NBA Finals Game 4: Aaron Gordon’s Excellent Show of Play Proves He the Missing Master Piece of Success for Denver Nuggets

MIAMI — Jamal Murray was asked if he has had time to reflect on just how good his team has become over the past two months after the Nuggets’ latest dominant double-digit victory Friday night gave Denver a 3-1 lead over the Miami Heat in the 2023 NBA Finals and moved the franchise within one win of its first NBA championship.

Denver’s combination of an exceptional offense and defense has allowed them to advance through the playoffs undefeated and without ever trailed in a series.

Never one to flinch from the microphone, Murray responded that the Nuggets haven’t changed much over the years and are still the same team they always were.

Since “we believed and we knew how good we were for a few years now,” he continued, “we have been very successful.”

Murray and the Nuggets have known for sure since the beginning of the 2021 season, but they may have suspected as much for much longer.

The Nuggets acquired Aaron Gordon from the Magic in exchange for Gary Harris, R.J. Hampton, and a first-round pick in 2025, and Gordon has fit in seamlessly at power forward with Nikola Jokic and Michael Porter Jr.

When Jokic, Murray, Gordon, and Porter all played together for 117 minutes, the Nuggets outscored their opponents by 46 points and won all seven games Gordon was on the court for them.

They took their show on the road to Los Angeles and won in dominating fashion, with Gordon playing a key role in shutting down Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers.

With Gordon on board, they transformed from a solid squad to a championship contender, though briefly, before Murray’s ACL injury derailed their title hopes.

I’m a huge Gary Harris fan. Nuggets head coach Michael Malone said Mike Singer of The Denver Post, “I love R.J. Hampton.” This was after the team acquired Hampton in a trade. “But it had to be done this way.”

It took two years to realize how important it was for Murray and Porter to return to health and for Jokic to continue his meteoric rise to become one of the game’s all-time greats for the Nuggets to finally be able to unleash the full force of the superweapon they had been building in the Rocky Mountains.

On Friday, however, the Nuggets outscored the Timberwolves by a blistering 29 points, and it was easy to see why Gordon’s addition was so crucial: the 27-year-old forward had a playoff career-high 27 points on 11-for-15 shooting, seven rebounds, six assists, and a steal in 42 minutes of work.

Malone praised his hardworking partner, saying, “He brought his hardhat tonight, and was just a warrior on both ends for us.” “…Shooting well from deep, making free throws, and putting up solid defensive numbers. Today, Aaron took care of everything for us. Indeed, he did.

He was our most valuable player,” Jokic continued. We were able to win today’s game thanks to his efforts.

In Game 4, Gordon was seemingly everywhere thanks to his characteristic limitless adaptability.

There he was, guarding the basket, rotating to the perimeter, and hounding Jimmy Butler one-on-one. He then switched onto Bam Adebayo and Kyle Lowry.

He was bringing the ball up the court to try to break the full-court press that the Heat had been using against him all series.

He was in charge of the offense, setting up dribble handoffs, directing cutters to open areas, and speeding up the game in transition.

There he was, bullying the Miami Heat’s smaller defenders with backdunks. He punished bigger players for helping him out beyond the arc by taking and making threes with ease.

He was waiting for them in the dunker position, cutting behind the Heat’s aggressive defense to find open lanes for alley-oops from Jokic and Murray.

“He’s a dog,” Murray declared. “He’s powerful. He’s really robust. I mean, he’s rough. There’s no stress around him. He’s a team player who also helps everyone get along off the court. He has consistently performed well throughout the playoffs, the season, and his stay with the team.

He’s been fantastic. He’s only in it for the glory.
To make sure that the five minutes and fifteen seconds Malone kept the two-time MVP on the bench didn’t cost the Nuggets a golden opportunity to seize this series, starting power forward-turned-backup center Gordon stepped up in the fourth quarter.

Gordon teamed with Bruce Brown to anchor the defense, and he teamed with Murray to stabilize the offense. When Jokic returned, Denver still had a nine-point lead.

“You know, all season long, it was like, oh, the non-Nikola minutes, kind of a crapshoot,” Malone recalled, describing how he felt like he had to cover his eyes and white-knuckle it through those minutes. In the postseason, our players have… had less rest. We’re picking and choosing who we play with.

However, the men who remain are engaged in fierce competition and defensive postures. Our attack may not be as pretty without Nikola, but the five men on the court need to be able to defend in order to succeed.

On Friday, Gordon had a large number of helpers.

