Here are five lessons from Lakers‘ 101-99 loss to Denver in Game 2 on Monday night that put them a 2-0 hole in their best-of-seven playoff series in the first round.
One out, one in
There was a bit of cruelty on Monday night in Denver, the late-game fates of the Lakers and Nuggets summed up by a pair of shots with wildly different degrees of difficulty.
First, with the score tied, LeBron James he was alone at the three-point line. Whether or not Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was pushed or got his feet tangled was irrelevant. He was on the court, legs up, left to watch.
James, who had just wrapped up the best three-point shooting season of his career, had already drilled two in the fourth quarter, and neither look was as good as this one.
See more information: Lakers lose to Nuggets in Game 2 heartbreaker on Jamal Murray’s buzzer-beater
And he was wrong.
“He went in,” he said, “and came out.”
After the miss (and Michael Porter Jr.’s rebound), Jamal Murray ripped the heart out of the Lakers by hitting a weak jumper over Anthony Davis right in front of the Nuggets bench. Davis switched to Murray after a Nikola Jokic screen, with the Lakers counting on their best defender to go with a big clutch player.
The moment, captured in videos and photos that will haunt the Lakers, was electrifying.
“When they went down, they wanted to get their two best players into action, which they did,” Darvin Ham he said. “And, you know, Jamal Murray hit a hard shot. AD, disappearing from the baseline, to his right. AD, arm outstretched, great competition.
“The kid hit a hard shot.”
And it put the Lakers in a difficult situation.
Another wasted opportunity
The Lakers leave Denver after blowing 32-point leads in the first two games of the series, a horrible feeling for a team that has lost 10 straight points to the Nuggets.
After Game 1, there was some talk in the media that the Lakers played well and left with nothing to show for it. Internally, this was not the frustration.
They knew they hadn’t played well – neither had Denver – and if the Lakers had been a little better, maybe they could have won.
Monday, they need to make sure of that.
For 26 minutes, they controlled every aspect of the game. In the last 22, they looked completely lost.
They had 17 assists in the first half and just seven in the second, a sign that Denver stagnated the Lakers’ offense once again in the second half.
“We missed shots,” James said. “We have to score against this team. We lost the shots. We still look great. We just miss them. And they did it.”
It’s probably not that simple.
The tuning game
If you’re looking for something obvious that happened strategically in the game, you can point to Michael Malone’s decision to take Jokic away from Davis as soon as the Lakers were up 20, keeping Davis out of the Lakers’ key pick-and-roll sets (with Aaron Gordon now covering him).
The end result was just seven shot attempts for Davis in the second half (and one in the fourth). Rui Hachimura, who took over much of the performance, had difficulty scoring at the rim.
“We were trying to take advantage of certain matchups and bring certain guys into their defense to get them going,” Ham said. “Sometimes when you do that, it all works out well. Sometimes you don’t finish the piece. And by that I mean we get the matchup we want, they have to double something, someone gets open, misses an open shot or misses a layup from close range. Things like that happen.”
As has happened so often in their recent meetings, Denver seemed a step ahead.
The little things
When a team loses at the buzzer, the final shot and final sequences receive the most scrutiny. But what about the offensive rebound and putback Christian Bruan got in the first half, when all five Lakers on the floor stood up and watched Jokic’s prayer scrape the front of the rim? What about those missed layups from Hachimura, James and Spencer Dinwiddie? What about the open corner looks that Austin Reaves and Gabe Vincent couldn’t connect?
Everything matters.
What is the next?
“Protect the house,” James said afterwards. “That’s where my mentality goes. And obviously, the only game that matters now is Game 3 and how we can improve. How can we discover this team. So Game 3 is where my mindset is.”
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The Lakers did enough to feel like they’re still in this series despite being down 0-2 (“I liked where we were,” D’Angelo Russell echoed afterward). They also showed that they can be stopped, that Denver’s defense solves them when the game matters most.
Then it all comes down to Thursday, with the Lakers potentially bringing Jarred Vanderbilt back after an intense workout on Monday morning. Christian Wood is also reportedly close to being available.
“I just need to focus on Game 3,” Davis said. “We showed that we are more than capable. We have stretches where we simply don’t know what we are doing at both ends of the track. And those are the ones that cost us. So we have two days to get it right and be ready to win Game 3 on Thursday.”
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This story originally appeared on Los Angeles Times.
