Heat defeat Nuggets in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, Murray misses game-tying 3-pt FG | NBA | UNDISPUTED

Being down 15 on the road in the hostile environment, the Nuggets had left lost all postseason at home. They've been dominant at home. They have the best player in the series on their team and he was playing unbelievable. But they didn't hang their heads and they found a way to keep fighting and keep fighting and stayed in the ball game. Gabe Vinson was huge, 23 points on 8-12 shooting. He was 4-6 from the three-point line. But I thought Max Cruz did a As a matter of fact, he didn't even get off. So with that being said, he was 0-10, I think 0-10, 0-9 from three and then he goes 4-7. He only scored 14 points, but those 12 big first quarter points were huge. You get Duncan Robinson, all of a sudden, he turns into Ray Allen in the fourth quarter. He had 10 big points in a matter of like three minutes and he started feeling himself because as they ran him off the three-point line, he started attacking the basket, something we don't normally see from Duncan Robinson, but we've seen it a little bit lately. Bam was Bam. But when you have three, you have three guys scored, give you at least 20. And what the Heat did, he said, well, they let Yoke score. No, you didn't. Yoke took it upon himself to go get 40 because he saw his teammates struggling shooting the basketball and he saw it slipping away from him. So now all of a sudden he's not looking to pass the ball because he doesn't trust his guys. Michael Porter Jr. is going to have to give him something, Skip. KCP is going to have to give him something. And we saw the first game and the same thing that we saw in game four, when they swept the Lakers, Aaron Gordon played big. Aaron Gordon didn't give you much last night. He's going to have to get if Michael Porter Jr. and Aaron, Michael Porter Jr. and Aaron Gordon can give you at least 30. Between those two, Yoke and with Jamal Murray, although Murray didn't have not have the greatest game, but anytime the dynamic duo can give you somewhere between 55 and 70 points, that should be good. They gave you 59 last night, although Yoke had 41. But I thought the Heat's resiliency was the main reason that they won that game because they could have easily hung their head like, okay, they're at home. They're supposed to win. We go down 0-2. We got two games in Miami. We can tie this thing up. But they said, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's plenty of time left. And they fought in there and then they opened the fourth quarter, Skip. That fourth quarter, you won't see a better fourth quarter than what they played on the offensive end. And they did a number on the Nuggets defensively, but it was their offense because the Heat scored 36 points on 19 possessions. That's the most efficient fourth quarter of any team in any game in the last two seasons. They shot 69% in the first fourth quarter. That's the third highest field goal percentage in a fourth quarter and an NBA finals in 25 years. Well, when you put up historic numbers like that in the fourth quarter, you're probably going to win the ball game and they did. Okay, I hear everything you just said. I'll go even harder than you went. Your man, Joker, scored 28 in the second half last time. He was extraordinary on the offensive end. His teammates were not extraordinary for the most part because he had only four assists. So we'll get deeper into this a little later in the show. But is that the magic formula? Is you just defend his teammates as hard as you can defend them and hope that they don't cash his three-point passes? Remember what Aaron Gordon did? He scored 12 in the first quarter on Gabe Vincent, it seemed like, on layups and dunks. Well, they took that away last time. They inserted Kevin Lovington to the starting lineup for the big. All right, even more deeper into this. Look at the rebounds. It's Denver 38-31. Look at points in the paint. Denver dominated. Look at second chance points. Denver dominated. Look at fast break points. Denver dominated. Denver dominated. Denver dominated. Denver is better, better, better. There were nine-point favorites last night. Now they're going down to Miami as three-point favorites. Doesn't that remind you of last series when Boston kept being nine-point favorite at home and three-point favorite on the road and finally lost in seven games? All right, so big picture. If I step back from this, I've been watching this league for a long time. I've never seen anything quite like these Miami Heat. I do love to watch them. I do love to root for them because you never know where it's going to come from on any given night. I'm going to remind everybody, they lost their leading regular season score in Tyler Hero in game one against Milwaukee. He might play in game three back in Miami, but look at him now. They're one all going home without their best score during the regular season at the 20-point a game score. The truth is, Mr. Sharp, that we haven't seen playoff Jimmy now for seven straight playoff games. He is going through an issue with his father who is not well at the moment. God bless him and God bless Jimmy because I think he might be a little distracted, if not a little