Five Stats The Mid-Day Talking Heads Might Cover On The 2023 NBA Champion Denver Nuggets

Joe Murphy. Getty Images.

This blog is for Mike Malone. If that name doesn't ring a bell, he's the coach of the Denver Nuggets which is a team in the NBA that just steamrolled through the entire playoffs in winning a championship. I spell this out for you in the event you get your sports info exclusively during mid-day talk shows. Now did the Nuggets have a player that is arguably the most versatile contributor for his team in the history of the game? Sure. But did anyone on the team talk shit they couldn't back up or obviously lie about considering retirement? How about flash some guns after getting eliminated?

Didn't think so. 

While most teams that win a championship like to play the "no one believed in us, but us!" card that is curiously never used by a losing team, the Nuggets got to play the ever so rare "no one really knew we were still playing but us!" card. But now that they've won it all this team cannot be ignored on the talk shows anymore. So here's my prediction for five statistical talking points you'll hear on the midday shows undistracted by LeBron's "look at me" fake retirement threat or Ja Morant's "look at me (and my toy gun)" IG cameos.

Denver Nuggets - 2023 NBA Champions: Stat #1

Ja Morant will be suspended for 82 games. 

You had to see this coming. The heads won't make it until the first commercial break before the Woj bomb drops. I actually have to give Adam Silver credit on this for being a comedic genius on all this. It really does feel like he's in on the "Denver gets no pub" bit after he went out of his way to interrupt the Finals storylines to announce that he will not be announcing the Ja Morant penalty until after the Finals are over. You know - to not distract everyone from the Finals. It was the best announcing of an announcement since Michael Scott. 

Sorry Mike, let's stick with storylines from the actual NBA Finals series now. The "Ja Drop" suspension announcement cant' be the only thing anyone talks about.

Denver Nuggets - 2023 NBA Champions: Stat #2

Udonis Haslem is the oldest player ever to take the court in the NBA Finals. 

Shoutout Udonis. Dude has played 19 monogamous years with the Miami Heat and let me tell you, it showed as they pushed him out of his rocker on the bench right onto the court as he forgot you actually need to check in with the scorers table first. With five players now having played in the finals in their forties, he's turned the "finals four for forty" (FFFF club) into the "finals five for forty" (FFFF club).

Not only was he 42 years old when he played for almost 30 entire seconds the other night, but he was just two days shy of 43. Hard to imagine things wouldn't have turned out different for the Heat if Spo would have suited him up on his birthday for Game 4. 

Denver Nuggets - 2023 NBA Champions: Stat #3

The Miami Heat have now scored the fifth most total franchise points in NBA Finals history

It's pretty insane how many more points the Lakers and Celtics franchises' have scored than everyone else in Finals history. Maybe if the mid-day shows talked about these teams a little bit more this graph wouldn't be so shocking to see. I will say, Miami being this high is a bit of a surprise to me considering they entered the league in 1989. But shoutout to Pat Riley and the Heat for passing the 76ers in all-time Finals points scored. 

Denver Nuggets - 2023 NBA Champions: Stat #4

The Miami Heat forced the saddest timeout in this year's playoffs in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals vs the Celtics

Couldn't really think of anything else from the Finals series that would spark much daytime talk interest, but I'm always tickled when teams call timeout in any sport for more than just taking the starters out. Here are your saddest NBA Playoffs timeouts this year with Joe Mazzulla leading the way down 21 in Game 7 with 1:21 left. Props to the Brooklyn Nets too for never giving up. I guess you can't quit in the playoffs if pretty much your entire team already quit in the regular season. 

Denver Nuggets - 2023 NBA Champions: Stat #5

OK Fine - Here's an ACTUAL Denver Nuggets stat. No NBA Champion has beaten playoff opponents with a higher sum of seeds throughout the playoffs.

Couldn't let my Nuggets fans out there down by failing to include at least one Nuggets stat. This will be the one the talking heads will run with after their finally done discussing Ja, where Kyrie is going to play, and the latest Zion wanna be baby mama drama. The haters will say this was the softest path to an NBA championship ever, and while the data certainly agrees, the haters fail to acknowledge it could have been a max opponent sum of seed of 28 had the Clippers beat the Suns. But the Suns were a legit champion contender. 

Side note. Are the Lakers the kings of just beating shitty teams en route to a championship? 

Jokes aside. Congrats to the Nuggets. There's literally no one on this team you wouldn't want to run through a wall with so long as the Jokic brothers lead the way.  And watching Jamal Murray let it all out with the O'Brien Trophy in hand was next level beautiful given what that man has gone through. 

- Jeffro