LOS ANGELES — For the foreseeable future, the Denver Nuggets will remain a problem that the Lakers have yet to find an answer for.
Because with Saturday’s 124-114 loss to the defending champions, in which LeBron James became the first player in NBA history to score at least 40,000 career regular-season points, the Nuggets completed a 3-0 regular-season sweep and won their eighth straight over the Lakers, including the four-game sweep in last season’s Western Conference finals.
“They have our number,” James said. “We haven’t beat them in quite a while and it’s always kind of the fourth quarter in the last six minutes or the last few minutes of the game where they make plays. We don’t make plays and that can be frustrating.”
Many of those Lakers’ losses have come similarly, with the Nuggets out-executing the Lakers in the game’s deciding moments.
After having a fourth-quarter offensive rating (points scored per 100 possessions) of 120.4 against the Lakers in last season’s conference finals, the Nuggets will finish the regular season with a fourth-quarter offensive rating of 153.1 against the Lakers.
“In a sense,” Anthony Davis responded when asked whether it feels like the Lakers are trying to answer the same kinds of questions against the Nuggets. “Because they do the same thing. And they beat us with it every time. So yes, we’re getting closer as far as the first 42 minutes or you can even say 44 minutes, right? And then that last four minutes is just them getting to what they get to.
“And they make us pay on our mistakes. Granted, they made tough shots. But they get to it every time and you know it’s coming. But they’re a great execution team. And you make one mistake with Jamal Murray’s scoring and passing ability, and same with [Nikola] Jokic, and then you have shooters around, Aaron Gordon on the glass ducking into smalls. It’s like pick your poison. And they do a great job of making reads.”
If the Lakers and…
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