Champ Denver Nuggets, No. 8 seed Miami Heat both deserve applause for a remarkable NBA Finals | Opinion

The destruction and hellfire follows now, right? We already are seeing it some on social media. The Miami Heat was eliminated in the NBA Finals at Denver on Monday night and so we immediately pivot to what’s next. What went wrong? Should they blow up the roster? Who’s available this summer?

This is what happens after a 94-89 Game 5 Heat loss for a 4-1 ouster in the championship series. Must put the blame somewhere!

Exhale first. Take a breath. Take a couple.

First, it isn’t always only about you and your team.

The Heat has won three championships and had been this close to a fourth just three years earlier. Heat fans, by no sane measure, are long-suffering.

Denver? Yes. Denver won decisively and deservedly, Nikola Jokic minted his status as the NBA’s best all-round player, and fans of the Nuggets are celebrating the end of what was tied for the seventh-longest championship drought in the history of North America professional sports..

“They are one hell of a basketball team,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra credited the victor. “We couldn’t really find, obviously, enough solutions to be able to get us over the top.”

For the love of Dan Issel (!), the Nuggets had been 0-for-56 years on titles, the first nine as an ABA team. The only longer active droughts are the Cleveland Indians (76 years), Detroit Lions (67), Minnesota Vikings (63), Cleveland Browns (60), Buffalo Bills (59), Atlanta Falcons (58) and Toronto Maple Leafs (57).

“The job is done,” said Finals MVP Jokic, “we can go home now.”

So can the Heat, with heads high.

“We’ll look back at some point and say this was a great year and great run, but we can’t think that at the moment,” said Kyle Lowry.

I would be pretty pleased were I a Heat fan with the club trusting Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo as a nucleus and building around them moving forward. (What a Finals Bam had!)

A championship with this group “I still believe with everything in me is something we can do,” Butler said.

But can we shelve the look-ahead a minute?

We are simply not allowed as sports fans to feel good about the other guy winning, sorry, no. But if it were possible, Denver might be it.

Beyond that, Miami fans need to appreciate what they have just seen this postseason before wringing hands over what might be next.

What an unexpected delight this was!

After coming oh-so-close to the Finals last year, Miami slogged through a disappointing regular season largely owing to the fourth-most man games missed to injury of any team. The Heat eked into the play-in round, lost to Atlanta, then barely survived an elimination game vs. Chicago. Remember?

Then a shocking upset of top-seeded Milwaukee.

Then an ouster of the rival New York York Knicks.

Then a triumph over even bigger rival Boston.

Miami became the first No. 8 seed since 1999 to reach the Finals.

The Heat beat three teams in a row that everybody thought was better.

Now it has lost to one that proved it was.

Two teams put on a desperate display Monday night.

One playing for a championship, the other for survival.

Both teams’ fans can be proud.

The greased flagpole the Heat had to climb:

Teams down 3-1 have won the series only nine times in 188 occurrences, or 4.8 percent, in the history of NBA seven-game playoff series since the current format began in 1984. When teams are down 3-1 like this — with Games 5-6-7 away-home-away, it is three wins in 130 tries, or 2.3 percent. The lone team to accomplish the climb in an NBA Finals was LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers (including current Heat player Kevin Love) in 2016 against the Golden State team that had set an NBA record with 73 regular-season wins.

So, it can be done. Also, you can find a $100 bill someone had dropped as you walk to your car in the parking lot. You just probably won’t

Spoelstra had no choice but to simply preach winning Game 5.

“All we’re thinking about is getting this thing back to the 3-0-5,” he’d said. “We do that [he snapped his fingers], that’s how quickly this can change. Everybody is counting us out. We’re used to that.”

The Heat could have used Tyler Herro, who was questionable coming back from a broken hand but not able to go.

The Heat also could have used a better Butler, the Playoff Jimmy version. He finished with 21 points but on only 5-for-18 shooting. He woke up in the fourth quarter and at one point scored 13 straight Miami points. But he also had a huge turnover and a missed three-point shot in the final minute.

“I wish I could have got it done for the guys,” he said afterward.

It wasn’t just Butler.

Miami shot a miserable 34.4 percent including an even worse 9 for 35 on three-pointers.

These are not numbers that allow you to think you should have won, or deserved to. (But was it just bad shooting? Denver’s defense? Missing Herro? Or does Miami need an offensive infusion this summer?)

Jokic scored 28 with 16 rebounds for the champs.

The page will turn for Miami soon.

To the summer, and what’s next. Big changes? A run at Damian Lillard? Run it back and just tinker?

For now, for just a minute, feel good, if you can manage, for a Denver franchise that has waited an awfully long time for what Monday night felt like on its home court.

And feel good for a Miami Heat team that fought through a gutsy two-month test to do what no No. 8 seed ever had, and came closer than anybody thought they could.

Sometimes, at the end, both teams deserve the applause.