Kenny, Jamal, and Isiah React to Nuggets Going Up 3-1 vs. Heat | 2023 NBA Finals

Teams that take a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals have won 35 times and lost just once. Denver Nuggets now just one win away from the first championship in their franchise history. Chris Miles here with Jamal Crawford, Kenny the Jet Smith, and Isaiah Thomas. And we are presented by State Farm. This is Game Time Live at the Finals. Here's the deal. Back-to-back wins on the road in the NBA Finals by double digits. There's so many things to break down, but Isaiah, what stood out most to you in this particular game four? Denver's just better. I mean, you know, their size, their offensive execution, their poise, the way they play, they play together. And they really have an answer to everything that Miami is trying to do. We said the other night that the Joker has all the answers to the test. And Denver really has all the answers offensively to what Miami is trying to do to them defensively. Well, the Miami Heat have proved everyone wrong up until this point. When they played the Boston Celtics, you said man for man, they have every advantage, Boston Celtics. They have the size in certain positions with Brown and Tatum. And then all of a sudden, they go up 3-0. So they disproved all the disclaimers. But now, you said, well, Denver has the same thing. 6'10", Porter. 6'10", 6'8", Gordon. And on the perimeter, Joker. And this is the first team that's actually proving them right. That they can punish you for outmanning you in certain positions. And that's what's happening. No one else to this playoffs has been able to do that to the Miami Heat on a consistent basis except for them. They're playing great basketball. Both of them are. But Denver is just a higher level of Miami. Everything you can do, we can do better. And right now, like Zeke and Jed have said, Miami has just ran out of talent. It comes down to you both can have schemes. You both can work hard. You both can do the right things. You both can play the right way. Now, let's just out-talent you. And right now, that's what Denver's doing. The only other time I've seen this happen, where the Denver Nuggets fans are staying in here. They've come down thick. Let's go Nuggets. And screaming the whole arena and screaming, let's go. You thought they were saying Celtics. Yeah. Oh, you're not. They had a plan. PTSD. PTSD. But they're screaming. The only other time I've seen this was when the Toronto Raptors fans traveled like this. Yes. And they would scream in the arena after the arena and stay in there for 15 minutes afterwards. This is what you're witnessing, Chris. Welcome to the NBA finals, my man. Welcome, baby. Hey, first time here, and that is an amazing thing to see. I was like, what are all those people over there chanting? And it's the fans that took the road trip down to Miami and had a good time. A good time. With two double-digit wins. Now, their defense showed up. The Miami Heat, 1-6 in the postseason, right, when they score under 100 points. Three of those games have come in this series. And three of those losses have now come to the defense. Is that Joker's brother? Yeah. You know he's there. You don't have to think of it. We should bring them on. No, I saw that guy in the hotel today. I don't think I want to talk about that. And I didn't know. I was like, who the hell is this big ass? I jumped in the elevator. I was like, I'm not going in there by myself. I said, no, Tim. He's taking pictures. He's famous. No, no, no. Those aren't his brothers. Those are the guys from Taken 5. Wow. That's who that is. That's why. Yeah, okay. Now I understand the toughness. Like, when you see it in person. Actually, the Joker is the skinniest one. Yeah, you see it in person. It's real. And that ain't fat. That's muscle. No, those guys do all of the neck weights and everything like that. No question. But, you know, I'm going to go to the other side. Here's a team that's down 3-1. We'll go there. What does a Miami Heat do? I think I might be the only one in the position that's been down 3-1 and been on a team that's been able to come back. The difference, I think, with the Miami Heat is we had the it factor with Hakeem Olajuwon. Hakeem Olajuwon and The Dream. And The Dream. All three. The it factor. And the other thing that you had, you had to have a division of delusion. You had to, like, really believe something was going to happen that could not happen. And you had to be delusional. And so we go, oh, this is exact. We were exact same position. We said, oh, if we go there and we go 3-2, we're not losing games. We're winning game six. We're not going to come back and lose. Now game seven, all the pressure's on them, Phoenix, and we're going to just stay close. And then it's on them. But you have to have delusion. You have to have it. Jimmy now has to change his game. He's been an all-around player. He has to be a scorer in this series, it seems like, for them to win. But the difference is, Denver has come to your house and beat you by double digits. No, that happened to us. In both games. We lost to Phoenix by double digits. But you had Akeem, Olajuwon, and Dream. All three of them. You had Akeem and Olajuwon and Dream. And Denver has the best player in the series. True. They have the Joker. And, you know, just all of us watching him in the back play, we're not getting ready to say he's the greatest big man to ever play and all of that. But he might be