The Nuggets opened the NBA Finals with a home win against the Heat, but Denver’s head coach Michael Malone is not getting ahead of himself and is telling his players to do the same.
“I told our players ‘Don’t read the paper, don’t listen to the folks on the radio and TV saying that this series is over and that we’ve done something because we haven’t done a damn thing. We won Game 1,'” Malone said ahead of Game 2.
“And the reason I told our players I was excited this morning was because we won Game 1 and we didn’t play well and there’s so many things we can do better and if we do those things at a better level we’ll have a chance to win Game 2 tomorrow night.
“I thought our pick and roll defense was poor. I thought our shrink the floor was poor. And I felt they got 11 offensive rebounds – Bad [Adebayo] had 4, Jimmy [Butler] had 3. There’s so many areas that we can clean up, so I’m not worried about what they’re going to do, I’m worried about the things that we have to do better to try to win Game 2.”
