After blowing two leads and dropping two close games on the road, the Los Angeles Lakers return home and host the Denver Nuggets in Game 3 of their first round series on Thursday night.
The Lakers came in looking to snap their 10-game losing streak at the hands of the Nuggets and also looking to avoid going down 0-3 in the series, which is obviously a death sentence with no NBA team ever coming back from that. Ultimately, that ended up being the case as the Lakers still can’t keep up with the Nuggets, suffering a 112-105 loss.
It was clear early that the Lakers were happy to be home as they jumped out to a quick 8-0 start thanks to some Nuggets turnovers and transition finishes by LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
Davis was going at Nuggets start Nikole Jokic early for 10 points, drawing two early fouls on the former MVP. Denver eventually settled in though, cutting the deficit to 18-13 and forcing a Lakers timeout.
Rui Hachimura had a nice response for the Lakers out of the timeout with a corner triple, and then Austin Reaves got in on the action with some drives to the bucket to put his team up 33-23 at the end of the first quarter.
Jamal Murray started to get going early in the second thanks to the Lakers allowing some offensive rebounds. Once Davis returned though, he helped settle the defense and scored inside to get the lead back to double digits.
D’Angelo Russell was struggling from deep for L.A. though and his misses allowed Denver to get out in transition, finishing some easy ones. After Aaron Gordon tipped one in at the buzzer, the Lakers’ lead was cut to 53-49 going into the halftime locker room.
It didn’t take long for the Nuggets to take the lead early in the third quarter, beginning on a 9-2 run to force a quick Lakers timeout.
The Lakers started to fall apart from there as they had some costly turnovers while Gordon continued to dominate inside and on the offensive glass to extend the Nuggets lead to 69-61.
James and Davis had a nice response out of the timeout, but it didn’t matter though as the Nuggets continued to pour it on, hitting some 3s and attacking the offensive glass. At the end of the third quarter, L.A. was trailing 83-75.
Turnovers continued to hurt the Lakers in the fourth as they were never able to sustain a run, especially with guys like Murray, Gordon and Porter continuing to score with ease.
Denver lead hovered around double digits for the entire fourth quarter as Los Angeles ran out of gas and was unable to make a run to get back in it.
What’s next for the Lakers
The Lakers will host the Nuggets again in Game 4 on Saturday evening in what is obviously another must-win game to get back in the series.
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