The Los Angeles Lakers’ first-round series against the Denver Nuggets have shown that LeBron James and Anthony Davis haven’t had enough help to keep up with the defending champs for all 48 minutes.
Game 3 was a similar story with the Lakers jumping out to an early lead before collapsing in the second half and losing to fall into a 3-0 deficit in the series. James and Davis combined for 59 of the Lakers’ 105 points while as a team they shot just 5-for-27 from deep.
After the game, James was asked if the pressure of needing to be perfect or close to it to beat a team as good as the Nuggets is affecting some of his teammates, and he gave an honest answer.
“I don’t know. It’s the postseason. We’re professionals. You’re supposed to have anxiety and pressure, feel the pressure, that’s what it’s about,” James said. “That’s what the postseason is about. So I don’t know how to answer that question, I don’t know. I don’t know. You have to ask the individuals that question and see how they feel. It’s hard for me to be like ‘This is what I think.’ I can’t do that, I’m not a mind reader. I don’t know. But this is the postseason, me and [Anthony Davis] have been playing together for six years and we’ve been to the mountain top, we’ve been close to the mountain top, we’ve played a lot of games. We know what it takes to win, what it takes to win a championship and how damn near perfect you got to be. That’s not like something that’s so crazy to obtain.
“I’ve been a part of it four times where you have to have almost perfect basketball to win. And I’ve done it with him. So I’m not a guy that you should ask that because I don’t feel a way about anybody that don’t want to strive to be as close to perfect as possible. And it’s just basketball. At the end of the day, it’s just basketball.”
In all three games so far, the Lakers jumped out to early double-digit leads, only to squander them due to their offensive struggles in second halves. That’s something that LeBron diagnosed after the loss.
“Obviously tonight we shot 5-for-27 from the 3-point line,” he said. “Had some really good looks at times, at times they were contested shots but I thought pretty much we generated some really good shots, we just weren’t able to knock them down.
“The regular season and the postseason is two different games, two different situations. So what happens in the regular season, obviously you build those habits in the regular season. But the game totally changes in the postseason and we have to be able to make the adjustment. But we’ve had some really good looks through three games, we’ve made some, but tonight was not one of those nights.”
LeBron James feels Lakers haven’t have enough energy in second halves
In addition to some guys on the Lakers not being able to rise to the occasion and hit big shots, LeBron James feels they have spent so much of their energy in the first halves and haven’t been able to maintain it.
“I feel like we spend so much energy in the first half building leads or with the defensive intensity that we have that we come out in the third quarter with not much energy or kind of lose track to the attention to detail that we had in the first half. I think a lot of that played into it,” James said.
“And you give credit where credit is due with Denver, those guys make tough shot after tough shot after tough shot. That’s a lot of what happened in that third for sure tonight.”
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