NBA Finals: In praise of Michael Malone's Nuggets Culture

From the opening jump of the 2023 NBA Finals, Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone was prepared for anything his Miami Heat counterpart might hurl at his team, and Erik Spoelstra would unfurl anything.

For all the discussion about Spoelstra and Heat Culture through the Eastern Conference finals — and a championship with this eighth-seeded squad would have made a case for the greatest coaching job in league history — we should pause a moment to appreciate the environment Malone is cultivating in Denver.

"They've built something that is stable, that's consistent," Spoelstra said. "You know what they stand for."

And now we know where they stand — as NBA champions for the first time in the franchise's history. Denver defeated the Heat in five games to complete a 16-4 run through the playoffs, second only to the vaunted 2017 Golden State Warriors since the league switched to a best-of-seven series in the first round.

And Malone is far from done. "We want more," he told the Denver crowd following the title tilt.

Heat president Pat Riley "said something many years ago," Malone added. "I used to have it up on my board when I was a head coach in Sacramento, and it talked about the evolution in this game and how you go from a nobody to an upstart, and you go from an upstart to a winner and a winner to a contender and a contender to a champion, and the last step is after a champion is to be a dynasty. So, we're not satisfied.

"We accomplished something this franchise has never done before, but we have a lot of young talented players in that locker room, and I think we just showed through 16 playoff wins what we're capable of."

Spoelstra carried his small-ball starting lineup's success against the Boston Celtics into this series, and Malone punished Miami for it. Given a week's time to prepare for the Heat, Denver identified Aaron Gordon as an X-factor, since no one but Bam Adebayo could match his athletic force at 6-foot-8, 235 pounds, and the Nuggets mercilessly fed Gordon at the rim against smaller defenders in the opening quarter of Game 1. Four times they went to him, and four times he scored, forcing Spoelstra's first timeout 5:26 into the series.

Denver never trailed Game 1 after that initial punch, leading by as many as 24 points in a decisive victory, and Spoelstra adjusted to a larger lineup — starting Kevin Love in place of Caleb Martin — for Game 2. The Nuggets took a counterpunch in the first quarter, rode their bench to a 15-pound lead in the second quarter, and then let go of the rope against a team that hits every opponent with a realization it never stops tugging.

When the Heat evened the series, the question was asked: Did they successfully turn Nikola Jokić into a scorer rather than a playmaker? Spoelstra dismissed the notion, and the focus turned to his comments about how that only was the opinion of an "untrained eye," rather than what his answer revealed about Malone: "That's not how they play. They have so many different actions that just get you compromised."

Likewise, Malone recognized that the defeat — a narrow one, by the way, that fell inches short of overtime on a decent Jamal Murray look — had more to do with his team's failure to match the effort level necessary to beat these Heat and win a title. Malone also understood his team would respond to his public criticism.

"This is the NBA Finals, and we are talking about effort; that's a huge concern of mine," he said after his team's first loss in almost a month. "You guys probably thought I was making up some storyline after Game 1 when I said we didn't play well. We didn't play well. ... We had guys out there that were, whether feeling sorry for themselves for not making shots or thinking they can 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."

There is nothing like a loved one's disappointment to make you look within yourself, and Malone's call-out worked because he had already empowered his team to do just that. "I asked them, 'You guys tell me why they lost,' and they knew the answer," he said. "Miami came in here and outworked us, and we were by far our least disciplined game of these 17 playoff games." You can tell a coach's message is resonating when his lieutenants in the locker room — the veteran voices — are echoing his sentiments through the media.

"Yeah," Jeff Green said. "It's the f***ing Finals, man. Our energy has to be better."

Not only did Denver bring better energy for Game 3, Malone added tactical adjustments on both sides of the ball. He sent less defensive help to Adebayo and Jimmy Butler, better accounting for Miami's shooters, and he leveraged rookie Christian Braun's size and athleticism to serve as a zone defense-busting cutter.

The Nuggets doubled their contests, contributing to the Heat's decline in efficiency from distance (17-for-35 from 3 in Game 2 and 11-for-35 in Game 3), and Braun converted all seven of his assaults on the rim. Denver's defense in this series, which limited the Heat to 100 points per 100 possessions in four losses —better than the best defensive rating of the pace-and-space era — peaked at the perfect time.

