The Los Angeles Lakers find themselves in a similar spot as last year, dropping the first three games of their playoff series against the Denver Nuggets.
The Lakers have gotten off to hot starts in all three contests but have not been able to maintain it with the defending champs taking control in the second half of all three games to earn victories.
Denver is a well-oiled machine that has a ton of experience playing together, particularly their starting five, and Rui Hachimura believes that has been the difference so far.
“With the playoff series from last year and the regular season I think we’ve lost like 12 in a row or something. So clearly, we have to do something better,” Hachimura said. “Of course, we’ve been trying. We’ve been watching a lot of film of them. We’re adjusting different coverages and all that. But, as a team, in my opinion, we just don’t have enough experience. We talk about it in film too, as a team, they’ve been together for like five years. Their starting lineup has played together for most games or whatever in the past few years and obviously they have more experience. Even when we’re up 20, we’re up 10, they’re up 20, they’re up 10, they’re the same. They’re the same team, very consistent in all that.
“We’ve been playing hard, but there’s stretches where we have just empty possessions and that kind of hurt us the whole game. We just kind of dragged out the whole game and it’s just the same story. Tomorrow we just got to lock in the whole game, from the beginning.”
Hachimura has been very vocal all season about the Lakers not consistently using last year’s lineup with himself, Austin Reaves, D’Angelo Russell, LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
When L.A. brought everyone back last summer, the plan was to use the regular season to build the continuity they lacked against Denver last year to be better equipped to face them this year.
With injuries and strange lineup decisions by head coach Darvin Ham not allowing them to do that though, they are back on the brink of elimination and likely to be swept again by a talented and experienced Nuggets team.
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