Nuggets vets celebrate first title after 43 years in the NBA
Ish Smith wouldn’t slow down. On a glorious Monday night, the Nuggets veteran guard ran around the tunnel of Ball Arena with a large smile, talking to family and dapping up anyone who stood near him. He shared a moment with his teammate and friend Jeff Green before calling Deandre Jordan to bask in the afterglow of Denver’s first title.
The trio of veterans have spent a combined 43 years in the NBA, each playing for more than seven teams. After decades of traveling to different cities and getting acclimated to various organizations, their new home in Denver allowed them to become champions.
“This is what the blood, sweat and tears and countless hours in the gym was all for,” Green said. “Being in this moment is everything.”
Growing up, Smith’s fondest memory of the Finals was the NBA on NBC. He remembered Hall of Famer Michael Jordan gracing his television screen while leading the Chicago Bulls to six NBA titles.
Now, Smith, 34, had his own championship memory and didn’t know what to think. He spent the entire night before Game 5 wondering how he would react to being on the mountaintop of the NBA, but all he could do was think about all the coaches and family members who helped him along the way.
“I don’t even think about myself,” Smith said. “I guess I’ll think about it at the end of my career. I’m truly thankful, but it will soak in later.”
When Green leaned against a wall, you could tell he needed a moment. The 15-year veteran was on cloud nine as people walked by to congratulate him. “(This) means a lot,” he said.
At one point, there was uncertainty that Green could play this long after he underwent open-heart surgery in 2012. But Green, a member of Denver’s productive bench
minutes on both ends of the floor for the entirety of Miami’s championship run.
The Heat needed more from their leader, and he did not deliver: Of Butler’s 21 points, nearly half (nine) came at the foul line. Not to mention he played on cruise control for the game’s first 45 minutes before stringing together 13 points in a two-and-ahalf-minute stretch in crunch time.
Butler’s short-lived, late-game theatrics may have impressed the untrained eye, but it was too little, too late for a player who had shot just 2-of-13 through the first three quarters. He then fumbled a potential Game 6 away in Game
5′s final 30 seconds:
First by driving into the paint, losing his footing, then throwing the ball directly to Denver’s Kentavious Caldwellpope, a sequence that turned a one-point game into a three-point deficit and cost Miami a valuable timeout.
“I turned the ball over,” Butler said of the game’s final two minutes. “That’s what stood out.”
On the very next possession, with time on the shot clock to create a better look, Butler attempted to tie the game on a turnaround fading three from the top of the key.
Again: Hardly special. Maybe Heat coach Erik Spoelstra should have turned to Tyler Herro.
Herro broke his wrist in Game 1 of the first-round series against the Bucks and missed nearly two months of action before receiving clearance to play in Monday night’s elimination Game 5.
Spoelstra said pregame it would be “all hands on deck,” and that he would assess the game to determine whether or not Herro’s services would be needed. Reminder: This is a former Sixth Man of the Year who averaged 20 points per game for Miami before suffering his injury.
Which is why it became more and more befuddling to watch the second-unit scorer stew on the bench while both Butler and his Heat teammates struggled to generate offense. The
Heat scored just 18 points in the fourth quarter as Spoelstra kept Herro sidelined.
“It’s just a really tough call, and I’ll probably have to wrestle with that all summer,” Spoelstra said of his decision. “That’s the hardest-played, most physical competition you can have, and that would be a tough thing for a guy that’s been out for two months that hasn’t had any kind of ramp-up.
“But that won’t save me from thinking about that for the next few weeks.”
And while the Nuggets enjoy the hangover associated with the champagne showers they enjoyed in the locker room, the Heat leave the NBA Finals with more questions than answers.
Chief among those questions after fizzling out in Game 5: Can Butler get it done as this team’s No. 1 scoring option, or will it take more for the Heat to return to NBA Finals, let alone dethrone the Nuggets should these two teams meet again down the road?
The Heat have already been rumored to have interest in Portland
Trail Blazers’ bona fide superstar Damian Lillard, and Miami can put together an attractive trade package built around Herro, role players and draft compensation. With the June 22 NBA Draft looming and free agency commencing shortly thereafter, there will be no shortage of opportunities for the Heat to explore adding additional firepower to a team that made the conference finals two years in a row.
Just any old firepower, however, won’t do.
The Heat need another closer, given their current one couldn’t get it done. It could be the only way to tangibly raise Miami’s ceiling given no one expected they would make it to the Finals in the first place — and likely fewer expect the Heat to return in the years to come without a landscape-altering mega deal.
“You never know what the team’s gonna look like next year or the year after that. I’m just grateful. I learned so much. They taught me so much, and I wish I could have gotten it done for these guys because they definitely deserve it,” Butler said. “You don’t have to score 100 points to win a basketball game. I think we’ll be OK. That’s Coach Pat [Riley] and Coach Spo’s job to put together another team, which I’m confident they will do. And we’ll take it from there.”