Denver Nuggets beat Miami Heat in NBA finals Game 5 for team’s first title

The Denver Nuggets beat the Miami Heat 94-89 on Monday night to win a first NBA championship in their 47 years in the league.

Led by two-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić, the Nuggets overcame a 10-point deficit in the second quarter to close out the series 4-1. The Heat threatened to make a comeback of their own in the final minutes before a costly turnover by Miami star Jimmy Butler gave Denver crucial free throws.

“The job is done, we can go home now,” said Jokić, who finished the game with 28 points and 16 rebounds, in an on-court interview after clinching the title. He was also named the finals MVP after averaging 30.2 points, 14.0 rebounds and 7.2 assists across the series. The Serbian All-Star, who was a second-round pick in the 2014 draft, also became the lowest drafted player to win a finals MVP. Denver’s title catapults him into the conversation as one of the all-time great NBA centers.

His teammate Jamal Murray was also superb: he averaged 21.4 points, 6.2 rebounds and 10.0 assists a game in the finals after missing the entire 2021-22 season with a torn ACL.

“It’s long before we made it here that I thought this was going to happen,” said Murray. “I had a belief of being in the playoffs before, having the experience, seeing the team and the chemistry grow, having the same core my whole career, that’s when I saw it. That’s when I believed it.

“To be here just kind of rounds it out and shows that when we are given the right circumstances and everybody healthy, God willing, we can do it. I think when we’re playing our best basketball, we are a very hard team to stop.”

It was far from a vintage performance from the Nuggets in Game 5. They missed 20 of their first 22 three-point attempts and seven of their first 13 free