LOS ANGELES — They showered Darvin Ham with boos as the coach was introduced before opening tip. They bombarded him with more pointed chants before time expired in an otherwise lifeless building.
“Fire Darvin!”
But is this Ham’s fault? D’Angelo Russell’s? The bench’s? All of the above? The Nuggets have infiltrated Los Angeles and sown instability within an American institution. The Lakers’ superstar foundation is crumbling under the overwhelming pressure of Denver’s starting lineup, which is on the verge of securing a second playoff sweep of Los Angeles in as many seasons.
“To beat a team like that in the first round, who I think if seeded differently, they could make it to the Western Conference Finals or something like that, it’s definitely a challenge,” Peyton Watson said. “But we’re up to it every time, and we love going out there and winning games.”
With every successive win — every identical win — the unthinkable becomes closer to reality. The Nuggets might just own the Lakers.
If they finish the job Saturday in Game 4, they’ll accomplish what not even the Steph Curry-Kevin Durant Warriors could, eliminating LeBron James via sweep two years in a row. Golden State needed five games in 2017.
“They do not have a weakness offensively,” James said. “… Definitely one of the better teams that I’ve played in my career.”
Maybe Denver will need five games in 2024. But if there’s any reason to believe that now, it’s this: The Nuggets are clearly a danger to themselves in this matchup. They are prone to stretches, even entire halves, of complacency against an opponent that can’t hold a lead against them. The ongoing 11-game win streak features six double-digit comebacks.
“I think in this job as a coach, you always have to put on the hat of, ‘We have to fight human nature.’ And how do you do that when you’ve beaten a team 10 times in a row?” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said before Game 3, a 112-105 victory. “… Well, we’ve been down 12, we’ve been down 20. We’ve lost the first quarter of both games. We’ve been down at halftime in both games. That’s cool in your home building when you have that crowd behind you, but now it’s just us.”
Those turned out to be hollow words. Denver spotted Los Angeles an 8-0 lead that grew to 12 before everyone other than Aaron Gordon decided to take Game 3 seriously.
What followed was a 24-point swing between the second and third quarters. Like clockwork.
“To be honest, I think every game is tougher and tougher,” Nikola Jokic said. “You can see, they were up 20 in Denver, in Game 2. They were up 12 today in the first half. But yeah, I think it’s really hard to play against the same team over and over again. You kind of get bored with the style of the play or whatever. So you just need to — especially for us, because we won the last three — just trust what we are doing and don’t get bored with success. Because it can (go) wrong really quick.”
The Nuggets are so bored of this matchup that they’ve inadvertently become thrill-seekers, dangling a win in front of the Lakers every night only to pull it out of reach at the last second when Anthony Davis tries to snatch it.
Moments of redemption for the Lakers are short-lived against Denver. Davis’s dominant first half against Jokic in Game 2 was forgotten because he didn’t score in the fourth quarter. Russell’s 23-point bounce-back was superseded by his scoreless Game 3. In the first and third games, he combined to shoot 6 for 27.
The variations of a Los Angeles second unit have failed to take any advantage of Jokic’s rest minutes. Before Game 3, Taurean Prince was the only Lakers bench player who’d scored a point in the series. Nothing from Spencer Dinwiddie. Nothing from Gabe Vincent.
They finally contributed more offense in Game 3 — but the bench was still an inefficient 8 for 19 en route to 19 points.
Davis has been the Lakers’ best player according to the box scores. Los Angeles is plus-25 points with him on the floor in the first halves of these three games — and minus-41 with him on the floor in the second halves.
“This team’s been having the type of run they’ve had against our ball club; I think it’s just a lot of disappointment,” Lakers coach Darvin Ham said. “Have to do a better job of staying focused, staying positive throughout it all, because again, you have those disappointment moments, what we call disappointment lags — that disappointment can spill over two, three, four possessions. And you see that someone makes a mistake, drop our heads, and we start jogging back instead of sprinting. But we have to fight through all of that. This is a hell of a team. … They push you to the limit in order to try and beat them.”
Moreover, the Nuggets push themselves to the limit in order to beat the Lakers. Not because they have to; because they can.
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