Five Thousand Two Hundred Eighty Feet: A Deep Dive Into the 2023 Championship

English feature · same subject as above · Team: Denver Nuggets / Star: Nikola Jokić

I The Night

June 12, 2023, Ball Arena. The horn went and the board read 94-89. Nineteen thousand five hundred and thirty-seven people came out of their seats. Confetti dropped from the rafters and fireworks went off outside in the thin air. The Nuggets had won the first championship in franchise history — 47 seasons in the NBA, 56 years if you count the ABA years, and never once had they held that trophy.

It was not a pretty game. Denver shot 5 of 28 from three, missing 20 of their first 22. They missed 10 of 23 free throws. In the first half they went 1 of 15 from deep, the worst shooting half in Finals history for a team taking at least ten threes. Miami led 51-44 at the break, and Bam Adebayo had 18 of his 20 points before halftime.

The fouls made it worse. Jokić picked up two in the first quarter and had to sit with 2:51 left in the second, and Miami ran off a 15-9 stretch while he watched. By halftime Jokić and Jamal Murray each carried two fouls and Aaron Gordon had three. Michael Malone even had to use DeAndre Jordan, a man long out of the playoff rotation, for a few minutes he hadn't planned on.

The turn came during a third-quarter timeout. Denver had a four-on-three and settled for a three that didn't go. Jokić lit into his teammates on the bench. "We could just get an easy layup or score the ball," he said later. From there the Nuggets stopped gambling on the jumper and started pounding the paint, possession after possession.

Denver outscored Miami 24-18 in the fourth and 50-38 over the second half. Jimmy Butler, who'd made two field goals in the first 43 minutes, suddenly woke up and scored 13 straight to put the Heat ahead by one. Then Bruce Brown grabbed an offensive rebound through traffic and tipped it in. Denver led again and never gave it back. Butler's three rimmed out at the end. Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope each hit two free throws to finish it.

Jokić went 12 of 16 for 28 points and 16 rebounds, 10 of those points in the fourth quarter on 5-of-6 shooting. "It was ugly and we couldn't make shots," he said. "But at the end we figured it out." Then the line everybody quoted: "The job is done, we can go home now."

There's a number worth sitting with. Denver won this thing 55 years, seven months and 28 days after it played the first game in franchise history. Nobody in the building had been alive for that one. A team that spent four decades as an afterthought — too high, too far, too easy to skip on a national broadcast — closed it out on its own floor, in front of people who had quietly stopped believing it would ever happen.

II The Finals MVP

The 2023 Finals MVP was Nikola Jokić, and it was unanimous — all 11 media votes, all for him. It was his first Bill Russell Trophy and the first in Denver's history.

For the series he averaged 30.2 points, 14.0 rebounds, 7.2 assists and 1.4 steals while shooting 58.3%. Game 1 was a 27-point, 14-assist, 10-rebound triple-double. Game 2 he couldn't find a rhythm and still put up 41 and 10. Game 3 was 32, 21 and 10 — the first 30-20-10 game in Finals history, and he and Murray became the first teammates ever to each post a 30-point triple-double in the same game.

Stretch it across the whole postseason and the numbers get silly. Jokić finished with 10 triple-doubles, breaking a record Wilt Chamberlain had held for 56 years, and became the first player ever to reach double-digit triple-doubles in a single playoff run. He also became the first player in league history to lead a postseason in total points (600), total rebounds (269) and total assists (190). Nobody had led in all three. Nobody had come close.

Where he came from is the good part. Denver took him 41st in the 2014 draft, and the pick got announced during a Taco Bell commercial. He's now the lowest draft pick ever to win Finals MVP, and the first player taken outside the top 15 to win both a Finals MVP and a regular-season MVP. He's the first center to take the award since Shaquille O'Neal in 2002.

The regular-season MVP vote made this one sting in a useful way. Jokić had won it in 2021 and 2022, then played arguably his best basketball in 2022-23 and lost his bid for a third straight to Joel Embiid. A few months later he had the trophy that mattered more. He became the 11th player with multiple MVPs and a title, a list that starts with Jordan, LeBron, Kareem, Moses Malone, Curry, Duncan, Magic, Bird and Pettit.

He'd already collected the Western Conference finals MVP, the Magic Johnson award, so he swept both postseason trophies. "We are not in it for ourselves, we are in it for the guy next to us," he said at the podium. "And that's why this means even more." Malone's read was simpler: "He's never changed with all the success, and he never will. It's just not in his nature."

He also became just the fourth center with multiple MVPs and a Finals MVP, alongside Moses Malone, Kareem and Wilt, and the first center since Chamberlain in 1967 to lead a postseason in assists per game. He put up 500 points and 100 assists in one playoff run, something no center had ever done. And he's one of five players born outside the United States to win the award, next to Giannis, Dirk, Tony Parker and Hakeem.

III The Long Wait Back

The real setup for this title was buried in two injuries. In April 2021, Jamal Murray tore the ACL in his left knee; the Nuggets got swept by Phoenix in the second round without him. He missed the entire following season. Nine games into 2021-22, Michael Porter Jr. had season-ending back surgery.

