Denver Nuggets defeat Miami Heat to win the franchise’s first NBA championship.

Denver is covered with confetti. The NBA championship trophy is passed around by the Nuggets.

Those scenes that appeared unimaginable for years before beginning to feel inevitable recently eventually came to pass Monday night.

The Miami Heat were defeated by the Denver Nuggets 94-89 in a tense, ugly Game 5 that didn’t stop Nikola Jokic from saving his teammates’ bacon with 28 points and 16 rebounds on a night when nothing else seemed to work.

Jokic won the Bill Russell trophy for NBA Finals MVP, an honor that means a lot more to him than the two MVP awards he received in 2021 and ’22 combined.

The Nuggets missed 20 of their first 22 3-point attempts, unable to overcome the tenacious Heat or the closing-night jitters. Of their first 13 free throw attempts, seven were missed. Before Miami’s Jimmy Butler went off and scored eight points in a row to give the Heat a one-point lead with two minutes and 45 seconds left, they had a late seven-point advantage.

With 1:58 left, Butler added two more free throws to help Miami retake the lead. Bruce Brown then scored a tip-in after grabbing an offensive rebound to give the Nuggets a permanent lead.

With 15 seconds remaining and a three-point deficit, Butler jacked up a three, but he missed. Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope each made two free throws to put the game beyond doubt and secure Denver’s championship.

Butler scored 21 points in the end. Even if it was ugly, the Nuggets and their supporters could all agree that the aftermath was stunning. At the final horn, pyrotechnics started to fly above Ball Arena. For the first time in the franchise’s 47-year history in the league, Denver will serve as the Larry O’Brien Trophy’s permanent home.

We struggled to make shots and it was nasty, but in the end we sorted it out, according to Jokic. “I am just happy that we won the game.”

The Heat were a tough, tenacious group, just as coach Erik Spoelstra had promised. However, their shooting was also subpar. Miami shot 34% from the field and 25% from 3-point range despite Bam Adebayo’s 20 points for the Heat. He was 2 for 13 for eight points before Butler started to shine.

The Heat said they weren’t interested in consolation prizes despite surviving a defeat in the play-in tournament and becoming just the second No. 8 seed to reach the finals.

For a while during this game, which was decided more on the ground than in the air, it appeared as though they would win since they behaved as though they expected to.

The Nuggets shot 18% in this game after shooting 37.6% from three throughout the series. There were 14 errors they made. They only shot 13 of 23 from the line, despite Brown and Caldwell-Pope’s clutch shots.

With 2:51 remaining in the first quarter, Jokic picked up his second foul and joined Aaron Gordon on the bench, setting the tone for the rest of the game. They were joined by Jeff Green and Jamal Murray, who on a bad night finished with 14 points and eight assists.

It made the Nuggets tentative on both sides of the court for the rest of the half. Somehow, after shooting 6.7% from 3 — the worst first half in the history of the finals (10-shot minimum) they only trailed by seven.

True to the Nuggets’ personality, they kept pressing, came at their opponent in waves and figured out how to win a game that went against their type. Their beautiful game turned into a slugfest, but they figured out how to win anyway.