Erik Spoelstra and Heat share ultimate respect for Nuggets

DENVER—The Miami Heat will go down as one of the best underdogs in NBA history, and every person in Colorado should have respect for what the Denver Nuggets foes did.

The Heat lost a play-in game, were backed down to the wall in a second play-in game then upset the best-team-in-the-NBA Milwaukee Bucks, following it up with an upset over the New York Knicks and then a seven-game classic series to beat the Boston Celtics for a trip to the NBA Finals.

Miami will credit this, their sixth trip to the championship series under Erik Spoelstra as Heat Culture. But it was Spo who wound up praising Micheal Malone and company for the culture built in Denver.

“You have to tip your hat to them. I said it, but they are one hell of a basketball team,” the second-longest tenured coach in the NBA said. “They play the right way, they compete, they are well-coached and they have a strong culture. So for this season, they deserve this.”

Spoelstra, whose father actually was an executive for the Nuggets for a brief time more than 30 years ago kept praising Denver.

“We didn’t get the final win, but sometimes that’s true in sport and also in life; that you don’t always get what you want. But there’s no regret from our side,” Spo said. “Everybody, staff, player alike in the locker room put themselves out there and put themselves into the team, whatever was best for the team. And the tough pill to swallow is it just wasn’t good enough. We ran up against a team that was just better than us in this series.”

The Nuggets topped the Heat four games to one, the only Miami win came in Game 2 when they shot a crazy percentage from deep. In truth Miami was pretty dead after losing three straight to Boston before finishing them off in Game 7. They wound up losing seven of their final eight games while the Nuggets won 10 of their last 11 to finish the postseason.

“Congratulations to the Denver Nuggets. Great franchise. Great team. They deserved it, and they beat us fair and square,” veteran Heat guard Kyle Lowery said.

The Nuggets 16-4 record was the second-best for a champion in the playoffs over the last 20 seasons while Nikola Jokic just missed out on a triple-double for both the playoffs and Finals en route to an NBA Finals MVP.

“I’ll speak for everybody in our locker room and the organization. You know, congratulations to the Denver Nuggets organization. They are a class act and they are one hell of a basketball team,” Spoelstra said. “One hell of a basketball team that we couldn’t really find obviously enough solutions to be able to get us over the top.”

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