Denver Nuggets win NBA championship for the first time in history
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For the first time in its history, more than half a century old, the NBA champion was the Denver Nuggets, which defeated the Miami Heat 4:1 in the final series of the championship of the major basketball league in the world, winning the fifth match on its court – 94:89. A key element of Denver’s success was the phenomenal Serbian center Nikola Jokic, who added the Play-offs Player of the Year title and an amazing record to his two MVP titles.
This final continued the series of triumphs of the owner of one of the largest sports empires in the world, Stan Kroenke. In the current decade, the clubs included in it have acquired the habit of annually extracting the most valuable titles. The Los Angeles Rams won the 2021 NFL championship. In 2022, in the championship of the hockey league, NHL, the Colorado Avalanche climbed to the top of the hierarchy. Now it is the turn of the basketball club, whose success, apparently, turned out to be the sweetest due to the specifics of its history, which is generally very bitter.
“Denver”, in the name of which at first the word “Rockets” was present instead of “Nuggets”, originated back in 1967.
He spent his first nine seasons in the American Basketball Association (ABA), which for a long time tried to compete with the NBA. The competition didn’t work out. And in 1976, the merger of the two championships took place, which, of course, was much more like the absorption of the weak by the strong. So four of the most notable teams from the ABA joined the NBA, including Denver.
Of these four, the only club that has managed to acquire the status of a true giant in the new championship has so far been the San Antoni Spurs, who have won as many as five titles. And Denver was still known as the main loser of the quartet. The Indiana Pacers and the New Jersey Nets, which became Brooklyn, at least made it to the Finals. Denver, for almost half a century, has never participated in the finals.
Famous players Alex English, Dikembe Mutombo, Carmelo Anthony, Allen Iverson turned out to be in its composition in different eras. He had seasons when it looked like the team was about to shoot. But nothing worked.
Most often, Denver wore the clothes of a hopeless middle peasant, for whom just getting into the playoffs is already an achievement, and overcoming a round in it is a great happiness.
Explaining the reasons for its current rise, experts, of course, find a bunch of components. But at the same time, one still stands out too much, overshadowing all the others. The fact is that the Denver leap is extremely personalized, or something, and in this sense it is similar to the march of the Argentina football team to the gold of last year’s World Cup in Qatar, the style of which left no choice but to sing the inspiration and exploits of Lionel Messi, his exploits partners are already mentioned in brackets as a side dish to the main course.
In the 2014 draft, Denver acquired the rights to young Serbian center Nikola Jokic. A clarification is needed here. He took Jokic in the second round. And the second round in the NBA draft is the time of such newcomers, who are not particularly believed in as future titans: indisputable talents diverge in the first.
It is not difficult to explain why they did not particularly believe in Nikola Jokic. He didn’t match the classic type of an ideal NBA center like the same Mutombo: height – 211 cm – unremarkable for a player of this role, figure – some kind of plump, not athletic. And no one at that moment guessed what would come out of this Serb. The lion’s share of the 40 guys who beat Jokic in the nine-year-old draft have become secondary characters. Some have even failed to gain a foothold in the NBA. And he turned into a figure of incredible proportions.
Actually, without much embarrassment, Nikola Jokic began to be called a great player even before this season.
According to the results of the previous two, he was recognized as the best player in the regular season due to a set of qualities unique for the “center”, which at one time, at the end of the last century, was possessed only by the inimitable Arvydas Sabonis. He, this set, turned out to be luxurious. And the number one ingredient in it is, of course, basketball intelligence of some cosmic level, which allows Jokic, for example, to play the ball, pass like a professional playmaker and take over in battles under the basket due to the ability to guess, feel the point where you need to find yourself . Well, plus an excellent throw, psychological stability. In general, if there is a standard basketball universal soldier, then this is just Nikola Jokic.
This year, he lost in the fight for the MVP title to another “center”, Joel Embiid, but the cup stage more than compensated for his loss. Nikola Jokic was incomparable in all four of her rounds, without exception, and in virtually every two dozen games played by Denver without exception. And at the end of the playoffs, it turned out that Jokic is his leader in three key statistical categories: he has the most points – 600, the most rebounds – 269, the most assists – 190. The NBA has never known such a “hat-trick” . It seemed that it was simply impossible, considering how special skills are required for leadership in each of the categories.
And it is foolish to argue that it was the “Jokic phenomenon” that was the factor that provided Denver with a really solid margin of safety in all series, including the final against an extremely strong Miami.
The fifth match, by the way, came out a perfect illustration of the scale of this reserve. Strictly speaking, Denver played badly in it for a long time. He missed 20 of his first 23 three-pointers, 7 of his first 13 free throws. Mistakes like this kill any team. But Denver, with Jokic calmly hitting the ring and taking rebounds at potentially turning points (only 28 points and 16 rebounds on his account), stayed close to Miami, and then ate him with giblets, forcing the once-genius defender Isaiah Thomas in an interview with ESPN to honestly admit that after such performances, the Denver leader, although he is only 28 years old, is obliged to move from the category of outstanding players to the category of legends.
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