All of the pieces the Nuggets have added to their championship puzzle contributed to the thrilling Game 4 win, including Murray’s brilliant playmaking (12 assists without a turnover despite a steady diet of blitzes and traps) and Jokic’s pedestrian-for-him-but-still-killer 23 points, 12 rebounds, four assists, three steals, and three blocks.

Although he was pegged as a strange hybrid small-ball 4/5 out of Brooklyn, Brown ran point with aplomb in the decisive minutes of the NBA Finals, attacking with reckless abandon and scoring 11 of his 21 points in the final period.

Aside from Mike Breen’s “Bang!” and the mass exodus of Heat fans, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s three fourth-quarter plays—a strip-and-steal on Butler in the paint, a stop on Adebayo on a mismatch that he finished with the defensive rebound, and a transition 3-pointer that put Denver up by 14 with just over two minutes remaining—were also huge.
But Gordon was the deciding factor in this match. When Miami took a one-point lead at the end of the first quarter on a buzzer-beating corner three by Butler, Denver’s Eric Gordon started hammering the ball against the Heat’s bench players and scored 15 points.

Brown remarked that “AG was being extremely aggressive.” They had a smaller defender on him, or he was temporarily matched up with a smaller defender. At all times, we need him to take the initiative.

He’ll help us get on the scoreboard. He always makes the proper play, and tonight was his lucky night.

It’s not everyone’s turn to score all the time on a team with so much talent and so much trust in the pass and in one another, but your chance will come.

This is fundamental to what has made Denver’s offense so difficult to defend all year. According to Gordon, it’s also an essential part of what makes the current Nuggets squad so remarkable.

He explained, “That’s just how this team is built.” We have individuals that can carry the load day in and day out. It’s possible that tonight won’t be your night, but it’s also possible that it will.

This group is great at identifying those who have found their groove. Simply put, I want to perform at a high level for the sake of my team. I’m just doing what my brothers ask of me when my team needs me.

For the first several years of his career, Gordon played for a rotating cast of head coaches in Orlando, leading to roster changes and competing priorities.
“When I was there, it was something new every year,” Gordon told Singer of the Denver Post after being dealt to the Nuggets.

All-new management, roster, and coaching staff. There was always so much change. We weren’t sure if we wanted to lose or if we wanted to tank. It was like pressing both the accelerator and the brake. Burnout.”

Gordon, playing on a team with no clear direction or established pecking order after Dwight Howard’s departure, occasionally overextended himself trying to be the team’s top offensive threat, a score-first, playmaker-second small forward in the mold of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George.

However, in Denver, he joined a club that had most of its key players in place and was led by a stable coach in Malone.

When asked about his role on the club, he stated, “I felt like I was going to be a defender for this team, a defenseman for this team,” which he said on Friday.

They had a good chance of scoring, as I anticipated. MPJ, among the world’s finest marksmen. Two-time MVP Joker is a complete offensive threat for you. Jamal Murray is a threat to score 50 points on any given night. I came in to play defense and make their job easier, and I was prepared for that. “That’s right up my alley.”

He had found a location where he could settle down, an NBA team where he could “get in where I fit in.” And in doing so, he discovered his ideal self, the game he was destined to play.

“It was nice just knowing that I could be myself, and that was enough — I didn’t have to be any more or less,” Gordon remarked. Saying, “Yeah, that was cool. Sometimes it means scoring, sometimes that means rebounding, sometimes that means defending the best player, and sometimes that means making plays. Night to night, I get to do whatever I want and be really authentic.

Not every former first-round choice is eager for a chance to make everyone else’s life easier. As important as Gordon’s defensive prowess, glass-eating rebounding, lob-catching, and complementing playmaking are to the Nuggets, they feel this is even more significant.

Gordon has completely and voluntarily put aside his own needs in favor of the team’s pursuit of an NBA title, and Jokic believes that his selflessness is being rewarded.

I think he sacrifices himself for the team or whatever it may be, Jokic replied, looking up at the clouds. To put it another way: “And that’s why I think the one upstairs gave him the game today, gave him the game that he had.”

Perhaps Gordon’s success was a sign from on high that his sacrifice was accepted. Perhaps it was just the case of a player endowed with extraordinary physical gifts seizing an opportunity to do so at a pivotal juncture in his career.

Whatever the case may be, the results of Game 4 validated everything that the Nuggets’ executive office saw in Gordon during that 117-minute preview in the spring of 2021 and led them to make the trade that brought him to Denver.

He was crucial to completing a championship-caliber squad. Back in Denver on Monday night, it will have its shot.

“I mean, that’s why we got him,” Murray remarked, smiling. To put it another way, “That’s why we got him.”

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