LOS ANGELES — As Nuggets and Lakers alike filtered back onto the floor and started to get shots up, the tension in the sea-level air wasn’t a feeling of unfinished business, but rather un-started.
The Lakers led 53-49, but Game 3 hadn’t truly tipped off yet. Every player, coach and spectator in Crypto.com Arena understood the reality: The second half is the battleground of this series.
And within two minutes of this battle, it no longer mattered that Denver trailed the entire first half, because Denver was back in front, back in charge, back in control of this Sisyphean cycle the Lakers can never escape. For the third time in as many games, the Nuggets erased a double-digit deficit Thursday night, winning 112-105 to take a 3-0 lead in the first-round series.
“I guess there goes the pregame speech about winning the first quarter and being up at halftime,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “So let’s continue to let them outplay us in the first half and settle into the game.”
The Nuggets have now won 11 consecutive games against the Lakers. They’ve trailed by 10 or more points in six of those wins.
Four of Denver’s starters scored 20 or more to nullify another 33-point game for Anthony Davis. Jokic amassed 24 points, 15 rebounds and nine assists. Jamal Murray added 22 points and nine assists.
And in his 43rd career playoff game, Aaron Gordon played one of his best, relying on physicality and competitive will to keep Denver afloat in the first half. He ended up with 29 points (a playoff career-high), 15 rebounds and three assists, including a nifty no-look feed to Jokic in transition that forced a Darvin Ham timeout. It narrowed the second-quarter deficit to four — as close as the Nuggets had been since falling behind 8-0 in a disastrous first two minutes of the game.
It was nothing more than the Lakers’ regularly scheduled head start. Six of the eight points were on fast breaks, and all of them were in the paint, Michael Malone’s two biggest fears and points of emphasis. Malone used a rapid timeout. Jokic got two quick fouls. Murray was back to pre-buzzer beater Murray. Open 3-pointers were still awry. The Nuggets started the night 2 for 14.
“Neither team could make a shot,” Malone said.
But their uncanny ability to linger in spite of their blips prevailed. Gordon tipped in a Jokic miss before the halftime buzzer to get back within four, and the first two minutes after the break were exponentially more important. A Murray run-out in transition and a long outlet pass from Jokic produced a game-tying layup. A 3-pointer from Michael Porter Jr. on the next possession gave Denver its first lead, 58-55.
It was Ham’s turn to call the early timeout as a feeling of deja vu set in. Nothing worked. The Nuggets assembled their own double-digit lead by the end of the frame.
Porter continued to be a force of consistency in an imperfect series for his team. He scored half of his 20 points in the fourth quarter, feasting on the Lakers’ three-guard lineup and even hitting a “too small” gesture after one jump shot. He also found Gordon twice in the dunker spot for assists.
Through three games, Porter is 47.8% from 3-point range on more than seven attempts per game. The rest of the Nuggets are a combined 17 for 81 (21%).
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“I have the utmost confidence that we’ll start to make those (wide open) shots,” Malone said pregame, reiterating his usual refrain that the Nuggets only care about the quality of attempts they’re generating.
Denver started the game with its traditional matchups instead of the cross-matching that turned the tide 72 hours earlier in Game 2. But when the Lakers got Jokic in early foul trouble, Malone maneuvered his defense in and out of various looks, including the one with Jokic on Rui Hachimura, Gordon on Davis and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope on LeBron James.
“When Nikola gets in foul trouble, I’m sure everybody thinks I’m gonna take him out,” Malone said. “Well, we can’t afford to take Nikola out. So we switched up the matchups. And we got him on somebody not named Anthony Davis. And then we went zone, just to keep him out of foul trouble, not get him his third. So being down four and Nikola not getting his third foul in the first half, those were two big wins.”
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