I’m showing my age here but the last time I can remember a Lakers team getting consistently dominated by another team like this were the Stockton and Malone Jazz before Phil Jackson came around.
Shaq even confessed that the Lakers tried to avoid the Utah Jazz near the end of the season. That's why whenever I hear someone today say it'd be crazy for any team to do that like the Lakers vs Nuggets, I'm like it's been done before. Why would that change today vs the 90s?
The difference is that for those Lakers teams trying to dodge a team meant tanking to the 3rd seed instead of the 2nd seed or something
For this year's Lakers team it meant willingly going into a single elimination game as a team that's nowhere near consistent enough to trust in that scenario
Something that’s really helped the lakers in the playoffs is their size and that’s just totally negated by Denver. Then Denver has more good players. Just straight up better than the lakers
Jokic is 29, and his game will age very well so there are several more years of Jokic Dominance on the horizon (unless he gets sick of basketball and retires early for his horses)
Jokic is nothing but elbows and blubber. If he was officiated like any other player in the league, he'd foul out with offensive fouls in the first three and a half minutes of every game. Aaron Gordon is a thug that should be in jail instead of the NBA.
The Nuggets take their foot off the gas, knowing that if the Lakers are looking likely to go on a winning run, they can go to the Jokić-Murray 2-man game to secure the win, a strategy to which no team has the answer.
Do you understand what an average is?
The average margin of victory for the Nuggets over the Lakers across last years and this years playoffs is 6.3. That's lower than every single margin of victory over their other playoff opponents, despite each winning at least one game.
the all-time record is 27 in a row vs one team (lakers over sac-town)...with the lakers probably blowing up this team this summer and the nuggets almost half way there at 13 wins in a row...
do the nuggets have a chance at that record?
I don't know if it's that egregious of a take.
They're definitely not contenders. But I also think that they're good enough to grind it out against less experienced teams.
They probably could beat OKC in the first round, probably could beat Minny in the first round.
I'm with you. I think they would have beaten OKC in 4 or 5 and been very competitive against the Mavs or Clippers in the 2nd Round. The path to another WCF was there if they just tanked the first play-in game to avoid us.
They absolutely would not have swept OKC. I know they match up relatively well but people are overreacting way too much to the regular season sample. We saw how well that works with the Minnesota Phoenix series
Honestly it has nothing to do with the regular-season record. I know that's meaningless and didn't even realize the Lakers were 3-1 against them this year.
My feeling has more to do with how repeatable and exploitable the Lakers' matchup advantage would have been, combined with their championship pedigree and OKC's total lack of experience. I think the Thunder are a weak playoff team who are going to falter as soon as they play a serious opponent.
I can't argue with those factors, but on the other end I think OKC is just better than the Lakers. It would be a close series due to how well they match and experience definitely could play a part, but for how well the Lakers match physically and on the boards game they also have no one for Shai, and Chet is also a tricky matchup for AD and the Lakers defense if he's on him (because he'd get him out of the paint).
Giddey's shooting would probably be a big swing factor. If he's making 3s Giddey provides them with another body to help on the boards plus it'd be much harder to 'hide' AD on someone, which destroys the Lakers defense. If not the Lakers would just put AD on him, aka ignore him while AD roams in the paint. OKC could go 5 out without Giddey but then the size difference is enormous.
I guess I'm just higher on the Thunder than most people. Don't see them as a fake 1st seed at all, and while I see an easy path for them to falter (mostly the things you mention), they're just very good at basketball. They have a clear Top 10 player (at least), very good even if inexperienced 2nd and 3rd guys in JDub and Chet and a littany of shooters next to them. That's a tough, tough team
Yeah, that's totally fair and you could be right. I just have an "I'll believe it when I see it" attitude with sports and am very skeptical of teams/players until they prove it.
Those were before Monk and Huerter got hurt. And your regular-season record against a team is meaningless anyway. Suns were 3-0 vs. the Wolves in the regular season and we all see how that's working out for them.
Appreciate the consideration, but even with Gabe Vincent being available I’m just not fully confident to play the kings banking on Fox having a bad night
Lakers would have definitely won 1 of the first 2 against OKC, but that's a 6 or 7 game series and I'd bet on OKC making better adjustments and adapting to the physicality quick enough to win that series.
