Since signing with the Los Angeles Lakers, Austin Reaves hasn’t earned many wins going up against the Denver Nuggets.
Reaves has been front and center for nearly all of the Lakers’ battles against the Nuggets, and even though he had a strong offensive night in their most recent matchup it wasn’t enough as Denver ran away with another win.
Los Angeles has now dropped their last 13 of 14 games against Denver, a clear sign that the latter owns the former at this point. The game followed what has been the script for the past couple of seasons which is the Lakers build an early lead just to see it evaporate in the second half due to meltdowns on both sides of the floor.
Even though Denver seems to also own the mental edge in the matchup, Reaves refused to acknowledge that and chalked up the loss to them just simply beating them down badly.
“Last year was last year. The year before was so long ago, I could barely remember what I did yesterday. Yeah, tonight they beat the shit out of us,” Reaves admitted.
Specifically, the game was lost in the third quarter and Reaves wasn’t happy with his or the team’s play.
“I think we just played one of the worst quarters you could possibly play,” Reaves said. “The energy was down from the first possession in the third quarter and they took advantage and ran away with the game.”
Reaves would continue to expand on the last of energy in the third quarter and why that’s not acceptable.
“I mean, I think that’s kind of just what I said. I’m sure JJ said [it] as well, [it] just wasn’t good enough. That should never be the problem. If we compete and lose off of not making shots or the other things, other than not playing hard, then you can live with those results. Tonight, in that third quarter [we] just didn’t play hard.”
Los Angeles went into halftime with a six-point lead, but that quickly disappeared at the start of the third as Denver went to work on the offensive end. Things snowballed from there, with the Lakers unable to buy a basket while the Nuggets got whatever they wanted. L.A. was outscored 37-15 in the third and could never truly recover.
While the Lakers were able to build some cushion in the standings thanks to their recent win streak, there has to be a level of concern for how they’ve looked against playoff-bound teams. It was good to see Los Angeles take care of the teams they needed to, but now they need to prove that they can win against teams like Denver.
JJ Redick & Austin Reaves previously discussed effort
This isn’t the first time that the Lakers’ effort and energy was lacking as this was a conversation that Austin Reaves and JJ Redick had after the 1-4 road trip to start the year, getting on the same page that it couldn’t happen again.
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