The Los Angeles Lakers suffered another loss to the Denver Nuggets on Saturday night, and it followed a similar script to their past meetings.
The Nuggets have now beaten the Lakers eight straight times and in basically every game, the two teams have been close going into the final few minutes. From there, the Nuggets have taken over with stellar offensive execution to earn the wins while the Lakers have struggled on both ends of the floor in crunch time.
After this most recent loss to the Nuggets, Anthony Davis discussed what went wrong down the stretch and why Denver is so tough to stop.
“I think tonight, Cam was in the action, Austin and Rui, and they were going to like a double screen,” Davis said. “And Cam was just so far behind because guys were screening. Rui was trying to help but also stay attached to Jokic and I’m the help guy, so when I see Jamal Murray comes off and he’s open, obviously he’s a hell of a basketball player, so you don’t want to give him any looks because those are two guys who they look for, him first and then Jokic and vice versa. So tried to help and then they hit Jokic, you know what I mean? Jokic is hitting Aaron Gordon on a dunk or he’s hitting their shooters on the weakside.
“So it’s just something that we got to go really in depth about. We’re gonna see this team again and it’s not gonna be the last time that they get to that package. We got to look at the film and see what happened and kind of just dissect it and get prepared for the next time we see them.”
The Lakers played the Nuggets tough for the first 45 minutes of the game but could not close it out, which has become a theme when these two teams meet. After the loss, Davis was asked if he feels the Lakers are getting closer to defeating the defending NBA champs.
“In a sense. Because they do the same thing and they beat us with it every time,” Davis said. “Yes, we’re getting closer, as far as the first 42 minutes, or you could say even 44 minutes. And then that last four minutes, it’s just them getting to what they get to. And they make us pay on our mistakes, like I say. 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. You make one mistake with Jamal Murray’s scoring and passing ability, and same with Jokic.
“And then you have shooters around. Aaron Gordon on the glass ducking into smalls when I go help, which they get to a lot with the lob. And then behind that they put a shooter in that corner, and it’s like pick your position. So they do a great job making reads.”
Davis only had four second-half points in Saturday’s game to finish with 17 total, which isn’t enough against a tough team like Denver.
Anthony Davis: Lakers need to move on from Nuggets loss
The month of March is a challenging one for the Lakers, so Anthony Davis stressed that they need to move on from the Nuggets loss despite their late-game mistakes.
“First, we got to move on from it,” Davis said. “We play every other night so get ready for a hot OKC team, Sac, Milwaukee, all these guys. But the game for them is always won in the last two or three minutes of the game. Same action and they put us in limbo a lot of times with our helps. We had some unfortunate plays, Bron gets stripped, I get stripped, Aaron Gordon gets the long rebound and hits a turnaround 3, Austin tries to help and Justin Holiday hits a 3.
“So it was some tough plays for us, but the last couple minutes, they get into their fourth quarter package and we’re either over-helping or not helping enough and it seems like this team is the one that always makes us pay for our mistakes.”
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