Is this the way?

Scattered thoughts on Game 2 of the Finals coming up…

• In Game 1, Nikola Jokic scored 27 points on just 12 shot attempts (and 12 free throws) and racked up 14 assists, and the Nuggets won. In Game 2, Jokic had 41 points on 28 shots (and eight free throws) and just four assists, and the Nuggets lost. Therefore, the Heat turned Jokic into a scorer and that's why they won. Except, no, because correlation does not equal causation.

• If you have a plan to make the opposing team's offense less efficient and the other team's offense is more efficient (by 10 points per 100 possessions, no less), your plan did not work. That doesn't mean it wasn't a good plan, or even the right plan. It just means it didn't work the way you intended it to. Even if you won that game anyway, it didn't work. You just won for some other reason. In this case, the Heat won for the same reason they have won throughout most of these playoffs: Ridiculously hot 3-point shooting.

• Even if you isolate the minutes where Jokic was on the floor, when Denver’s offense was actually less efficient than in the minutes he was off thanks to that early second-quarter run, then the Nuggets were south of 2 points per 100 possessions less efficient in Game 2 than they were in those minutes in Game 1. If you want to say, well, they lost by three points so those 2 points per 100 possessions obviously made a difference, well, fine. But this was an 86-possession game and 1.72 points (2/100*86) is not 3 points so it was not “the difference” in the game.