drained, by going through that away from basketball situation. But the point, and I'm giving him certainly a pass for that, but look at Shannon. Look at last night. He's seven for 19. That's 37 percent from the floor. Is that playoff Jimmy? No, it's just not. Look at the third quarter last night. He went 0 for 5 while Joker was scoring 18 points just in the third quarter. And there was a point where I thought, okay, that's enough. I will be the first to admit that, what was it, in the second quarter, they got all the way up as 522 in the second quarter. They jump up 15 points. I wrote them off on Twitter because I thought, there's no way. You just got buried by a Denver avalanche, right? How are you going to come back from 15? I was imagining you up in your palatial estate. I just think you sat back and said, got this one. You know what? No, actually I don't because I know the end of quarters are very important. And I say, when they had that big lead, I said, let me see how they close out the second. And what did the Miami Heat do? They go on this run. They got back in it. They cut it to six. Yes. And then they storm out in the third quarter and cut it to none. They actually tied the game up. And then they fall slowly but steadily back behind to the point that they got to the end of the fourth, excuse me, third quarter. And they're down eight going to the fourth quarter. And then lo and behold, that I would have bet against this because this man had played six minutes and 48 seconds so far in the game. It was a minus 20. I'm talking about Duncan Robinson, undrafted out of Michigan. He is six feet, seven inches tall, but he looks a little awkward. Sometimes he looks a little geeky, gawky, right? And all of a sudden, to your point, he scores 10 points and they come in such a flurry that you're like, what just happened? If we could show our faithful viewers who might not have seen this, this is Duncan Robinson to start the fourth quarter. He just said, oh, that was sweet. Up and under on Jamal and swished it. And then he drives it and makes it. And then that was a bomb. He said, I got this. And then he goes up and under and watch what he does after this. He is mean mugging the crowd. He is mean mugging the crowd. Duncan Robinson, LeBron and not one muscle. Okay. What, what muscles? I don't know, but I just showed you 10 quick points and they go from down 8,375 to up 8,880 to 85. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Cause it was 10 to 10 to two. What just happened? And the truth is the heat never looked back. No. Although even though the heat were up nine with three and a half minutes left, all of a sudden there's a strong close from starting with Jamal Murray. Boom, boom. He hits two big threes and they got back in the game. It looked like, cause it goes to the end. And then we had a shot from Jimmy Butler. It was a force up that missed. And if we could see the last sequence here, Jamal Murray got, got a pretty good look. I thought, and I figured he would make this. I figured we were looking at overtime because he just usually makes these. Okay. So Bruce Brown gets the rebound, kicks it to Jamal. Jamal's coming. He's on Gabe Vincent first, but he yoke picks him off and Jimmy tries for a steal, then stays with him pretty well. And I thought defended it very well. Right. And did you think he was going to make it? Yeah, because I've seen him make that this, I mean, in this playoff run here, we've seen him make that shot so many times, especially against the Lakers and against the sun skip. We've seen him make that shot. So for him to hit that five step and it not go in. Yeah. I was a little surprised that it didn't go in. It looked on target from it. I thought it was going to go down. In fact, when it was halfway there, I thought that's it. How are we going to figure out overtime? And it lipped out. So the point is, do the heat live and die by the three? Well, Eric Spolster says, there's no way we're not built that way. But the truth is I now look at the whole playoff run of all the teams in the playoffs. Remember Miami was the worst three point shooting team. They ranked 27th in the NBA during the regular season. Yeah. They now have six of the top 11, three point shooting games in this whole playoff run featuring everybody from start to finish. Six of the top 11, three point shooting games were by the Miami Heat. You shot 49% last night. Well, I got to tell you, when you shoot 49% on the road, you're going to have a pretty good chance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you look at it, I mean, look at the Nuggets. They shot 52% from the floor. They shot 39% from the three. You can live with that. 86% from the free throw line, 19 of 22. As you mentioned, they had 38 rebounds to the Heat 31. But the difference is they made six more threes. It's hard. You can't keep overcoming that because it's not like you making, you know, you got a 90 field goal attempts and you're 52% from that. You have, if you're going to overcome threes, you're going to have to get up a boatload of tooths and they didn't do that yesterday. Okay. So what changed from game one to game two, the Heat shot an all-time playoff row, low two free throws in game number one. And they went two of