LOS ANGELES — For the foreseeable future, the Denver Nuggets will remain a problem that the Lakers have yet to find an answer for.
Because with Saturday’s 124-114 loss to the defending champions, in which LeBron James became the first player in NBA history to score at least 40,000 career regular-season points, the Nuggets completed a 3-0 regular-season sweep and won their eighth straight over the Lakers, including the four-game sweep in last season’s Western Conference finals.
“They have our number,” James said. “We haven’t beat them in quite a while and it’s always kind of the fourth quarter in the last six minutes or the last few minutes of the game where they make plays. We don’t make plays and that can be frustrating.”
Many of those Lakers’ losses have come similarly, with the Nuggets out-executing the Lakers in the game’s deciding moments.
After having a fourth-quarter offensive rating (points scored per 100 possessions) of 120.4 against the Lakers in last season’s conference finals, the Nuggets will finish the regular season with a fourth-quarter offensive rating of 153.1 against the Lakers.
“In a sense,” Anthony Davis responded when asked whether it feels like the Lakers are trying to answer the same kinds of questions against the Nuggets. “Because they do the same thing. And they beat us with it every time. So yes, we’re getting closer as far as the first 42 minutes or you can even say 44 minutes, right? And then that last four minutes is just them getting to what they get to.
“And they make us pay on our mistakes. 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. And you make one mistake with Jamal Murray’s scoring and passing ability, and same with [Nikola] Jokic, and then you have shooters around, Aaron Gordon on the glass ducking into smalls. It’s like pick your poison. And they do a great job of making reads.”
If the Lakers and Nuggets played again this season, it would have to be in a playoff series. The Lakers (33-29) entered Sunday at No. 10 in the Western Conference, while the Nuggets (42-19) were No. 3.
“Not really,” Rui Hachimura responded when asked if the drought against the Nuggets has created any doubt for a potential playoff matchup. “We’re still missing a couple of guys. And we’re still trying to figure out. It takes time. I know we don’t have much time, but we just got to keep building that chemistry. We just got to figure it out.
“We got to make it to the playoffs first, [but] I think we’ll going to meet them again soon. We’e got to be ready for that.”
Even though there are no more Lakers-Nuggets matchups on the schedule, lessons from Saturday can still be applied to the Lakers’ upcoming games, with March providing challenges against some of the best teams in the league.
“Teams are watching film, and they’re gonna try to exploit the same thing,” Davis said. “We just gotta lock in defensively and try to figure out ways that we can be better on both ends of the floor, honestly. Not just the defensive end.
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“But offensively, getting to a package where we can execute. The pick-and-roll with [Austin Reaves] and Bron, we’ve been getting to lately. Or this [D’Angelo Russell] and Bron [pick-and-roll]. Because a lot of teams, their big guys don’t want to leave my body, so now they’re walking to the rim for layups, especially in the fourth quarter.”
THUNDER AT LAKERS
When: Monday, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Crypto.com Arena
TV/radio: Spectrum SportsNet/710 AM