With the Denver Nuggets one win away from their first NBA Championship, head coach Michael Malone has a simple message: “Be more desperate.”
“My biggest concern going into any close-out game is human nature and fighting against that,” Malone said to ESPN. “Most teams, when you’re up 3-1, they come up for air. They relax and they just kind of take it for granted that, oh, we’re going to win this.
“We know anything is possible [down 3-1]. That’s why my message to our team was our approach has to be we are down 3-1. They are desperate. We have to be more desperate. They are hungry. We have to be hungrier.”
The Nuggets won Game 4 on Friday 108-95. Game 5 is back in Denver at Ball Arena.
The NBA All-Star game fell flat this year. The NBA recently adopted rules in the past few years to make the game more intriguing. A score target in the fourth quarter and team captains picking teams instead of East vs. West were supposed to make the game more competitive. Those tactics worked for a while. However, this year they did not.
Team Giannis ousted Team LeBron on Sunday (Feb. 19) 184-175. However, there was little defense or effort given throughout the game. This led to Jayson Tatum scoring 55 points and taking home the MVP trophy. “It means the world to me,” Tatum said about winning the Kobe Bryant All-Star Game MVP. “Everybody knows how much [Kobe] meant to me. My favorite player, my idol. So it’s an honor to take this home.” However, not many others were thrilled with the outcome of the game. Players like Tatum’s Celtics teammate Jaylen Brown and coaches like Nuggets’ Michael Malone had their qualms.
Jaylen Brown Wants Change
“Real basketball is different. This was like a layup line… It was just a glorified layup line. We got to figure out how to make the game a little bit more competitive.”
Jaylen Brown with a strong statement on the All-Star game
In the post-game press conference, Team LeBron’s Jaylen Brown was asked about how he fared wearing a face mask during the game. Coming off a facial injury, Brown said he was fine. He explained that it was mostly because little effort was needed during the game. “Real basketball is different. This was like a layup line,” he said. “It was just a glorified layup line. We got to figure out how to make the game a little bit more competitive.” Additionally, Team LeBron’s coach for the night Michael Malone, head coach of the Denver Nuggets, agreed with this sentiment. Giving a harsher criticism, Malone had very few nice words to say about Sunday’s affair. “It’s an honor to be here, it’s an honor to be a part of a great weekend, great players, but that is the worst basketball game ever played,” he said.
ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith then applauded Malone for his comments during an ESPN broadcast Monday. “I applaud Coach Malone for highlighting the flagrant lack of effort. In basketball, they play in the summer leagues, they play in the offseason considerably harder than they played yesterday. Hell no, I didn’t enjoy it. It just reeks of a level of arrogance and taking fans for granted.” Neither of the team’s captains, LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo, were not able to finish the game due to hand injuries. But, the other players did not show enough effort to even put themselves at risk for injury.
