The Denver Nuggets suffered their first defeat of the young season on Thursday night, losing to the Lakers 121-114.
The Denver Nuggets’ victories this season have come as a result of their fantastic defense and overall phenomenal team play and consistency on offense. Neither of those was on full display at the Staples Center.
The Nuggets had no answer for LeBron James, which is something that every team in the league has struggled with since 2003. However, if you can’t contain LeBron, you need to contain his teammates, which the Nuggets were not able to do.
Kyle Kuzma and JaVale McGee combined to score 43 points while shooting 52.9% from the field. Lance Stephenson and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope added a combined 20 points off the bench, with 12 of those points coming from 3-pointers. While LeBron had a great game, he wasn’t the only reason the Lakers won. By failing to shut down the role players around LeBron, the Nuggets dug themselves a hole that they couldn’t crawl their way out of.
Denver Nuggets
Their shooting struggles also continued on Thursday. The team made just 6 three-pointers on 23 attempts, with 3 makes on 17 attempts from the starting lineup. That’s a clip of 26.1% overall and a shocking 17.7% from the starting lineup. They have proved they don’t need to hit 3-pointers incredibly efficiently to win games in their first 4 games of the season, but they cannot take 23 three-pointers and make just 6 of them in the future.
They also had struggled with turnovers. Every member of the starting lineup other than Gary Harris had at least 3 turnovers, with Nikola Jokic tallying 6. By the end of the night, they had racked up 19 turnovers total. For comparison, the Lakers had just 13 total with Lonzo Ball being the only player with at least 3 turnovers.
It was not a good team performance by the Nuggets. But there were a few good individual performances. Let’s take a look at those.
(Note: All stats via Basketball-Reference.)
Starting Lineup Grades:
Nikola Jokic: B
Paul Millsap: C
Torrey Craig: D+
Gary Harris: C+
Jamal Murray: B
It was not a great night for the starting lineup.
I already pointed out their difficulties shooting from distance and with turning the ball over, and there were many more problems on the night.
Only Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic registered a free throw attempt from the starting lineup. They were the only ones drawing fouls, or taking shots that could draw fouls. The Nuggets had a free throw rate of .217, which means for every field goal attempt, there were .217 free throw attempts. That should be a talking point for coach Mike Malone over the weekend.
Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray both had pretty good games. They combined for 46 points, 21 rebounds, 2 steals, and 2 blocks on 50% shooting from the field. They both had 5 free throw makes, as well. However, there were some things that brought their grades down. They combined for 9 turnovers, 7 fouls, just 4 assists, and 20% shooting from 3-point range on 10 attempts. They also had an average BPM of -8.5 and an average ORtg of 101.5. Neither was very effective on defense, either, with Lonzo Ball and JaVale McGee, their main matchups throughout the night, combining for 33 points, 13 rebounds, 10 assists, and 6 steals on 57.7% shooting from the field. Overall, however, they were two bright spots in a fairly demoralizing loss.
Gary Harris had a mixed game on both ends of the floor. On the bright side, he held Josh Hart to just 12 points on 30% shooting and Hart had one of the lowest ORtgs on either team. However, Hart had the highest BPM on either team, and Harris himself was held to 13 points on 13 field goal attempts and 33.3% shooting from 3-point range. He wasn’t terrible, but he wasn’t his normal borderline All-Star self.
Paul Millsap did not have a very good game. But most players tasked with guarding LeBron usually don’t have the best games. In the previous 4 games, Millsap was making up for his offensive deficiencies with great work on the defensive end and by grabbing a lot of rebounds. He didn’t showcase either on Thursday night. Millsap scored a measly 6 points on 33.3% shooting, grabbed 5 boards, and his DRtg of 116 was the second highest on both teams among players with at least 15 minutes. He’s not going to be guarding one of the best basketball players of all time every game, so this shouldn’t happen too often, but for now, he gets a C for his performance.
Torrey Craig looked like one of the worst players on the floor on Thursday night. Everybody knows that he becomes something of a liability whenever the Nuggets possess the ball, but he looked like he was actually hurting the team on offense. He did not showcase any range(0 for 2 on three-point attempts) and his ORtg of 34 was noticeably lower the rating of anybody who played more than 5 minutes. He had 40 possessions against either LeBron or Kyle Kuzma. They attempted 11 field goals in those possessions and scored a combined 15 points(NBA.com). He had a defensive rating of 115 and a BPM of -9. It’s fair to say he didn’t do his job on either end of the floor.
Bench Players:
Monte Morris: A
Trey Lyles: C+
Monte Morris was the only true bright spot for the Nuggets in the loss. He posted 20 points, 7 assists, 3 rebounds, and 3 steals on 66.7% shooting from the field and 100% from 3-point range on 2 attempts. He was the only Nugget who played 20+ minutes with a positive BPM and he paced both teams in ORtg comfortably(187). If he keeps performing as he did on Thursday, he should continue getting 25+ minutes and could even break his way into the starting lineup if Torrey Craig can’t get his act together.
Lyles, like many Nuggets, had a mixed performance. He had a decent game scoring the ball, tallying 11 points on 41.7% shooting. He also showcased some of the passing ability he displayed in the preseason, putting up 3 assists with a 19.8% assist percentage. However, he made just 1 of his 3 three-point attempts and he could not do much on the defensive end either, posting a DRtg of 115 and giving up 11 total points to the Lakers on 7 total FG attempts(NBA.com).
While there were a few solid individual performances against the Lakers, overwhelmingly, it was a disappointing night on both ends of the floor. However, it was just a 7 point loss and it was a very close game up until the end of the 4th quarter. Denver should not be too discouraged by the loss or these player grades.