The Lakers’ lack the Nuggets’ wealth of experience playing together.
The Los Angeles Lakers are on the verge of getting swept out of the playoffs by the Denver Nuggets for the second straight season. Making those dire straits even worse, they’re coming off what many league followers legitimately and sarcastically called the “most competitive sweep ever” by coming closer to beating the defending champs while still remaining so, so far away.
LeBron James, Anthony Davis and company took another double-digit lead on Thursday night before Denver took complete control in the second half, marking the third straight game of the series Los Angeles went up by 10-plus points in an ultimately losing effort. Since 2003, 90 teams have managed double-digit advantages in the first three games of a playoff series, according to OptaStats. Los Angeles is the only one to fall in each of them.
Despite their penchant for building big leads against Denver, reality has clearly set in for the purple-and-gold in wake of Game 3. Facing a do-or-die matchup with the reigning champions at Crypto.com Arena on Friday, Rui Hachimura revealed the biggest difference between the Lakers and Nuggets driving the latter’s dominance: Experience playing together.
“Clearly we have to do something better. Of course, we’ve been trying. We’ve been watching a lot of film of them, we’re adjusting different coverages and all that,” he said, per Los Angeles beat writer Michael Corvo of ClutchPoints. “But as a team, my opinion is we just don’t have enough experience. We just talked about it in the film, too. They’ve been a team, they’ve been together for like five years. That starting lineup, they’ve played together for most games or whatever in the past two years. Obviously they have more experience. We’re up 20, we’re up 10, they’re up 20, they’re up 10—they’re the same team. They’re very consistent in all that.
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