Michael Malone Says Game 3 Win vs. Heat Was Nuggets' 'Best Game of the Series
The Denver Nuggets were firing on every cylinder during Wednesday night's 109-94 win over the Miami Heat in Game 3 of the NBA Finals, and head coach Michael Malone praised his team after the game.
Malone called it Denver's "best game of the series, our most complete game of the series" while speaking to reporters after the contest.
He also praised the duo of Nikola Jokić (32 points, 21 rebounds, 10 assists) and Jamal Murray (34 points, 10 boards, 10 assists), who became the first teammates in NBA history to post a 30-point triple-double in the same game.
"I've been with Nikola for eight years and Jamal for seven," he told reporters. "We've had some pretty good moments. But not in the NBA Finals. And for those guys to make history the way they did tonight—no one's ever done that. That's what's really neat about it. ... By far their greatest performance as a duo in their seven years together."
Jokić and Murray were phenomenal, but this was a total team performance.
The Nuggets made a concerted effort to chase the Heat off the three-point line defensively, and the result was Miami—a team that has been carried throughout these playoffs by hot perimeter shooting—finishing just 11-of-35 (31.4 percent) from deep.
The Nuggets also dominated on the boards (58-33), taking advantage of their superior size, and were efficient on offense, shooting 51.2 percent from the field while finishing with 28 assists.
It helped that Jokić and Murray combined to shoot 24-of-43 from the field and dished out 20 of those assists.
"I think it's just a feel and a trust that we're going to figure it out," Murray told reporters of his partnership with the two-time MVP center. "And it's a lot of unselfishness. I keep bringing that up. It's just free-flowing. If something is there, we go. If not, don't force it."
It was a reminder of Denver's elite ceiling as a team, and it helped them restore home-court advantage after giving up a fourth-quarter lead in Game 2 that evened the series.
Put another way, if Denver plays like they did on Wednesday night two more times in this series, they'll be raising a banner.
