One NBA Finals team will get a trophy. But will either get respect?

DENVER – The Denver Nuggets’ mascot, Rocky, an anthropomorphic mountain lion with a lightning bolt for a tail, dragged a pick axe as he stormed around. He needed to silence the voices. They were disrespecting his team.

For weeks, the Nuggets had dominated the National Basketball Association play-offs. And for weeks, they thought, no one in the media had given them their due.

Not when they beat the Minnesota Timberwolves and Phoenix Suns in the first two rounds. Not when they swept the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference finals.

Now Rocky was ready to avenge them – metaphorically, at least – in a video the Nuggets played during a break in

Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Thursday night.

In an audio montage of slights from pundits, Nuggets coach Michael Malone lamented the national sports coverage during the conference finals.

“And all everybody talked about was the Lakers!” he said, just before Rocky found a television set and smashed it with his pick axe. He kept smashing items until the video showed a framed picture of an unidentifiable Lakers player lying shattered on the ground.

Denver’s Finals opponents, the Miami Heat, did not fare much better in Game 1 on Thursday. The Nuggets led by as many as 24 points and won 104-93. They entered the series as heavy favourites, an unfamiliar position.

“Even when we win, they talk about the other team,” Nuggets guard Jamal Murray said.

“It fuels us a little more and will be sweeter when we win the chip.”

Neither the Nuggets, the West’s top seeds, nor the Heat, the East’s eighth seeds, feel that their abilities have been fully respected this post-season, and both teams have used that as motivation.

Miami slipped into the post-season. They lost their first game in the play-in tournament before winning the sudden-death second game to get into the play-offs as the eighth seeds.

During the Eastern Conference finals, when Miami faced the second-seeded Boston Celtics, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra took issue with the media coverage during the regular season.

“I guess nobody is really paying attention,” Spoelstra said, when asked why they kept believing in themselves.

“Whether that turns into confidence or not, sometimes you don’t have the confidence. But at least you have that experience of going through stuff and you understand how tough it is.”

The Heat beat the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the play-offs, and upset the Celtics in the conference finals, taking the decisive Game 7 on the road in Boston.

Even during that series, they showed why people had doubts. They raced out to a 3-0 series lead against Boston. But then the Heat dropped three straight games as they turned the ball over and struggled offensively.

On the other hand, the Nuggets have held steady in their strengths – the all-round play of Nikola Jokic, who has won the Most Valuable Player Award twice; the dynamic scoring and passing of Murray; the fluid offence and hustle from role players like Aaron Gordon and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.

They have been the best team in the West since December.

But even then, as Malone and Murray said, they felt much of the attention from the media and fans had been devoted to, well, everyone else.

The Heat have undergone an even sharper turnaround. Their best player, Jimmy Butler, has become known for elevating his play in the post-season, and round by round they have defied expectations.

It is perhaps why the Nuggets are not giving the Heat the opportunity to feel disrespected by them.

“Who said that we are favourites?” Jokic said on Wednesday. “The media?”

He was told that Las Vegas betting odds counted the Nuggets as favourites.

“I think we are not the favourite,” Jokic said, having become more comfortable as the underdog. “I think in the Finals there is no favourite. This is going to be the hardest game of our life, and we know that.”

Often fuelled by disrespect themselves, the Nuggets understood the perils of disrespecting an opponent. NYTIMES