Michael Malone must be smiling from cheek to cheek.

Not because his Nuggets are just one win away from the franchise’s first championship, sure, he’s happy about that, but it’s about the way his team is doing it — with defense.

After dropping Game 2 with a disappointing effort, Denver brought its best self on the road to Miami and smothered a Heat offense that has been one of the best in the NBA over the last two months, holding them to two of their lowest point totals of the entire postseason. Miami’s only lower point total than in Games 3 and 4 came in Game 1 of these NBA Finals.

Safe to say the Nuggets have saved their best defensive efforts for last.

“It was great,” Denver guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope said after Game 4. “We wanted to come in and try to not only get one game, but get both of them. And we did exactly what we wanted to do. Game plan was just to communicate, make sure we get to the right spots down the stretch.”

The Nuggets saw an opportunity to seize control of these series in South Beach and they took it, which showed up in their play.

Not only did they force 14 Heat turnovers in the Game 4 win, but 11 of them were steals by Denver. Caldwell-Pope had three steals in the game, but so did Nikola Jokic, who continued to play some of the best defense of his career in the playoffs.

“Joker doesn’t get enough credit for his defense,” Aaron Gordon said. “He’s spectacular with his hands and with his coverage, and KCP is the same way. Incredible ball awareness, understanding where to be and how to strip down. It’s awesome out there.”

Aside from the counting stats like steals and opponent shooting percentage, the advanced numbers back up the Nuggets’ increased play on the defensive end. After having a defensive rating over 116 in the sweep over the Lakers in the Western Conference finals, the Nuggets have a defensive rating of 108.6 through four games against the Heat, which is also their best in any individual series this postseason.

Malone has said numerous times throughout this series that the outcome would be determined by how well they defended Miami’s 3-point shooting. So far, so good.

The Heat struggled shooting the ball in round two against the Knicks, but in the first round against the Bucks and in the East finals against the Celtics, they shot over 43% from behind the arc in both series.

If you dig deeper and look at true shooting percentage, Miami’s 53% in the NBA Finals is its worst in any series this postseason.

Whether it’s been denying good looks or contesting hard on the ones the Heat do get up, the Nuggets have simply made Miami’s shooters uncomfortable and the team that has lived and died by 3-point shooting in the playoffs is starting to see its title chances fade with every shot that clanks off the rim.

“We take a lot of pride in it,” Gordon said. “We know we have a very potent, high-powered offense, and offensive players with Joker, Jamal, Mike, KCP, (Bruce Brown). Going down the list, we have guys that can put the ball in a bucket in a multitude of ways. So we know what’s going to win us games is defense, and we’ve got guys that love to play defense.”

Coming back home with a chance to close out the series in Game 5, it’s going to take that same defensive intensity because as the Heat have shown time and time again, they’re capable of erupting for a big shooting game on any given night and they’ve been impossible for teams to put away all throughout the playoffs.

But if there’s one thing different about this Nuggets team, it’s that they simply won’t be satisfied until the Larry O’Brien trophy is in their hands.

“It’s still one win,” Jokic said. “We need to win one more. I like that we didn’t relax. We didn’t get comfortable. We were still desperate. We still want it.”