one of the smartest big men to ever play. Define that. Define that. Because he has an answer to every problem that you throw at him. He's the most unique big man to ever play. If you play man to man, right, he can post you. If you double team him, he's an excellent passer. If you play zone against him, he sets it up and plays weak side. He's unselfish. You know, and when you talk about just reading the defense, you know, he reads the defense better than most big men. Most point guards. Yeah, and most points. I mean, so Kareem, Shaq, Will, you know, Walton, them guys, they were good offensively. But I'm just talking about in terms of they were good scoring wise. But in terms of just like knowing exactly what to do, how to do, when to do it. Not from a scoring standpoint, but okay. But did they have to? Shaq didn't have to do that. He didn't, like, you never made him feel uncomfortable enough to figure out. He stayed on addition. He never went to multiplication or division. No, hear what I'm saying. I'm talking intellect, right? I ain't talking like scoring. So when you put this type of defense against him, he knows exactly where to go, not to get himself a bucket, but to totally distort your defense. He's the guy that if you're coaching kids like I do and the kids are doing something and me and my assistant coach say, no, no, go do it like this. He's the guy that's going to do it like this, like he's playing with kids. The difference between him and those other guys is the fact that they're scoring first. He's scoring last. Like he's playing a whole different game. So how do you figure out that arithmetic if you haven't seen it before at that position? I think I've seen it. Who's been like that? I just haven't seen it in a 6'11", 7-foot body. But, you know, it's magic. He wasn't scoring first. He does exactly what magic did. He dismantled your whole defense. You play zone. You play whatever. He shoots a three. Start learning to shoot the three. And LeBron, like the same way. And younger LeBron at certain times would just dismantle your defense and he would post you. And then when he learned how to post up. But from the center position, he's really the only one who, because of his unique body type and everything else, he's the only one who I think gets those quiz questions. Where Shaq, he's like, you're never going to get to that because I'm going to score so much. His dominance. You know what I mean? For the audience watching, we are not saying Shaq and the Joker are in the same league. That ain't what we're saying. We're talking basketball intellect. With the God-given talents that you have. We're talking from the neck up. From the neck up in terms of how he sees and understands the game and how he makes it. And if Magic Johnson was playing in today's NBA. That's how he'd look. He would be a center in today's NBA. He wouldn't be a point guard in today's NBA. Listen to the names we're saying with him, though. Magic, LeBron, Shaq. We're saying all-time great. We're talking the intellect, again, from the neck up. Larry, would you put Larry the same way? That's what's killing Miami. It's his basketball IQ. It's his intellect. Like I said the other night, he has all the answers to the test. So whatever equation you give him, he's got the answer to the equation. He's so good. He's not even playing against the Miami Heat players. He's playing against Ulster. Yes. His mind is playing against Ulster. Oh, you want to do that? Okay, I have a counter for that. He's playing a whole different game. And the last thing I'll say on this, Chris. Coach Smith used to have a—the late, great Dean Smith used to have a saying. When we used to walk on the floor, he said, We're not playing against the opponent. We're playing like golf. We're playing the course. So we're playing the course. This is a par four. We have to get there in four. We have to get there in three. So we never—we had certain rules that we would do against anything. And he has rules in his head. No matter what happens, this is what I'm going to do. You double me here, I'm looking A or B. He's playing golf while everybody else is playing basketball. So here's the question for you as far as the Denver Nuggets winning this game. Because nine minutes, 34 seconds left in the fourth quarter. The Miami Heat crowds into it. Joker gets his fifth foul. And we've talked about it all season. Non-Nikola Jokic minutes. That's the weakest part of the Denver Nuggets. The only way they don't win is if Nikola Jokic has to sit. He sits for five minutes. They hold that lead. How do they do that? We were saying that when Jamal Murray wasn't all the way right. Now you put him back in. You equate him, and now everybody else is playing. Aaron Gordon and Brown score 48 points. Joker and Jamal Murray score 38 points. What team can do that? The two best players are outscored by a bench player in their third or fourth op. The 1989 Detroit Pistons. There you go. Talk about winning. Detroit Pistons wins Ponce Villas. You're saying other championship teams. Oh, my bad. We got two point guards. And the guy who started his career is a point guard. And we've had a magnificent series from a guy who's developed into a guy that can create for others. And that's Jamal Murray. Let's show him some love, right? Ten assists, zero turnovers in this game. What? He also had his fourth consecutive game to start the NBA Finals with ten or more assists. First player in NBA history to do that. See you.