two, two of two last night, they went 18 of 20, which leveled the playing field with the home team because it was on board was 19 to 22 for the home team. So at least it's sort of 50, 50 ish. Right. But they attacked, they attacked last night and I thought early in the third quarter, the fourth quarter might've been the fourth quarter skip. They were in the bonus with nine minutes to go in the game. They got frustrated, got a ticky tag file here. And then Joker just whacked bam upside the head. Now it's three. And the next thing you know, you get a reach in file is four. And the next one, you're in the bonus. So now all of a sudden, Miami is marching to the free throw line, shooting penalty, shooting penalty free throws for nine minutes. The other thing off game one was I told you that bam out of bio had a career high 25 attempted shots because Joker was basically just daring him to go ahead and shoot that 10, 12 foot jump shot. And he tried and he tried and he made a good number of them, but it didn't do enough damage. So last night he was 14 shots. You can live with that. And you can live with 14 because everybody else got involved in their own little big way. Right. And it was classic heat basketball last night because it went seven deep of players who contributed. And you can make a case that there were MVP of the game, like stretches from seven different Miami heat. Right. Yeah. You mentioned, I mean, look at Cal Larry was bombing three. I mean, he has some threes give out like, Hey, no way that's going in and it's wishes. He made one bomb like a, like it was like out of his range. And I'm like, you're going to shoot that because that's, that's grounds for dismissal. Like you're going to be yanked back to the bench. Right. I'm not the only one that was thinking that like, damn, what guy did this Cal out? Okay. It went in. Then I'm thinking, damn, what didn't get into Caleb Mark. They said, he's been sick. He said, after the game, he's suffering migraines and chills, had a towel, wet towel over his head in the locker room, mispractice the day before. So they said it's non COVID, but I don't know, but he, he was not himself, but he hasn't been himself for two games. Right. He scored three points and three points in the two games. And he finally made a three late in the game. That was fair. It was three 39 left that actually put them up by their biggest margin, 12 points in the, in the fourth quarter. Right. But Shannon, remember what he did? Remember that, that Caleb Martin, who averaged, what was it? 18 and eight rebounds against Boston. Yeah. In, in I'm talking about in games three, four, five, six, seven, the last five games, he carried this team into the NBA finals. Yeah. I don't know what's happened to him. Maybe it was just his illness last night, but help me out. What if he turns back into Eastern conference finals, Caleb Martin, you might be in trouble because they pulled off what they did last night with little to no Caleb Mark. Yeah. But skip they're going to, I'm looking at Michael Porter's gift. He he's better than five points. Uh, Aaron Gordon didn't play bad, but he didn't get enough shots. Seven attempts is not enough. KCP four attempts is not enough. He needs, he needs to be a little bit more aggressive and stop just standing on it. You know, looking to pass the ball to your mom. He had a non game last night and he did the big ABC pregame interview and may question himself. Maybe next time I don't do the, the big standup pregame. It was just before, I don't know, five minutes before tip off. He did a big lengthy interview with the guys. It was great. I mean, it was just great talking about the game and how confident he is and how he never does get quite enough acclaim for what he contributes and went on and on, but they were in control. And then that happened. So did the guy say, well, after the game, that's why we don't get no claim. You shot one for four, one for three, and he was a minus 14. He was on the ABC set after the game. It was not KCP. It was Kyle out. Right. Okay. So the flip, I mean, the script got flipped. Yeah. Those, but that skip, I mean, you got Jimmy Butler hit some three skip. I'm like, how did, how do you hit the three that he hit? If he's wide open, he misses it by a mile. But when a guy's all up in him, got a hand in his face and turn it on his Jersey, he pulls up in the corner and knocks it down. I'm just confused that like the difference in his three point shots, normally guys that are wide open, they're going to shoot at a higher clip than a guy that's shooting a contested three. Yeah. Jimmy Butler is just the opposite. Okay. So here, here, here, he rose up, he rose up, he rose up. And their, their plan was, what do we talk about Friday? Eric Spolster likes to talk about going in the cave to try to figure out the next game. Right. Pat Riley is in the cave and he is a mastermind and has been since the Showtime Lakers. Right. And all of a sudden they, they come up with, they mixed in a lot of zone. They play a great matchup zone. They normally hold it off into the fourth quarter. Yeah. They normally hold it off, especially if they get a lead or the game starts to get close. They'll jump into that three, two, put Gabe, Gabe business plan to settle