Mike Malone implores Nuggets to match Heat's effort, energy in NBA Finals
Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, center, tries to get past Heat center Bam Adebayo during the second half of Game 2 of the NBA Finals on Sunday in Denver. Credit: AP/David Zalubowski
When the postgame interview with Nuggets coach Mike Malone began innocently enough Sunday night with a question about scoring issues for players other than Nikola Jokic, it was clear that he wasn’t going to let this session go anywhere but where he wanted it to go.
A hint had come earlier in the game when ABC’s sideline reporter, Lisa Salters, asked him about Jokic’s scoring outburst and he immediately diverted the subject to Denver’s defensive failings. So when this interview began, he had one thing on his mind.
“Let’s talk about effort,” Malone said. “This is the NBA Finals, we are talking about effort; that’s a huge concern of mine. You guys probably thought I was just making up some story line after Game 1 when I said we didn’t play well. We didn’t play well.”
Fair enough. Malone comes from a lineage that might directly point to Jeff Van Gundy or Tom Thibodeau and veers back to Pat Riley. And for those of us who have been around them long enough to remember, this is an old trick.
Ask Riley in his coaching days about John Starks’ shooting and he would answer with a critique of Anthony Mason’s defensive effort or Charles Oakley’s preparation, whatever the subject he really wanted his players to read about or hear raised by their friends or family.
And what Malone wanted his team to know was that to beat the Miami Heat, it wasn’t about how many assists Jokic piled up or how Miami plotted a defense to slow down Jamal Murray or shut down Michael Porter Jr.
Effort was not just a talking point for Malone in this series. There is a reason that the Knicks gave the Heat a better battle than Milwaukee or Boston did in this postseason, and it is exactly that point that Malone raised: The Heat play to the last breath every night, and to beat them, you have to play that way, too.
Certainly Milwaukee was missing Giannis Antetokounmpo for part of the first-round series and Boston could point to Jayson Tatum turning an ankle in the opening minutes of Game 7. But what beat them was an undermanned Miami team playing harder, being more prepared for every strategic shift.
The Knicks were the one team that was willing to dive across the floor, to throw an elbow to match every elbow — and it’s certainly worth remembering that the Knicks had their own issue with Julius Randle missing the first game of the series with a sprained ankle. Even though he returned, he eventually had to undergo surgery to repair the ankle.
Like the Heat, the Knicks were not stocked with jaw-dropping talent. They relied on a blue-collar approach preached by Thibodeau and exemplified by Jalen Brunson.
“It’s the [expletive] Finals, man,” Denver’s Jeff Green said. “Our energy has to be better. We can’t come out like we did, and we have to be better.
“ . . . Nothing needs to be said at this point. I think we understand, especially after tonight, how we need to be. Like I said, it’s the Finals. I don’t think we need a rah-rah speech in order to get us up. I think we know what we have to do going into Game 3.”
Denver is that combination of talent and hard-nosed style that should be able to get past Miami and earn the first title in franchise history. But it’s not a fait accompli. The Nuggets have to work, and that’s the point that Malone wanted to get across to his team.
Stories circulated after Game 2 that the postgame locker room was no kinder or gentler than Malone’s postgame session, so the message presumably has gotten across. Now it’s up to the Nuggets to decide whether they will meet that challenge.
“Tonight, the starting lineup to start the game, it was 10-2 Miami,” Malone said. “Start of the third quarter, they scored 11 points in two minutes and 10 seconds. We had guys out there that were, just whether feeling sorry for themselves for not making shots or thinking they can just turn it on or off.
“This is not the preseason, this is not the regular season. This is the NBA Finals. That to me is really, really perplexing, disappointing.
“I asked the team, I asked them, you guys tell me why they lost, and they knew the answer. Miami came in here and outworked us, and we were by far our least disciplined game of these 16 or 17 playoff games, whatever it is now. So many breakdowns. They exploited every one of our breakdowns and scored.
“If we’re going to try to go down there and regain control of this series and get home-court advantage back, we’re going to have to outwork Miami, which we didn’t do tonight, and our discipline is going to have to be off the charts.”
That is what it takes to beat Miami. Now the Nuggets’ players know it, too.
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
