Michael Malone: Nuggets Must Play With More Discipline in Game 3

Coach Michael Malone said it’s pretty obvious what went wrong for the Nuggets in their Game 2 loss to the Heat.

It was all on the film. And now the series is tied 1-all entering Game 3 in Miami.

“Every clip was a discipline clip,” Malone told reporters. “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. … 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.”

Game 2 marked the first home loss for the Nuggets in these playoffs. They had been 10-0 before that.

Another thing the Nuggets haven’t done? Try trail in a series. A loss in Game 3 would put them in dangerous, new territory. 

But guard Jamal Murray, center Nikola Jokic and the rest appear to be keeping the faith.

”We’ve always been a resilient team,” Murray said. “We’ve always had that chemistry. That’s one of our biggest advantages is our chemistry and how long we’ve been playing together, the continuity that we have, the reads that we make on the fly, no matter what the defense is doing. I would say just as long as we stay together and have that bounce-back mentality, we’ll be fine.

“We’ve been in positions like this before. This is the first loss in [previous] seven games, I think,” Murray said. “So we’re not doing a bad job. We’ve just got to refocus, sharpen our mentality and like I said, be more deliberate on both ends of the floor, and we’ll be fine.”