No, the Heat haven’t solved Nikola Jokić, but the Nuggets still have soul-searching to do

DENVER — Don’t tell Erik Spoelstra that his Heat hit the magic number Sunday night in their bid to slow down the best player in the world.

In the Nuggets’ 111-108 loss to the Heat in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, a defeat that tied the series 1-1 as it shifts to Miami, Nikola Jokić scored a game-high 41 points. It was the third time in this postseason Jokić has scored at least 40. The Nuggets have lost all three of those games during a postseason in which they are now 13-4 overall. In those big-scoring games, Jokić has averaged seven assists — including a postseason-low four dimes Sunday — a steady dip from his 10.5-per-game average.

The Heat turned the two-time MVP into a scorer and reaped the benefits. Simple as that. Right?

“Yeah, that’s a ridiculous — that’s the untrained eye that says something like that,” Spoelstra said afterward. “This guy is an incredible player. You know, twice in two seasons he’s been the best player on this planet. You can’t just say, ‘Oh, make him a scorer.’ That’s not how they play. They have so many different actions that just get you compromised. We have to focus on what we do. We try to do things the hard way, and he requires you to do many things the hard way. He has our full respect.”

Nothing is easy when it comes to defending Jokić. He is the singular most dominant offensive force in basketball because he can be whatever the game needs him to be.

It’s so hard to gameplan for him. He’s such a basketball savant. He’s brilliant. You’re never going to stop him; you just try to slow him down.

“If you take some of the passes away, he’s going to go score,” said Heat forward Kevin Love, who started Game 2 after not playing in the series opener. “You try to take that away and send a double team, he’s going to pass the ball. He’s going to bury you under the hoop if you switch. He’s just so smart that, you just try to make it tough on him and take the other X factors out of the game.”

In Game 2, no other Nuggets player scored more than 18 points, and even that total took a late fourth-quarter flurry from Jamal Murray. The Heat shrunk the floor, restricted cutting lanes and generally made it more difficult for Denver’s role players to find a rhythm. There was no early burst from Aaron Gordon as there had been a few nights earlier when he scored 12 points in the first quarter. Michael Porter Jr. continued to struggle from 3-point range (3 of 17 in the series). Murray did not find the same freedom to probe the floor as he did in Game 1. Outside of an impressive bench-led burst to start the second quarter, Denver struggled to find consistent transition opportunities, which has been a staple of their offensive success in these playoffs.

Nuggets coach Michael Malone likes to describe Jokić as someone who “doesn’t fight the game.” On Sunday, the game asked Jokić to score. And the two-time MVP obliged. In two brief periods at the end of the first and third quarters, Jokić scored a combined 12 points while directly guarded by Cody Zeller, the backup Miami big who gives up considerable size and strength when pitted against Denver’s superstar center. At the end of the third quarter, Jokić scored on Zeller four times in a five-possession span. That put Jokić up to 31 points on the night and gave Denver an 83-75 lead entering the fourth quarter.

Jokić being a scorer was working just fine to that point. The offense was generally clicking because little of what Jokić was doing was forced. The Nuggets were seemingly in control.

“He did what he was supposed to do,” veteran Jeff Green said. “When he had to be aggressive, he was aggressive. He makes the right play, and he sees the floor very well. I don’t think what they did took him out of him getting assists. If he’s going to be aggressive like that, other guys can figure out how to be effective on the court. It’s not about us just waiting around trying to get Joker to figure out how to get us the ball. We have to figure out how to be aggressive. It starts with the defensive end and then we carry that over to the offensive end.”

It was the defensive end that spoiled everything for the Nuggets in the fourth quarter of Game 2. Miami began the period on a 13-2 run, with Denver allowing a handful of 3-pointers during that stretch that were the cause of breakdowns of every variety. The Heat scored on seven straight possessions to begin the period. It was a ghastly display by the Nuggets that gave them little opportunity to create pace with their offense. It’s hard to spin through a defense, especially one as tough and well-coached as Miami’s, that continually has time to set itself. The best option in that scenario was often Jokić’s one-on-one scoring.

“They just put us in their rhythm,” Jokić said, “and we didn’t want to play that way.”

Teams do want to limit Jokić’s ability to get his teammates involved. Early in his career, Denver’s center famously said he grew up wanting to be a good passer because an assist makes two people happy. So it stands to reason that zapping some of the joy out of the Nuggets’ offense would start with trying to make Jokić the bucket-getting engine and cutting off the scoring for everyone else.

Only, as Spoelstra noted sharply, doing so isn’t just a choice a defense can make and easily execute. For the Heat, the work they were able to do defensively Sunday was aided by them hitting 17 of 35 shots from 3-point range, many of them coming from the kind of wide-open looks they had but didn’t make in Game 1. That is the biggest issue facing the Nuggets at this critical point in the series.

“It was definitely a breakdown in communication,” Malone said. “It was definitely a breakdown in our game plan, and we just were not nearly as disciplined as you need to be in the NBA Finals.”

Much of the remainder of this series will be played in the half court. Miami is too good defensively in transition to give Denver free rein to run. So the Nuggets need to more efficiently counter the matchup zone defense Miami has deployed in this series. They began finding answers late in the fourth quarter, like when Murray sensed three defenders closing in on him and skipped it to Gordon for a 3-pointer that cut a 12-point lead to nine. And when Murray relocated on the perimeter after a Jokić offensive rebound, caught the cross-court pass from the center and buried a long-range shot that cut the lead to three points.

“We messed up a lot of things that are controllable,” guard Christian Braun said. “We know that that’s not who we are and we’ll get it back next game.”

Jokić will adjust to whatever the Heat throw at him next. But if the game once again demands that he light up the scoreboard, that doesn’t have to be a kiss of death for the Nuggets.

“I trust Nikola,” Malone said. “He’s going to read the game. He’s going to read how he’s being guarded, and he’s also going to pick his spots where he knows, regardless of how he’s being guarded, we need him to score and be aggressive and look to score. Whether it’s 41 points, only four assists, or it’s 25 points and 15 assists, Nikola, one thing I trust about him is he’s going to make the right read time and time again.”