So Jokić carried it alone for two years. He won MVP in 2021 and 2022 and Denver still couldn't get out of the second round — in 2022 they lost in five to Golden State, who went on to win it all. Empty stats. Too soft for the playoffs. The MVPs don't mean anything. He heard all of it for two years and never once bit back in public.

In 2022-23 both guys came back. Murray averaged 20 points and pushed his assists to a career-high 6.0. Porter played 62 games, averaged 17.4 and shot 41% from three, with no visible rust. Denver's offense went from "Jokić, figure it out" back to something with two players who could create their own shot.

The playoffs made the difference obvious. Against the Lakers in the conference finals, Murray averaged 32.5 points and shot 40% from three, and his fourth quarters in Games 1 and 2 are why that series never got interesting late. In Game 5 of the Finals he scored just 14 — and led the team with 8 assists, four of them in the fourth quarter. When the game needed a conductor, he conducted.

The patience ran both ways. Denver's front office didn't panic through two lost seasons. They didn't trade Murray for a win-now piece, and they didn't give up on Porter after a second back surgery. In a league that measures windows in months, they waited for two injured young players to heal. Four years later that decision paid out a championship.

The noise around Jokić in those years was specific and mostly unfair: great in January, gone by May. He never engaged with it, never gave anyone a quote to run with. What he did instead was keep making the same passes, keep playing the same game, and trust that a roster built around one man's passing could eventually be made whole. It took two lost seasons and two long rehabs. Nobody says the regular-season thing anymore.

IV The Road

The regular season was 53-29, first in the West. It was the first time in franchise history Denver had ever held the top seed, clinched on April 5 with games to spare. For a team that had been around 47 seasons without ever finishing first, that alone was a statement.

The path wasn't the cakewalk it later got described as. Minnesota went down in five. Then Phoenix — a team that went 8-0 after trading for Kevin Durant and came in as the hottest thing in the West. The Suns tied it 2-2 with two home wins, and Game 4 featured a career-high 53 points from Jokić, the best scoring night of his life in either the regular season or the playoffs.

In the conference finals came the Lakers: rebuilt at the deadline, 20-8 after the All-Star break, and owners of seven straight playoff series wins over Denver going back decades. The Nuggets swept them in four. It was the first sweep in franchise history and it put them in the Finals for the first time ever.

They finished 16-4 in the postseason, tied for the third-best title run since the league went to four best-of-seven rounds, behind only the 2017 Warriors at 16-1 and the 2024 Celtics at 16-3. They did not lose a single game at home. Jokić took the Western Conference finals MVP.

Stack those numbers and they say the same thing: this wasn't a lucky run. Fifty-three wins, the No. 1 seed, 16-4, undefeated at home, a sweep in the conference finals. Denver spent the whole season proving it was the best team in the West, then spent three months turning that into a trophy.

The margins back it up. Denver won its 16 playoff games by an average of 8.3 points, and all four of its wins over Phoenix came by double digits. This wasn't a team sneaking through on close games and kind bounces. When the Nuggets won in these playoffs they usually won going away, and that's the most reliable sign available that a title was earned rather than survived.

V The Roster Puzzle

What Denver did better than anything was identify the hole and fill exactly that. In the summer of 2022 they sent Monte Morris and Will Barton to Washington for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Ish Smith. That same offseason they signed Bruce Brown in free agency.

Both moves showed up all over the Finals. Caldwell-Pope was the first line of defense on the perimeter and one of the most reliable spot-up shooters in the series; in Game 5 he blocked three shots, a 6-foot-5 guard rotating down to protect the rim. Bruce Brown was the glue: 10 points and a team-high four offensive boards in the clincher, and it was his tip-in that decided which team went home with the trophy.

Aaron Gordon was the other piece that mattered. Denver got him from Orlando midway through 2020-21 for Gary Harris, R.J. Hampton and a 2025 first-rounder, specifically to put a forward next to Jokić who could bang, run and take the other team's best wing. That's what he did in every round, playing through foul trouble in Game 5 and never dropping the physical level.

Behind them sat veterans like Jeff Green and DeAndre Jordan. When Jokić went to the bench in Game 5, it was Jordan — out of the rotation for months — who had to hold the line, and Miami only won those minutes by six when it could have been worse. That's what depth buys you. It doesn't show up in highlights; it shows up in the ugliest four minutes of your season not becoming a collapse.

And the kids. Christian Braun, taken 21st in 2022, plus Peyton Watson, acquired in a draft-night trade, gave Denver energy and switchable defense all year. A champion doesn't need five stars. It needs eight or nine men who know exactly what they are.

Porter deserves his own line, because he was the biggest risk on the roster. Back surgery before he turned 25, a max contract, and a job description that asked him to shoot over people rather than create for himself. In the clincher he went for 16 and 13, missed looks he normally makes, and still found ways to finish around the rim. Denver never needed him to be a star. It needed him to be out there.

VI The Gamble

The first bet was placed on draft night in 2014. Denver took a chubby Serbian center with the 41st pick, during a commercial break, and almost nobody in the room thought it would matter. Nine years later he was the best player in the sport.

