Finally healthy, the championship promise of Nuggets could be fulfilled Monday

DENVER — It was just four games in March of 2021. Four wins.

The window was that small between when Aaron Gordon joined the Nuggets in a trade from Orlando and when Jamal Murray went down with a torn ACL. It was a small sample size (although part of a stretch where Denver won 12-of-14) that foreshadowed what could happen Monday night.

For those four games when everyone was healthy in 2021, the Nuggets looked every bit the contender. Gordon fit in seamlessly from Day 1 and felt like a missing piece, and the Nuggets looked like a trendy Finals pick. They looked like a team that that season could beat the top-seeded Jazz or a dangerous Suns team (who ultimately made the Finals). Then Murray went down, and he — as well as Michael Porter Jr. with back issues — missed the 2021-22 season recovering.

The promise of those games could be fulfilled Monday night. The Denver Nuggets are just one win away from an NBA title and can close it out against the Heat on Monday.

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

“And to be here just kind of rounds it out and it shows when we were given the right circumstances and everybody’s healthy, no doubt we can do it.”

Everyone wasn’t healthy again until this season, and even then role players like Bruce Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope had to be added to the mix. Even then, Murray didn’t play like he has of late all season long, it took him time to grow into trusting his knee again. But to a man, the Nuggets say they wouldn’t change a thing, that the