2023 NBA Finals: Denver Nuggets end 47-year franchise championship drought

Nikola Jokic (centre) won his first Bill Russell Finals MVP on June 13, 2023, taking Denver Nuggets to their first-ever NBA title, 47 years after the team joined the NBA. (Photo: Denver Nuggets/Twitter)

The Denver Nuggets are NBA champions. It has taken 47 years for this sentence to be put down on paper. But the Nuggets have finally ended a near five-decade long drought to get their hands on the Larry O’Brien trophy. When the final buzzer sounded at the end of Game 5, the Nuggets had trumped the Miami Heat 94-89, winning the 2023 NBA Finals series 4-1. This has been a title waiting to happen for the franchise over the last few years, but they finally got past the finish line this time round.

Impressive from the beginning

Unlike the Miami Heat, who were on a Cinderella-run for much of the 2023 playoffs, the Denver Nuggets were pretty impressive from the start of the season. They finished atop the western conference standings with a 53-29 regular season record and lost only eight games on their home floor all season long. Between November to February, they pulled off a 40-16 record, which gave them a 0.714-win percentage, which was better than the Milwaukee Bucks’ overall 58-24 record (0.707-win percentage) for the season.

Denver mirrored that form all through these playoffs as they clinically dismantled the Minnesota Timberwolves in five games in the opening round of the 2023 postseason. They split the first four games of their conference semi-finals versus the Phoenix Suns, but were totally business like as they brushed aside Phoenix in the final two games of the series to win 4-2. They even bettered their performance versus the Los Angeles Lakers, sweeping them in four straight games. That result was no mean feat as they took down a team, boasting all-time greats in LeBron James and Anthony Davis. After three imposing rounds, the Miami challenge seemed more like a formality Denver must overcome than give them any serious cause of worry. A five-game finals was vindication of Denver’s remarkable postseason run.

Getting their due, finally

This Denver team needed validation. Theirs is a story of resilience. The media ignored them even during their striking playoff run. Their players had their share of long-drawn injury issues, going through periods of doubt and uncertainty, but have come out on tops. Jamal Murray, easily the Nuggets’ second-best player in these playoffs, didn’t play for the franchise in the last two postseasons because of injury. Michael Porter Jr. missed the 2022 playoffs for a similar reason. Aaron Gordon, spent six-plus seasons with the Orlando Magic, going to the playoffs only once with that franchise. All three players are NBA champions today.

One must compliment the Nuggets head coach Michael Malone, too. Malone did his hard yards as an assistant coach around the league for a decade between 2003 and 2013. He was then sacked from his first head coaching assignment after he had barely worked for 1.5 seasons with the Sacramento Kings. His time with the Nuggets has seen him consistently and patiently improve the franchise. He dealt with injury setbacks to key players that derailed the team’s championship aspirations in earlier seasons. But Malone is a winner today. He will certainly live to tell the story of just how exacting his eight-year journey with Denver has been.

Nikola Jokic: A bona fide all-time great

2023 NBA Champions Denver Nuggets' Nikola Jokic (centre) is Western Conference Finals MVP (Photo: Denver Nuggets/Twitter)

Right at the crux of the American media’s distaste for the Denver Nuggets has been their treatment of the team’s bona fide superstar, Nikola Jokic. The constant criticism that Jokic has had to deal with is that his game never really mirrored what the advanced analytics’ teams were raving about or that he hadn’t delivered proportionate to his two-time back-to-back MVP status. Taking Denver to the promised land, 47 years after the team joined the NBA, should quieten down those critics for good.

Jokic’s run has been historic in more ways than one. His playoff numbers — 30.0 ppg, 13.5 rpg and 9.5 apg — are off the charts. He tallied 10 triple-doubles in these playoffs, with nine of those statistical marvels resulting in wins for Denver. He had a 53-point game, a 30-17-17 game and a 32-point, 21-rebound and 10-assist game for Denver in these playoffs. Those aren’t just historic numbers, but more like NBA 2K23 stats.

More impressively, he took down names such as Anthony Edwards, Karl Anthony Towns, Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo en route to winning his first Bill Russell Finals MVP. To be even more specific, the list of players who have vanquished Durant and James, two all-time top-20 players, in the same postseason is zero. That is as impressive a Finals run in NBA history as any, and certainly on a par with Michael Jordan’s journey to his first NBA title in 1991.

An apology to Jokic and the Denver Nuggets by the American media won’t be out of place at this historic moment.