Follow usThe Miami Heat are trailing 3-1 to the Denver Nuggets in the NBA final, but Denver’s head-coach Michael Malone is still wary of their chances.
Ahead of the vital Game 5, he pointed out that “human nature” is the biggest concern for his team, who head with a 3-1 lead.
“Most teams, when they’re up 3–1, they come up for air. They relax,” Malone told reporters. “They just kind of take it for granted that, ‘Oh, we’re gonna win this.’ And the neat thing for us is that going back to The Bubble, we’ve been down 3–1 before and we’ve come back and won and we know anything is possible.”
Malone pointed out the 2020 Western Conference semifinals, when the Nuggets came from 3-1 down to beat the Clippers.
“Our approach has to be that we’re down 3–1,” he said. “They’re desperate, we have to be more desperate. They’re hungry, we have to be hungrier. The closeout game is always the hardest game ever.”
The only team to ever come back from 3-1 down in the finals are the Cavaliers, who beat the Warriors in 2016.
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