3 takeaways from the Nuggets' game one win over the Lakers
By Ben Handler
If the Nuggets hit 3s they’ll sweep the Lakers again
It didn’t take long to realize that the strategy for the Lakers is to force the Nuggets to shoot a bunch of threes and live with the results. LA collapsed the paint and threw tons of bodies at Nikola Jokic and anyone else who got in the lane and didn’t show extra help to the open spot-up shooters.
This worked decently in the first half as they got Denver to put up a season-high 23 three-point attempts and they only hit six. But things swung in the last few minutes of the first half and then in the third quarter. The Nuggets seemed to get more comfortable with this defense and started burying open shots.
Denver went 9/19 after halftime, including a trio of threes by Kentavious Caldwell-Pope during a 13-0 third quarter run that put the Nuggets up for good. The Lakers have a good defense but they can’t take everything away. It seems like they’ve chosen the threes as the thing they’ll allow and the Nuggets need to take advantage as they did during the second half of game one.
Denver isn’t a high-volume shooting team, but they certainly have plenty of capable shooters. Those shooters have to be willing and confident and they can shoot the Lakers right out of this defense and seize control of the series.