The small ball era had a good run. The Denver Nuggets — led by 6-foot-11, 285-pound center Nikola Jokic — officially expired the small ball era with a brand of old-school basketball principles that rely mostly on size and strength over pace and space.

The Nuggets plowed through the 2023 NBA playoffs, winning 16 of 20 games. Their 16-4 postseason mark is the best since the 2007 San Antonio Spurs. Denver put an exclamation point on its historic playoff run by winning the franchise’s first NBA title after overpowering and overwhelming the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals.

“[The Nuggets] have what Golden State had. They’ve changed the game,” Fox Sports NBA analyst Ric Bucher said on FS1’s “The Herd.”

“With a point center in Jokic, now I expect teams are going to be looking to find that athletic 7-footers who might be able to match up with him to make the game difficult,” Bucher added, “or find some sort of wrinkle that is going to have an answer for Nikola Jokic.”

The Nuggets roll out a conventional starting five with Jamal Murray (point guard), Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (shooting guard), Michael Porter Jr. (small forward), Aaron Gordon (power forward), and Jokic (center). They all have ideal size for their respective positions. Murray is a 6-4 point guard who can score at all three levels and post-up smaller guards. Caldwell-Pope is a 6-5 guard with elite defensive talent as a 3-and-D wing. Porter Jr. is a lengthy 6-10 shooting forward who can provide instant offense. Gordon is an athletic 6-8 forward who started his career in Orlando as a spectacular slam dunker, but became a rugged player willing to do all the dirty work and take on difficult defensive assignments.

And then there is Jokic.

The big man from Sombor, Serbia, is a throwback center with a touch of modern. He takes high percentage shots. He sets solid screens. He rebounds the ball. He can hit 3-pointers, but it’s more a luxury than a necessity. What makes Jokic special is his ability to be playmaker as the 5-man. The Nuggets run their offense through Jokic, and he’s very comfortable being the quarterback.

Having the center be the focal point is certainly nostalgic. It goes against the new-school way where threes are better than twos. Analytics shifted the attack from inside-out to outside-in.

The Nuggets don’t subscribe to this approach. They are more of a conventional team that would have been a good fit in the 1980s and ’90s.

Nuggets coach Michael Malone — whose father Brendan won two championships as a member of Chuck Daly’s staff with the Detroit Pistons — leans heavily on his starting five. He usually finishes games with his core five guys, an anomaly in today’s game as most coaches prefer going small instead of staying big. The Heat deployed this small-ball, perimeter-oriented philosophy and rode it to an improbable postseason run, becoming the second No. 8 seed to reach the NBA Finals. The Heat advanced through each round by wearing down opponents with 3-point shooting, near-flawless execution in the fourth quarter, and a perplexing zone defense.

It almost work until Miami ran into Denver in The Finals.

Miami’s formula worked against Eastern Conference teams. It wasn’t as effective against the bigger Nuggets, whose size, strength, and skill — three traits that define their all-world center Jokic — were too much to overcome. Jokic and Co. found the mismatches and punished the mismatches throughout the series.

Jokic enjoyed a sensational NBA Finals debut, averaging nearly a triple-double (30.2 points, 14 rebounds, 7.2 assists) en route to winning Finals MVP. He was too big and too skilled for his counterpart Bam Adebayo. Bam had a solid series (22.3 points, 12.5 rebounds, 3.8 assists) but his numbers were pedestrian compared to Jokic. Adebayo’s effort would have been good enough against the majority of NBA centers. But Jokic is no ordinary center.

Bam is an undersized center (listed at 6-9, 255) best suited as a big forward. In boxing terms, Bam would be a light heavyweight. He was simply no match for a super heavyweight like The Joker.

Denver’s core group is homegrown. The Nuggets drafted Murray in the first round in 2016. Two years later, they drafted Porter Jr. Team executive Calvin Booth, who took over as general manager in 2020, made two important acquisitions: Gordon in 2021 and Caldwell-Pope in 2022.

Caldwell-Pope gave the Nuggets some much-needed perimeter defense with championship pedigree (he won with the Lakers in 2020), while Gordon provided athleticism and versatility on both ends. He has embraced a supporting role after being the featured attraction in Orlando.

“He’s been put into the perfect role as the third guy [behind Jokic and Murray],” said Bucher, who compares Gordon’s arc to Andrew Wiggins. Wiggins, the No. 1 overall pick in 2014, struggled to carry the burden of being the face of the Minnesota Timberwolves, but thrived as the third or fourth wheel with the Golden State Warriors.

Gordon entered the league with a ton of hype and a ton of expectations as the No. 4 overall pick by the Magic in the 2014 draft, the same year Jokic was drafted.

Jokic’s NBA odyssey was an unlikely one. He was drafted in the second round. Forty players were taken ahead of him. He looked overweight and out of shape when he first played in the Las Vegas summer league.

“I always think about this and laugh because that first Summer League in Vegas, 300 pounds, out of shape — he’s a nice player,” Malone said of Jokic, whose draft scouting report read something like this: Slow-footed, below-average athlete; doesn’t get much lift off the floor; doesn’t have the speed or burst to drive past opponents or stay in front of them laterally on defense.

No one ever could have seen Jokic winning MVPs and becoming the most dominant big man in basketball since Shaquille O’Neal and Tim Duncan.

“That speaks to his dedication to his craft, getting in great shape and understanding that for him to fulfill his potential, he had to work harder, and he’s done that,” said Malone, who quickly realized he had something special in Jokic during his rookie year in the 2015-16 season.

“There was a game in his rookie season at San Antonio. He put up a crazy stat line,” Malone recalled. “[He put up] 25 or 26 points, 12 or 13 rebounds, six or seven assists against a guy like Tim Duncan. That was for me when the light bulb went off and saying, ‘Wow.’ What he just did, who he did it against, on the road against this team, coached by [Gregg Popovich]. This kid has a chance to be a special player.”

Malone had one more puzzle to figure out. Jokic and Jusuf Nurkic were both on the roster and room wasn’t big enough to house them. Malone had to chose one.

“I was bringing Nikola off the bench,” Malone recalled. “After we lost a game at Dallas, I remember having the conversation [and said to myself] ‘What am I doing?’ This kid was All-Rookie as a center. I started him the next game, probably around December 12th Year 2, and that’s when our team took off, he became the focal point of everything we did. And we realized we had a player we can build an offense and a team and an organization around.”

Malone made the right call.

With Jokic as their centerpiece, the Nuggets are now sitting on the Iron Throne ruling the basketball world. It took seven years, but it was worth the wait. Denver’s loyal fans waited almost five decades to celebrate a championship. Thanks to a plus-size starting lineup spearheaded by an uber talented big man rewriting the NBA record book, the Mile High City finally got its championship banner.

Jamal Murray had an opportunity to tie the score as time expired in Game 2 of the 2023 NBA Finals, but his step-back 3-pointer against Jimmy Butler bounced off the rim.

It was a shot Murray has made on multiple occasions. When he missed, he was more surprised than than disappointed. It shows the level of confidence Murray has in his ability to close games. He felt good about the shot. He didn’t feel good about his lack of intensity throughout the game. “I didn’t play terrible,” he said. “I felt like I could have done a lot more.”

Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone was around Murray for the next two days leading up to the pivotal Game 3 in Miami. He could tell his 26-year-old point guard was itching to redeem himself and was ready for a big bounce-back game.

“I could tell, speaking to him and being around him the last 48 hours, that he was putting a lot of Game 2 on him,” Malone said. “It wasn’t just him. It was me and everyone of our players. It was collective. But that’s what champions do. That’s what warriors do. They battled back. I just felt his presence all game long [in Game 3]. Forget the stats for a second. I felt Jamal Murray’s presence, his energy. He was here. He was in the moment.”

In a game the Nuggets sorely needed to regain home-court advantage in the NBA Finals, Murray and Nikola Jokic authored what Malone called their “greatest performance” as a duo in their seven years together. Jokic and Murray became the first teammates to pull off a 30-10-10 triple-double game in NBA history. Jokic finished with 32 points, 21 rebounds, 10 assists. Not to be outdone, Murray had 34 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists.

“The whole playoffs he was playing phenomenal. He’s a really good leader out there. We’re just following him,” Jokic said of Murray, who might be the best player in the 2023 postseason if not for the 6-11, 280-pound monster he shares a locker room with.

Murray and Jokic have been spectacular. Both are at the peak of their powers and looking more and more like the best 1-2 punch in basketball. The rest of the NBA should be worried because the Murray-Jokic partnership could have a long, dominant run as long as they can stay healthy.

“It’s a great duo. Their games complement each other,” Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “Both those guys are elite-level talent.”

Jokic is Denver’s undisputed best player. He’s arguably the best basketball player in the world. If Jokic is the engine of Denver’s Formula 1-type racing machine, then Murray is the fuel that ignites the Denver machine.

“Murray is an electric playoff performer,” Spoelstra said. “Murray will draw second and third defenders. You have to pick him up beyond the 3-point line. And he’s ignitable.”

Murray set the tone early for Game 3 as he took on the Butler defensive challenge and brought the intensity from the tip. He scored 20 of his game-high 34 points in the first half. He shot 12-for-22 from the field, he was 3-for-6 from 3-point range, and 7-for-8 from the line.

The type of energy and aggression Murray brought to the table against the Heat represented what he’d been consistently doing the entire postseason. He was sensational during the Nuggets sweep of the L.A. Lakers in the Western Conference finals.

Jokic was the consistent jab that kept the Lakers at bay. Murray was the right-hand cross that knocked LeBron James and Co. out of the playoffs. Murray’s performances in games 2 and 3 against L.A. were his signature moments. He scored 23 of his game-high 37 points in the fourth quarter of Game 2 to give the Nuggets a 2-0 lead in the series. In Game 3, he dropped another 37-point outing on the road to give the Nuggets a commanding 3-0 series lead.

Murray is one of the game’s fourth-quarter performers. His ability to come through in clutch situations was one of the primary reasons why the Nuggets reached the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history.

About the only time Murray’s confidence wavered slightly was during the beginning of his rehabilitation after tearing his ACL in April of 2021. Murray had some doubts about regaining the form he flashed in the bubble season of 2020.

“I remember being in the bus with him, going to the airport after he did the injury [against] Golden State the next day and he had tears in his eyes, and that was the message. ‘Hey man, you’re gonna come back from this. And not only are you going to come back, you’re going to be better,'” said Malone. “In that moment, it’s really hard to believe that. His first thought was, ‘Are you guys gonna trade me? I’m damaged goods, you guys are gonna trade me now.’ “

Malone responded with, “I hugged him and said, ‘Hell no, you’re ours. We love you, we’re going to help you get back, and you’re going to be a better player for it.”

Malone was right. Murray not only fully recovered but he became a better player since the ACL injury. The 2023 playoffs is a reminder of the player the Nuggets selected with the seventh overall pick in the 2016 draft out of Kentucky. The kid from Kitchener, Ontario (Canada), has continued to find ways to improve and show out on the biggest stage in the world.

Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr made some waves when he suggested that Murray is the focal point of the Nuggets’ attack. Seems silly to think that a guard — who has never been named to a single All-Star game or make All-NBA — be the focal point of a team that employs two-time MVP and All-NBA center Nikola Jokic.

But here was Kerr, without hesitation, circling Murray as the top target on the white board.

“I can see [the Heat] in their coaching meeting saying, ‘Murray is the head of the snake, not Jokic,'” Kerr said during Draymond Green’s podcast.

The Nuggets are not just a one-man show. They are a complete team with a scary two-headed monster leading the attack.