NBA FINALS: HEAT VS. NUGGETS

June 6, 2023

Christian Braun

Denver Nuggets

Practice Day

Q. Coach talked about the lack of effort that y'all had in Game 2. Just wondering y'all's thoughts on that? Did y'all agree? Sometimes harsh words and criticism is hard to take, but I know you're a team.

CHRISTIAN BRAUN: Yeah, I think we agree with what Coach said. You can't lose an NBA Finals game because of effort. We've got to bounce back effort-wise. I think we only lost the game by three points, so we're right there in a game where we didn't play well at all, and it's back-to-back games where I think the team agrees we haven't played well.

So we've just got to bounce back.

Q. What were the differences in what you saw from Miami between Game 1 and Game 2?

CHRISTIAN BRAUN: They did a lot of the same stuff, but we just messed up on our end, and I think that's the best part about it, is there's a lot of controllable things and a lot of things that we can fix.

If it was something that they did that we just couldn't handle it would be a different story, but we lost by three in a game where we made a lot of mistakes on our end, so definitely controllable, and we'll bounce back in Game 3.

Q. What does them putting Jimmy on Jamal do from your perspective?

CHRISTIAN BRAUN: Lets Nikola score in the middle of the zone. If they want to mix it up, they're going to do what they do, but I think the biggest part is just controlling what we do.

And I think that's why we lost the last game. We didn't control what was controllable for us and we didn't play hard enough. Jamal can score on anybody, and our offense is good enough where anybody can get looks. And I think we got a lot of good looks the last game, they just didn't go in.

Q. Malone said he wasn't happy with the team's three-point defense and that Miami just didn't knock down some open shots, maybe sort of came back to get you guys in Game 2 a little bit more. Was there anything between those games that you've noticed that is a fix that was an issue in both games?

CHRISTIAN BRAUN: I think, like you said, we made a lot of mistakes on our end, and I think both games we felt like we haven't played that well, so we've just got to bounce back and do what we do really well.

They had a lot of good and open shots in the fourth quarter, so got to take some of those away, and a lot of it's just communication.

Q. How much of it is just communication, making sure there's a switch on a screen or something like that involving Strus?

CHRISTIAN BRAUN: Yeah, like I said, a lot of it is communication and stuff that we can control. Something that we will fix. We've been better with that stuff throughout the whole game. Like I said, back-to-back games we haven't played well.

To lose by only three in a game where we thought we didn't play very well, it's definitely encouraging, and we'll play a lot better next game.

Q. This is the first time that you guys are coming into somebody else's house 1-1 in this series throughout the Playoffs. Where do you feel like the team is focus-wise?

CHRISTIAN BRAUN: I think that might be something that we needed last game, to lose a close game with a lot of things that we can fix.

So we feel like we're definitely in the right spot, fixing things that we need to fix. We'll shoot better obviously going forward.

But control what we can control, just be who we are. I don't think it matters home or away.