The second bet was patience. Jokić turned into a two-time MVP while the team stalled out for two straight years. The front office didn't flinch. Gordon arrived to fix the forward spot. Then Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown to fix the perimeter. None of those moves shook the league. Every one of them patched the hole that had cost them the year before.

Michael Malone was the other bet that paid off. This was his eighth season, and he'd been through a conference finals run and two years of people wondering whether he was the guy. He never chased a trend. He built everything around Jokić's passing, got criticized for being too dependent on one player, and watched that exact approach get called the right way to build a team the moment Denver won.

GM Calvin Booth made the two moves that closed the gap. Owner Stan Kroenke, in one ownership cycle, collected an NFL title, a Stanley Cup and now a Larry O'Brien — the Nuggets were the last of the three and by far the longest wait.

There's a longer backdrop too. Denver was the last of the four ABA teams that merged into the NBA to reach the Finals, and became the second ABA-born franchise to win a championship, after San Antonio. Half a century of road to get here.

And then there's the commercial. Front Office Sports later worked out that the Taco Bell ad during which Denver's pick got announced ended up generating more than $4.4 million in equivalent brand value for the chain, once that pick turned into a Finals MVP. Nobody at Taco Bell planned it. Nobody in the room that night was really paying attention. It's the whole roster in one joke: the most valuable thing on the board got read out between ads.

VII The Tuition

Miami earned something this postseason. They were 44-38 and seeded seventh in the East on record, dead last in the league in points per game, and the only playoff team with a negative point differential. They lost a play-in game to Atlanta, beat Chicago in the second one, and squeezed into the field as the eight seed.

Then they took out Milwaukee, the best record in basketball, four games to one. Jimmy Butler averaged 37.6 in that series, dropped a career-high 56 in Game 4, and led them back from 16 down in the fourth quarter of Game 5. It was the sixth time an eight seed had ever knocked off a No. 1.

Next came the Knicks in six. In the conference finals they went up 3-0 on Boston, got dragged back to 3-3 — Derrick White's putback at the buzzer in Game 6 nearly ended them — and then went into TD Garden and won Game 7 by 103-84. Butler had 28, Caleb Martin 26 and 10. Butler took the Eastern Conference finals MVP; Martin averaged 19.3 for the series after averaging 9.6 in the regular season.

Miami became the first eight seed to reach the Finals since the 1999 Knicks, and the first ever to do it in a full 82-game season. Their rotation ran on undrafted guys — Martin, Gabe Vincent, Duncan Robinson, Max Strus. A group of players nobody wanted turned a season of doubt into one of the great playoff runs.

But the Finals exposed a ceiling. Tyler Herro broke his hand in the first game of the first round. Victor Oladipo tore his patellar tendon. Butler played the whole series on a bad ankle and shot 5 of 18 for 21 points in Game 5. "Those last three or four minutes felt like a scene out of a movie," Erik Spoelstra said. "Two teams in the center of the ring throwing haymaker after haymaker." This time the script went the other way.

One more thing was riding on that run. Udonis Haslem, in his 20th and final season, checked into the Finals one last time — two decades in the same jersey, ending on the biggest stage the sport has. Spoelstra reached his sixth Finals as a head coach. Whatever the scoreboard said in June, this group walked out of the season having made the case that culture is a real thing and not just something printed on a T-shirt.

VIII The City and the Map

Denver sits at 5,280 feet, exactly a mile up, and Ball Arena's scoreboard never lets a visiting team forget it. All season the Nuggets turned that building into a place nobody could win — they didn't lose a single home game in the entire postseason.

The city had waited 47 years. The franchise joined the NBA in 1976, played in the ABA before that, and had its eras — Alex English, the Dikembe Mutombo team that knocked off Seattle — but nobody had brought the trophy back up the mountain. On championship night the fireworks went up outside the arena and the streets stayed loud past midnight. A whole generation found out what it feels like when your team is the one on top.

Word also reached Sombor, Serbia, Jokić's hometown. That same week Novak Djokovic won the French Open, so a town of fewer than 50,000 people lost its mind twice in one week. A kid taken 41st, announced during a fast-food ad, was the best player in the NBA Finals.

For the league, the meaning isn't just another small-market story. What Denver proved is that you don't need a big city's pull, a superteam, or a pile of top-five picks. You can get there by being right over and over — draft the right guy, wait for the injured ones, fill the one hole that hurt you last year. It's slower. It holds up.

Jokić's own reaction was the perfect footnote. He stood in the confetti holding his daughter, grinning like he wasn't quite sure what to do with himself. Asked about being the 41st pick, he shrugged it off: "That doesn't matter. When you're here, you're a player." The job is done, we can go home now. No wild celebration from a man who'd simply finished what he started.

Kroenke's Avalanche had taken the Stanley Cup a year earlier, which made this his third title across three leagues in a little over twelve months. And the ABA thread runs straight through it: Denver reached the ABA championship round in 1976, the league's final season before the merger, and lost. It took 47 more years, a new league, and a second-round pick from Serbia to finish the job that team left undone.

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Video Recap

Official Finals MVP highlights: