The incident between the Nuggets and the Heat in November of 2021 is ancient history at this point.

Nikola Jokic was handed a onegame suspension for elbowing Miami’s Markieff Morris in the back after a foul by Morris that Jokic took issue with. It caused a scuffle at mid-court between the teams and Morris was actually out with a neck injury until late in the regular season.

But ahead of the NBA Finals between the two teams, it’s not on the minds of anybody playing in the series.

“I think it was just something that was a heated moment,” Heat guard Kyle Lowry said. “It hurt a teammate of ours, and we wanted to have his back.

“But I don’t think there’s anything festering. We’re at a different level. We understand that it’s about winning four games right now. Anything that has happened in the past is things that we can’t control right now. We’ve got to worry about winning basketball games, and that’s all that really matters.”

Even Jimmy Butler, who was jawing at the Nuggets bench after the incident, isn’t thinking one bit about getting revenge for that moment.

“I think there’s a lot of, like, stuff about the whole situation that people don’t understand, and I’ll let that stay back there,” Butler said. “But I will say I wasn’t talking to Jokic. That wasn’t my beef. Make sure you write that. The individual who I was talking to definitely knew who I was talking to.”

Respect for Joker

Understandably, every member of the Heat that spoke at Wednesday’s media day was asked about what the key to stopping Jokic is. Most of the answers were the typical responses from opponents, but veteran Miami big man Kevin Love, one of just a few players in this series with a championship ring, had the best comment about Denver’s two-time MVP.

“He’s going to go down as one of the greatest big men to ever play the game,” Love said. “He just continues to impress and just beyond the statistical output that he has, the impact he has on the game, how he does it, how he operates, what we’ve seen, in a lot of ways is unprecedented.

“He’s not a guy you’re going to stop. You just have to hope to stand him down, continue to make things really tough for him.”

Finals memories

Every kid dreams of making the Finals. Every kid in the backyard growing up would imagine themselves taking the final shot to win it all —but not like Jamal Murray.

“Funny thing is it wasn’t just for the championship,” Murray said. “I used to, like, write down the playoff seeding, put myself on one of the teams, then play. If we played Detroit Pistons, I would go against Billups and Rasheed Wallace, and just talk like Marv Albert, all of them. I was in deep.

“I was making shot after shot, trust me,” he said with a laugh.

With a stark gap in age between the oldest players in this series and the youngest, the Finals memories they have growing up also couldn’t be much more different.

There’s guys like Michael Porter Jr., who grew up idolizing someone he knocked out of the playoffs this year — Kevin Durant.

“I definitely paid attention to the whole Warriors run,” Porter Jr. said. “Growing up, KD was my favorite player. I remember watching his Finals against LeBron, as well. To have a chance to be here, play against KD in the Playoffs earlier, it’s just cool. Obviously, I’m on the biggest stage now, it’s just cool looking back on the journey.”

Then there’s guys like Ish Smith, who grew up in the 90s and remembers Michael Jordan’s heroics in the Finals, even getting the chance to play for him in Charlotte earlier in his career.

“Having Mike as an owner, meeting him — it’s funny because that’s what I grew up on, NBA on NBC,” Smith said. “That’s what I think about when I think about the Finals, that was my era, the ’90s.”