spot because he's guarding or holding off a yoke and he's doing a good job in the way. Yes. And yet they match up and they, they close on three point shooters out of the zone, which is usually your, your, your issue with the zone. You, you, you just leave out too many winning shots. Right. Right. And they play it to perfection and they mix it to perfection because it seems like every other time down, it's man's zone, it's man's zone. What are we doing? What are we doing? It makes you hesitate. And then Joker said after the game, they make us play, or they made us tonight, play at their pace. They like to play deliberate basketball. They like to set it up and pick you to pieces. They don't want you to get out and run, especially at home. They will pick their spots. That's why fast break points were all Denver. Miami will pick it spots. They'll run with you, but they have to do it off of turnover when it's just begging to be run. And we'll, and we'll, and we'll talk about that a little later. Skip about the timeout call, but the nuggets want to get it out. They don't really want to get it into a half court set. Miami wants to play in a half court set because they feel that they have that advantage of making you move side to side and they're going to be able to get a good shot. The nuggets want to get the ball out. Hey, that's why I'm saying a lot of times last night, Skip, you see who was losing the break, Nicola Yoken. He's not looking, he's not looking to pass it to a guard. He's like, I got this. And he's coming down in a couple of times. He took it all the way to by himself because like I said, he sees his teammates are struggling, scoring the basketball. He's like, nah, later for this, I'm timeout, I'm done. Like, oh, I still trust my teammates. I don't. So usage rate, I know it's a second level stat, but it means what's the percentage of the game that you had the ball in your hands while your team had the ball, obviously. 42% was Joker last night. That's up there with LeBron in the 2015 finals when he had lost Kevin Love and then he lost Kyrie in overtime of game one. And remember games one, two, and three, he's up there around 45%. But for Joker to have it 42%, Shannon, it's a ton of ball in hands. He's playing everything. He is being the point guard, the facilitator, and by far the primary scorer last night. And it's a lot to ask of one man. Jamal was just a ghost until later in the fourth quarter because he did next to nothing through the first three quarters. And then all of a sudden he got hot. And that's why I think Michael Malone said, okay, last shot. I'm going to let Jamal just take it because that's pretty much who he is and what he does. Yeah. Yeah. He's of the guys. He's the guy that's best equipped to go one-on-one and get a shot that he likes. I'm not trusting. I'm not really trying. Are you going to trust Michael Porter Jr. When he's struggling in that situation? Skip for the entirety of the game. You're probably not. You're not going to trust Aaron Gordon. You're not going to put in a situation. So basically it's come down to a yoke and Jamal Murray. And they're like, I'm, I'm not necessarily sure. Skip, I would have used yoke to set the screen. I might've got the screen from somebody else because I don't want Jimmy Butler defending that play at the end. Okay. Because it was a good switch for Miami. I thought it was a great switch. Yes. Yes. Yes. Because if it's Gabe Vincent on, on Jamal. Yes. Yes. Yes. Jamal's got to be at least two, three inches taller. Two inches. Right. Two inches tall. At the bare minimum. Okay. So that's the only, that's the only thing skip. I don't know if I had a call for the screen pick, excuse me, the pig with yoke. Um, because I don't want Jimmy Butler. Jimmy Butler is probably their best own ball defender. He is. I don't want that. Give me, give me anybody else other than Jimmy. All right. So sum it up. How concerned is Shannon sharp about Joker and company? Well, I'm not, I'm not overly concerned skip because I, you, if you're going to tell me that Michael Porter Jr. Is going to play like this, the rest of the series, then they're, they're in a heap of trouble because I mean, skip the average 17 points a game in the regular season. He gave you five, he gave you five points. Uh, seven shots is not enough for Aaron Gordon. I mean, seven shots. Yeah. Seven shots is not enough. KCP got to give us more than six points on with 36 minutes of play time. Uh, but I'm not concerned. I still like, I still, I'm still going, I'm gonna roll with the, uh, I'm gonna roll with the nuggets. They'll take, take the nuggets and six and I still got the heat and six. So something's about to happen. Where's the go tell us a lot game three. It's normally game five of the Todd series tells you a lot in the game three in a one, one series about to tell us even more. You'll be in a heap of trouble. They win this thing. We will find out on Wednesday guys. We'll see what that home crowd does for the heat as well. They show up late, leave early. You know that we'll see. Maybe they'll be energized by this latest win. Thanks for watching undisputed fans. Subscribe here to get the very latest from skipping Shannon. Plus go watch a few segments from our other shows on FS one.