Miami have been there just last year when they lost in the semi-finals to the Celtics and when right after the loss Jimmy Butler promised that this year they will take up a notch, he meant it and already kept it.
If you know basketball, it was obvious that the Nuggets to establish themselves once it became clear that the Miami Heat are gonna have a big-time issue dealing with the size of Aaron Gordon who knew exactly where to position himself to create a mismatch after mismatch which expected to repeat itself over and over as we move forward with this series
Murray finished a good game with 11-22 and only had 3 turnovers as he was a bit of a struggle to get to his spots. He is for sure one of the bigger guards who plays with great pace and knows how to use his size to get into his spots let alone his ball handling.
What blew my mind was the fact that Nikola Jokic was able to finish as the leading scorers of the Nuggets despite having only 5 FGA throughout the first 3 quarters which is something not many players could do in the history of NBA finals.
Jimmy Butler, on the other hand, struggled a lot and overall had better days when finished only scoring 14 pts but we all expect him to come back stronger and after taking some rest for game 2 cuz still, they had a grueling week playing 7 games to reach to this point and as far as Caleb Martin who earned the comparison to MJ after his great playoff run, finished this game 1-7 for 3 points and what he did against the Celtics was remarkable. Just a little 60/49% shooting plus 26 in Game 7. That was fun to watch. Then there was Max Strus who finished 0-10 (0-9). The Heat finished 33% from deep but the Heat are known to struggle with keeping the same level of shooting
Still early to get an idea of who’s gonna take the title but what’s more important is that the first game of the NBA finals really fulfilled what we hoped to see or expect from an NBA finals game.