The Lakers fell short in the end after a fiery 4th quarter comeback, as the Nuggets were just too much for the Lakers to handle in the first three quarters. The final was 114-106, but that doesn’t reflect how much in a hole the Lakers were at many times against these Nuggets tonight, falling behind by 18-points multiple times throughout the game.
Here’s our recap of this stupid, stupid game.
Nuggets come out firing
This looked like a blowout early on in the game, as the Nuggets scored 63 points in the first half on 56.4% shooting from the field. Nikola Jokic was extremely aggressive in the opening minutes of the game, and it seemed like the Nuggets really took after him as they held as high as an 18-point lead in the 2nd quarter. Jokic was really helped out by the bench, as Monte Morris and Michael Porter Jr. both made four out of five field goals for 12 and nine points, respectively in the first half.
The Lakers, on the other hand, we’re pretty cold on the offensive end until the waning moments of the 2nd quarter that allowed them to trim the lead to only 10. Rajon Rondo and Alex Caruso were especially bad, combining for only two points on 1-of-10 field-goal shooting with three turnovers.
It looked like the Lakers may get back into it very early on in the 3rd quarter, but that hope was decimated as the quarter went on with the Lakers facing an 18-point deficit — again — going into the 4th quarter. They then came back furiously behind plenty of steals created by Rajon Rondo. It ultimately wasn’t enough as the Lakers never regained the lead although they trimmed the deficit to three at one point.
Anthony Davis with a weird game
As with most of the playoff games this year, the Lakers would not have been in this game if it wasn’t for Anthony Davis. Still, the big man had a bit of a weird game ending with only two rebounds. He even had zero rebounds going into the 4th quarter.
I wouldn’t say Davis wasn’t crashing the boards. Most of the Nuggets misses came on long shots which means those defensive rebounds are up for the guards more so than the bigs. But still, it’s a glaring statistic especially when you consider the 44-25 deficit that the Lakers faced against the Nuggets in the rebound department.
The Lakers will look to turn things around on Thursday night.
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