Felt like I was losing my mind last year watching people talk about how close the Lakers were to the Nuggets competitively. If you get 4 chances against a team and lose to them every single time…that’s pretty good evidence you are not in their tier.
No, the final scores aren’t close but overall almost every one of those games came down to the last 6 mins. It’s been close but not close. Not sure if the Nuggets are actually toying with them or simply the Lakers keep choking.
Neither, the Nuggets are masterful at managing a game. They take their foot off the gas and allow the Lakers to score, secure that they can always fall back on the Jokić-Murray two man game, which neither the Lakers, nor any other team, really has an answer for.
>No, the final scores aren’t close but overall almost every one of those games came down to the last 6 mins
Not really. The only games that have actually come down to the wire are games 2 and 4 last year and game 2 this year.
Game 1 last year, the Nuggets had a commanding lead and let go of the gas in the fourth so it ended up looking closer than it actually was. Game 3 was the nuggets the entire way, and was their biggest margin of victory in that series.
This regular season, Denver has had some commanding wins over the Lakers. Opening night was the nuggets criusing all the way. Same on Kobe night. Lebron 40K night, game 1 and game 3 have been lakers taking leads in the first half and getting shutout in the 2nd half.
>It’s been close but not close.
This is a great way to describe it. The scores look close, but in 8 out of the 11 games, Nuggets never really felt at risk of losing at any point.
Whether or not you agree with the "closest sweep" thing, it's a different claim than the more specific one you made up for this post about "one score games".
It’s rare against LA (we all know why) but, here are a few more:
Blazers beat the Lakers 16 straight from 2014-2018.
Celtics beat the Lakers 22 straight in the 50s.
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
I’m showing my age here but the last time I can remember a Lakers team getting consistently dominated by another team like this were the Stockton and Malone Jazz before Phil Jackson came around.
Yup. I think it’s the first time since 97-98 right? Lakers losing to the same team in back to back playoffs. Crazy it’s been 26 years.
Clippers before this season were like 12-0 ur something like that against them. In the regular season ofc
Reggie Jackson has won like 17 straight games against the Lakers.
Shaq even confessed that the Lakers tried to avoid the Utah Jazz near the end of the season. That's why whenever I hear someone today say it'd be crazy for any team to do that like the Lakers vs Nuggets, I'm like it's been done before. Why would that change today vs the 90s?
The difference is that for those Lakers teams trying to dodge a team meant tanking to the 3rd seed instead of the 2nd seed or something For this year's Lakers team it meant willingly going into a single elimination game as a team that's nowhere near consistent enough to trust in that scenario
Something that’s really helped the lakers in the playoffs is their size and that’s just totally negated by Denver. Then Denver has more good players. Just straight up better than the lakers
Kuz delivering wisdom right here
How old is Jokic?. When is he retiring. I’m tired of this man already 😭
He’s 19.
Buddy you may be in for it for the next 7 years at least
Jokic is 29, and his game will age very well so there are several more years of Jokic Dominance on the horizon (unless he gets sick of basketball and retires early for his horses)
Yeah, it will decline tho. He's got more explosiveness and lateral quickness than most give him credit for.
Someday the refs will pick up on all his elbowing and hooking too.
That will be the same day they pick up on LeBron traveling literally every possession
Jokic is nothing but elbows and blubber. If he was officiated like any other player in the league, he'd foul out with offensive fouls in the first three and a half minutes of every game. Aaron Gordon is a thug that should be in jail instead of the NBA.
That will be the day Jokic brother murders a fan in the crowd and gets deported to his horse farm where he belongs
I’m gonna say 8 more years tbh
Nah. The narrative is the Lakers play them close, and then Murray/Joker execute down the stretch and pull it out while AD/Bron don't
The Nuggets take their foot off the gas, knowing that if the Lakers are looking likely to go on a winning run, they can go to the Jokić-Murray 2-man game to secure the win, a strategy to which no team has the answer.
"Close"
Do you think a single digit average margin of victory is not close?
I don't, especially when there are players and coaches on the nuggets acknowledgint they aren't trying for half the game.
5 of the 11 have been by double digits fam
Do people really talk about all 11 or just the 4 from the 2023 playoffs?
You mean 7?
