Canada's Jamal Murray and Nuggets head to NBA Finals after sweeping LeBron's Lakers
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Canada's Jamal Murray and the Denver Nuggets advanced to the NBA Finals for the first time in team history Monday night, sweeping the Western Conference finals with a 113-111 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers.
Nikola Jokic is a player unlike almost anything the NBA has ever seen, and now he's taking his Denver Nuggets somewhere they've never been.
Jokic had 30 points, 14 rebounds and 13 assists, and the Nuggets advanced to the NBA Finals for the first time in team history Monday night, sweeping the Western Conference finals with a 113-111 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers.
Canadian Jamal Murray scored 25 points for the top-seeded Nuggets, who overcame LeBron James' 31-point first half and a 15-point halftime deficit with a tenacious finish in Game 4 to earn their first conference title in their 47 NBA seasons.
"It's incredible," Murray said. "It's a lot of fun. It's surreal. We're going to keep making history, that's the thing. We're going to keep that mindset."
Jokic earned his eighth triple-double of the playoffs by the third quarter, breaking Wilt Chamberlain's 1967 NBA record for triple-doubles in a single post-season. The bulky Serbian centre with a point guard's grace also led the Nuggets' gritty defensive effort despite picking up his fifth foul midway through the fourth quarter.
Jokic didn't leave the floor for the final 33 minutes of Game 4 -- and when Denver needed a big basket, Jokic delivered that as well. He muscled past Anthony Davis for the game's final points on a layup with 51 seconds to play.
"I think that's why playoffs are so nice and so interesting, because you don't care about how tired you are," Jokic said. "You don't care about minutes, fouls, shots, percentage. You just want to win a game. Some plays today we weren't playing good defence sometimes, (but) you can win it in every kind of possible way."
