Los Angeles Lakers head coach Darvin Ham is running out of solutions for beating the Denver Nuggets, as his team has now lost 10 straight against the defending champions. L.A. now heads home down 0-2 and blowing two great chances at stealing a game in Denver.
Game 2 could very well have been the nail in the coffin as the purple and gold had a 20-point lead in the third quarter. Similar to Game 1, the offense became stagnant and unorganized, allowing the Nuggets to get back into the game. Jamal Murray, who struggled in both games shooting the ball, got going in the fourth quarter and hit the game-winning shot over Anthony Davis.
Murray had 14 points in the final frame, scored the last six for his team and that is all he needed to get the job done. Ham broke down what he saw during that final sequence leading up to the buzzer-beater.
“They came down, they wanted to get their two best players in the action, which they did,” Ham said after losing 101-99. “Jamal Murray hit a tough shot. Fading away on the baseline to his right, AD with an outstretched arm and good contest, kid hit a tough shot.”
The Lakers cannot overcome the boogeyman as after starting both games strong, they’ve shot themselves in the foot. Denver capitalizes off every missed opportunity and no lead is truly never safe against them, if that is not clear by now. Ham was asked about the second-half struggles once again and believes the team will be better from last night’s performance but stressed that they can’t take any possessions off.
“Once we watch the game, we’ll figure that out,” he said. “We played a solid basketball game defensively for three quarters. That’s a tough team, you got to come with it. You can’t take any possessions off. The ball gets knocked around, it falls into Michael Porter’s hands and he hits a big 3 for them. So we got to be on deck at all times versus this ballclub. Offensively, we got some good stuff, Bron had it going, DLo had it going from 3.
“We’ll be better from this, definitely will be better from it. They did what they were supposed to do, they held serve. Again, it’s not the first to one, two or three. It’s the first two four. We just got to go home and do the same starting with Game 3.”
Now, it becomes an even taller task to pull off this first-round upset for the Lakers. Once this series wraps up, L.A. has nobody to blame but themselves as they cannot execute at a high enough level down the stretch of games.
Game 3 now likely decides the fate of the Lakers’ season, so it will be interesting to see if Ham has his team ready to go.
Darvin Ham still expecting ‘hard-fought series’ against Nuggets
While the Lakers had a great opportunity to steal Game 1, Darvin Ham was optimistic about a ‘hard-fought’ series with the defending champions. After losing Game 2 in heartbreaking fashion though, the series could be shorter than expected.
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