Outclassed Miami look no match for the better team and the best player

M aybe it was the thin air. Perhaps it was fatigue in their 21st game since the end of the regular season. Or just an inevitable reversion towards normality for the postseason’s greatest overachievers.

Whatever it was, it was quickly clear that anyone tuning in to the first game of the NBA finals on Thursday in the hope of witnessing a stirring mountain tale starring a brave band of odds-defying underdogs should have switched off the game and streamed The Sound of Music instead.

The most flagrant cause of the wide margin of victory was the Miami Heat’s failure to rack up enough points from distance, especially from open looks early in the game.

How many three-point attempts did the Heat miss? Well, count the number of car commercials during the breaks in last night’s broadcast and double it. That’s roughly how many. Put it this way: if this series goes seven games, you can forget about the US meeting its Paris Agreement climate commitments.

Miami’s one-third conversion rate – 13 from 39 attempts – was below their lamentable regular-season average of 34.4%, the fourth-worst in the league. Max Strus went 0 for 9. Yet before this game, Erik Spoelstra’s side were the best shooters from afar in the playoffs, making 39%. They couldn’t atone from the free throw line at Ball Arena – remarkably, they were restricted to only two attempts, the fewest in playoffs history.

The Denver Nuggets dominated from start to finish in front of their fans in the franchise’s first ever NBA finals game. At one stage Denver led by 24 points. The deficit was cut to a mere nine points in the last three minutes – for a couple of seconds. It was exciting, in the way that a plate of broccoli might seem exciting if the only other food in your house is