"They're a really good team," Braun said of the Heat. "They make good adjustments, have a great coach. We've got to find a way to beat the different things they throw at us. They've thrown the press, they've thrown zone at us, try to give you a lot of different looks, keep you on your heels. They're doing a really good job of it. Our coaches are putting us in the right position, too, to counter them and beat them, too."

Kudos to Malone, who has not let his team forget that its offensive prowess could not deliver a title on its own. Preaching defense can fall on deaf ears eight years into a coach's tenure, especially when the team's offense is historic. Not in Denver, where the coach and his stars are in lockstep, and their unified message ripples down the rotation. The fortitude of a team never falters when a locker room is on the same page.

"He's a competitor at heart," veteran Nuggets reserve DeAndre Jordan said of Malone. "We can see the fight and tenacity he has. He wants to win just as much as we do, and I think when you have a guy like that at the helm it's very important, and it's contagious to the players, and we all kind of rub off on each other."

Take Michael Porter Jr., for example. Malone demanded defense from the touted prospect, even as most everyone called for Porter to play through mistakes, and the strategy has borne fruit years later, despite the 24-year-old's struggles offensively in this series. Riding Braun in the second half of Game 3 was a choice, and one Malone abandoned for Porter's defense when Braun was less impactful against Miami's man-to-man looks in Game 4. Denver might have lost Porter entirely if Malone had not previously put in the work.

"One thing I really respect about Coach Malone is that he's consistent in how he is," Porter said. "He hasn't coached us or tried to motivate us any different than he has all season. He is very competitive. Even Game [81] ... he was just as upset about losing that game [to Utah] as he would a game right now. So, he's very consistent in his approach and the way he coaches us individually and as a team. I can respect that."

We cannot discredit Jokić, whose unselfish brand of basketball and skill to execute it are the main reasons the Nuggets won their first title. But that style of play does not permeate every corner of the roster without the coach fostering it first, and then expecting it to sustain even when the two-time MVP is not on the floor.

Which is precisely what happened in Game 4, when Gordon slid into a small-ball version of Jokić's role during the Serbian center's fourth-quarter foul trouble. Gordon screened Murray's man and delivered a hand-off that the point guard converted into a 3-pointer, stemming a rising Heat tide early in the quarter. That play ran the Nuggets to 14 points on 10 possessions directly out of timeouts in two road victories.

"That gives you a good indication of how good this Denver Nuggets team was in this series but also throughout the course of the season and all of the playoffs," Spoelstra said of a hard-fought Game 4 his team lost by double digits. "They were the superior team in every series. They deserve this championship."

Then came Game 5, a slugfest unlike any the Nuggets had played all season. They started 1-for-17 from 3-point range and 9-for-19 from the free-throw line, committed 14 turnovers and lost both Jokić and Gordon to foul trouble in the first quarter. Games like that, with a title on the line, are won with the type of execution that can only be summoned by a team that was prepared for every moment through muscle memory.

"I got on him sometime during the season like, 'Hey, we're not your little kids anymore. We're grown men, and if we make a mistake just come talk to us,'" said Murray, whose entire seven-year NBA career has been spent playing for Malone. "When we weren't that good, he had to have that kind of authority and defensive mindset and just get on us and pull it out of us. Now, it's like we know what we need to do to win. We know what to expect from each other, and we can get on each other to push each other to be better."

Malone called timeouts trailing in each of the first three quarters, and Denver flipped the momentum every time. The coup de grâce was a 9-2 third-quarter stretch fueled by hearts of champions, beating in unison.

"One more win," Malone told his team prior to the clincher. "Go out there and take it. Nobody's going to give us a championship." And when it was theirs to seize in the fourth quarter of a heavyweight bout Spoelstra called his team's "most active defensive game of the season," Malone reminded his team in the huddle, "It's right there. Take it." And Denver did, making the 51-year-old Malone — 30 years into his coaching life — a champion, same as his father, Brendan, an assistant for the "Bad Boy" Detroit Pistons.

Just about every lever Malone pulled in this series, from beginning to end, came up Denver. A ring validates Jokić as an all-timer and Murray as his worthy co-star, but it also stamps Malone as one of his profession's very best. Take nothing away from Spoelstra, who did not have the horses to make this a race, but Malone was every bit as good, and that should put every team trying to build a winner in the near future on notice.

Nuggets Culture is sustainable under Malone's watch.