter with a 13-2 run, with the Nuggets dropping a few three-pointers during that time and then causing a series of crashes. The Heat scored seven straight points at the start of the quarter. The Nuggets were so bad that they had little chance of finding their rhythm on the offensive end. It's hard to break through a defensively strong team, especially a tough and well-trained team like Miami, who always have time to adjust themselves. In this case, the best option is usually Jokic's singles score.

Jokic fell into the "rhythm" of the Heat

"They just got us into their rhythm," Jokic said, "and we didn't want to play like that." ”

The teams all wanted to limit Jokic's ability to involve teammates in the game. Early in his career, the Nuggets' center famously wanted to be a good passer from a young age because one assist can make both men happy. Therefore, it is reasonable to think that for the Nuggets' offense to lose some of the threat, it is first necessary to make Jokic the scoring engine and cut off everyone else's scoring.

It's just that, as Spoelstra pointedly points out, doing so isn't just a choice that the defender can make, nor is it an easy choice to execute. For the Heat, the work they did on Sunday's defense was aided by their 17-of-35 three-point shooting, many of which came from the kind of open shots they didn't do in the first game. That's the biggest problem the Nuggets face at a pivotal time in the series.

"It's definitely a breakdown in communication," Malone said. "It was definitely a collapse of our game plan, we didn't get to the discipline we needed in the NBA Finals."

Most of the rest of the series will be half-time positional battles. The Heat's defense is too good to give the Nuggets room to run freely. So the Nuggets need to be more effective against the regional defense that Miami deployed in this series. They began searching for answers in the second half of the fourth quarter, when Murray sensed three defenders surrounding him and passed the ball to Gordon, allowing him to make a three-pointer and narrow the 12-point lead to nine. When Jokic got the offensive rebound, Murray returned to the outside, caught a pass from the center, and narrowed the score to three with a long-range shot.

"We messed up a lot of controllable things," defender Christian Braun said. "We know that's not our style and we'll get it back in the next game."

Jokic adjusts to whatever challenge the Heat give him next. But if the game again requires him to score a lot, it won't necessarily be a kiss of death for the Nuggets.

"I trust Nikolai," Malone said. "He reads the game. He will read how he is defended, he will choose the position he understands, no matter how he is defended, we need him to score, to be aggressive, to score resolutely. Whether it's 41 points and 4 assists, or 25 points and 15 assists, Nikolai, I believe one of his things is that he will make the right interpretation time and time again. ”