The game of the night on Saturday is taking place in Denver as the new-look Lakers come to town to face the red-hot Nuggets in Ball Arena. The Nuggets have won nine games in a row and have never had a 10-game winning streak during the Nikola Jokic era.
The Lakers are in the midst of a tough road trip and still trying to get acclimated to life with Luka Doncic in place of Anthony Davis. The Nuggets come in at 39-17 which is good for second-place in the Western Conference and the Lakers sit at 33-21, placing them in fifth.
Both of LA’s superstars have been battling ailments; LeBron James has been nursing a foot injury that kept him out of the All-Star Game and Luka Doncic is still in the process of recovering from a hamstring injury that has kept him out for months.
They were each officially listed as Probable to start the day, but they’ve been officially upgraded to available just over an hour before tip-off. The Nuggets will be missing Peyton Watson, but otherwise, both teams will have their full rotations intact.
Nuggets should be able to dominate Lakers down low
While the Lakers’ trade for Doncic has drastically raised their offensive floor, the opposite is true on the defensive end. They sent their best big man, Anthony Davis to Dallas and they ended up rescinding a trade that would have brought in his replacement, Mark Williams.
Now they are left with a frontline that prominently features Jaxson Hayes and Alex Len. Denver has already been dominating this matchup for the past few seasons, but the gap between these teams is about to get even wider.
Before, the Lakers could at least put AD on Jokic or opt to have a big body like Rui Hachimura on Jokic while AD sat back and protected the rim. But now, the team has neither of those options and they are completely hopeless against the Joker.
This is about as big a mismatch as there can be and the Lakers may just end up punting on the center position and trotting out James, Hachimura, and Dorian Finney-Smith along with two guards. That lineup has little to no chance of slowing down Jokic but it still may be their best option.
They are in big trouble on defense, so at least they can try to make the Nuggets work on the other end. Playing five-out and forcing Jokic to come out and guard pick and rolls with James and Doncic is the Lakers' best - and perhaps only - chance at success. If it’s not a shootout, they don’t stand a chance.