Lakers expose Nuggets’ biggest fears with preview of playoff gameplan

Nuggets fans were looking forward to Saturday night’s game when the team got a chance to extend their winning streak to 10 games against a hated Lakers squad that they’ve dominated in recent years. But no matter how many times they’ve beaten them, it never gets old against the Lakers.

This was a new-look Lakers team coming to town though as they, of course, recently added Luka Doncic and lost Anthony Davis. After rescinding a trade for big man Mark Williams, the Lakers’ frontcourt is looking thin and Doncic has looked rusty and out of shape.

There was lots of optimism in Denver that this would be another chance for a red-hot Nuggets team to bully the Lakers and bludgeon them with size and strength. But that wasn’t the case as LA came out and punched the Nuggets in the mouth, blitzing them en route to a 123-100 victory.

Lakers overwhelm Jokic, force others to beat them

The Lakers pressured the Denver defense with relentless attacks from Doncic, LeBron James, and Austin Reaves, but the story of this game was the LA defense. They played a lot without a true center, but they made up for it with but made up for it with relentless pressure.

From the word go, they were all over Nikola Jokic, running big wings at him as soon as Denver got the ball, denying Jokic entries, fronting the post, and making him work hard just to get a touch. When he did get a touch, the Lakers were switching everything and throwing double and even triple-teams at the Joker, forcing the ball out of his hands almost immediately.

Hands were active as well and it was a rare occurrence to see Jokic get anything resembling a clean look at the rim. The result was just 12 points for the reigning MVP on just 2/7 shooting from the field.

Jamal Murray was the clear secondary focus of the Lakers’ defense, and while he got hot from three, he finished with just 19 points on 13 shot attempts. This all led to Russell Westbrook leading the team with 17 field goal attempts, followed by 15 for Aaron Gordon, and 14 for Michael Porter Jr.

Denver’s lack of talent after Jokic and Murray on full display

This has been the biggest fear for the Nuggets as a contender all along; lack of talent behind Jokic. When the playoffs start, teams are going to employ this type of strategy and force the Nuggets’ role players and secondary stars to beat them. At least on Saturday night, the results were not pretty.

This is just one regular season game where a lot of factors led to a rare dud for Denver. They’ve got plenty of time to clean things up, bounce back, and create better schemes to counter this type of pressure. But the Nuggets need to make some changes if they’re going to beat the best teams in the West.