NBA FINALS: HEAT VS. NUGGETS

June 6, 2023

Michael Malone

Denver Nuggets

Practice Day

Q. Michael, after Game 2, you were critical of your players at large. I know that's not the first time that you've done that over your eight years. How do you decide when to come out here and say those kinds of things about your players?

MICHAEL MALONE: Honesty isn't critical, so I don't view it as being critical. I think it was an honest assessment of the game. Before I came out and spoke to you guys, I had the same conversation with our players. Never once will I come into a press conference and say something to you that I haven't spoken to our team about.

Our players owned it. I asked them after the game, Why did we lose tonight? And they told me we didn't play hard enough. They told me we weren't disciplined enough. It wasn't critical by any nature. It was an honest assessment.

Q. Mike obviously didn't play up to his standards on either end of the floor in Game 2. How can he help himself? How can he become more engaged on both ends of the floor?

MICHAEL MALONE: It's not just one player right now. Whether it's Michael, Jamal, Aaron, Pope, Nikola, whoever, we have to be a lot more disciplined, a lot more urgent.

If you really want to simplify the first two games, in the first three quarters we have dominated both games. The Miami Heat are dominating the fourth quarter. They're averaging 33 points a game in the fourth quarter, shooting over 60 percent from the field in the fourth quarter and over 50 percent from three.

We're up eight going into the fourth quarter in Game 2. You're up 21 going into the fourth quarter of Game 1. They end up on a 15-2 run in the fourth quarter to take control of that game.

How can Michael help himself? How can everybody else help themselves? Communicate, be disciplined. It starts with the defense. If we defend and rebound, we can get out and run. We had 18 fast break points in Game 2: 16 in the first half and 13 in that second quarter.

Obviously as I mentioned, we're not getting any runouts in the fourth quarter because we're defending nobody.

Q. Obviously the first 16 or 17 games of the Playoffs for you guys, they weren't easy. Just some of the numbers made them seem that way. How valuable can a little dose of adversity be to a team when you're trying to do what your team is trying to do? How much do you almost need a little bit of an edge to get to where you want to go?

MICHAEL MALONE: Yeah, I think it's important to remind us that just because we're playing at home and we're undefeated, you just can't show up and think that's going to continue.

Coming off of a four-game sweep against the Lakers, and that was a very hard-fought sweep. They were in every game. We had to fight for every game. So you have to find a way to turn a negative into a positive.

We had a really good film session this morning. I gave an opportunity for everybody on our team to speak and talk about what they saw on the film. It was a very honest conversation. Guys owned what they needed to own. We have to learn from Game 2 to use it to our advantage, to your point.

What I know about our group is for years now we've handled adversity very well. I have no doubt that tomorrow night will be a much more disciplined, urgent team for 48 minutes.

Q. You talked about the fourth quarter stat just now. If I remember, Magic Johnson used to call it "winning time." Beyond being more focused and more disciplined, what can you and your coaching staff do to help your players perform better in the fourth quarter?

MICHAEL MALONE: Well, I've got a great stat. I think quarters 1 through 3 after two games, we had around 19 percent of our possessions were at the end of the shot clock, last seven seconds.

In the fourth quarter of Game 1 and 2, that jumps from 19 percent to 32 percent. Which means we're taking the ball out of the net, we're walking it up, we're playing against the zone and we're getting caught playing in really late-clock situations, which is hurting our offense.

Obviously what I can do is to try to help our guys defensively, because when we get stops and we get out and run, we've had control of the first three quarters two games in a row. Making sure we have the right lineups in. And offensively, just kind of giving our guys as many ways that they can attack that zone as possible where we can be effective and at least produce the right shot.

Whether we make it or not, that's going to be on our players. But trying to make sure we're producing the right shots against that zone, which has given us some trouble in the fourth quarter.

Q. Just to follow up on your point about defense, what is it specifically that the Heat are doing that has been a challenge for the first two games, and have you faced a team in this playoff run yet that has moved the ball and off the ball as much as they have?

MICHAEL MALONE: I showed 17 clips this morning. Every clip was a discipline clip, if you will, where our discipline, whether it was game plan, whether it was personnel, whether it was defending without fouling, whatever it may be, 17 clips added up to over 40 points in Game 2. That, to me, is staggering.

What we can do better is just be a lot more disciplined in terms of the game plan, who I'm guarding. Most of that stems from communication. A saying I learned a long time ago, communication is concentration. For me to communicate, I have to know what the hell to say. If I'm not concentrating and I'm not focusing, I don't know what to say. We had way too many examples, for an NBA Finals game, where we had guys not on the same page because of a lack of communication.

Their ball movement, their body movement, obviously they do a really good job with that. But we've played 17 games now in these Playoffs. Think about this: Going to the fourth quarter, they had 75 points. They were shooting 43 percent from the field, and we're up eight. So now it's just a matter of sustaining it for a lot closer to 48 minutes.

Q. You mentioned all the fourth-quarter stats, and you guys have held sizable leads going into the fourth quarter. Do you believe tightness might play a role in maybe trying to protect a lead on your home floor? Does the zone lead to some indecision? Do you see anything as far as just general tightness and indecision on one end of the floor and the other end sort of snowballs?

MICHAEL MALONE: I haven't seen indecision. I've seen, once again, a lack of communication and discipline. They played zone not just in the fourth quarter, and we've been fine against it.

But I think once that game kind of -- you allow a 15-2 run to start that fourth quarter and you've got Nikola out, you've got to get Nikola right back in. Now it becomes a different ball game.

We want to play fast; they want to play slow. When you're not getting stops, advantage Miami Heat because now they have their 2-2-1 press back to the zone. And as I mentioned before, we're playing way too slow to try to attack that, which is forcing a lot of late-clock situations for us.

We've got a lot of guys that have been in big games, playoff tested, so I don't think any of it is our guys getting tight. I think it's just not adhering to the discipline that the game needs.