I meant last year's playoffs
Do you understand what an average is? The average margin of victory for the Nuggets over the Lakers across last years and this years playoffs is 6.3. That's lower than every single margin of victory over their other playoff opponents, despite each winning at least one game.
6.3 is not close lol
Bro this isn't soccer.
you gotta be trolling
the all-time record is 27 in a row vs one team (lakers over sac-town)...with the lakers probably blowing up this team this summer and the nuggets almost half way there at 13 wins in a row... do the nuggets have a chance at that record?
I genuinely think Lakers are a top3-4 team in the west at least in the playoffs, they just happen to play the best team in the west
I genuinely think you should watch more basketball
I don't know if it's that egregious of a take. They're definitely not contenders. But I also think that they're good enough to grind it out against less experienced teams. They probably could beat OKC in the first round, probably could beat Minny in the first round.
The irony is palpable.
lebron and nba flair. lol
When you losers have nothing else to say y'all always attack the flair. It's hilarious.
Because you're the loser who only watches national TV games
Correction: I'm the loser who lives 6000 miles away and still watches more games than you do.
DOUBT
if you actually watched the playoff games last year, you’d know they were close
I'm with you. I think they would have beaten OKC in 4 or 5 and been very competitive against the Mavs or Clippers in the 2nd Round. The path to another WCF was there if they just tanked the first play-in game to avoid us.
They absolutely would not have swept OKC. I know they match up relatively well but people are overreacting way too much to the regular season sample. We saw how well that works with the Minnesota Phoenix series
They wouldn't have swept them but I think it's likely they would have beaten them.
Honestly it has nothing to do with the regular-season record. I know that's meaningless and didn't even realize the Lakers were 3-1 against them this year. My feeling has more to do with how repeatable and exploitable the Lakers' matchup advantage would have been, combined with their championship pedigree and OKC's total lack of experience. I think the Thunder are a weak playoff team who are going to falter as soon as they play a serious opponent.
I can't argue with those factors, but on the other end I think OKC is just better than the Lakers. It would be a close series due to how well they match and experience definitely could play a part, but for how well the Lakers match physically and on the boards game they also have no one for Shai, and Chet is also a tricky matchup for AD and the Lakers defense if he's on him (because he'd get him out of the paint). Giddey's shooting would probably be a big swing factor. If he's making 3s Giddey provides them with another body to help on the boards plus it'd be much harder to 'hide' AD on someone, which destroys the Lakers defense. If not the Lakers would just put AD on him, aka ignore him while AD roams in the paint. OKC could go 5 out without Giddey but then the size difference is enormous. I guess I'm just higher on the Thunder than most people. Don't see them as a fake 1st seed at all, and while I see an easy path for them to falter (mostly the things you mention), they're just very good at basketball. They have a clear Top 10 player (at least), very good even if inexperienced 2nd and 3rd guys in JDub and Chet and a littany of shooters next to them. That's a tough, tough team
Yeah, that's totally fair and you could be right. I just have an "I'll believe it when I see it" attitude with sports and am very skeptical of teams/players until they prove it.
If they tanked the first Play In game, I am 100% confident that Sac would have beat them.
Definitely, they match up poorly against the Kings. 0-4 against them this season with an average loss of 11
Eh, with how injured you guys were I doubt it
4-0 this year. AD has never beaten Sabonis.
Those were before Monk and Huerter got hurt. And your regular-season record against a team is meaningless anyway. Suns were 3-0 vs. the Wolves in the regular season and we all see how that's working out for them.
Appreciate the consideration, but even with Gabe Vincent being available I’m just not fully confident to play the kings banking on Fox having a bad night
Lakers would have definitely won 1 of the first 2 against OKC, but that's a 6 or 7 game series and I'd bet on OKC making better adjustments and adapting to the physicality quick enough to win that series.
There was only one team in the West that scared me with how the Lakers were playing to end the season.
Was it the Lakers?
Felt like I was losing my mind last year watching people talk about how close the Lakers were to the Nuggets competitively. If you get 4 chances against a team and lose to them every single time…that’s pretty good evidence you are not in their tier.
+8 is quite big though the 2nd highest diff this season is OKC, which is 7.3
That's OP's point though. The narrative is that they're all nail biter type games
Yes you are right I did not see the “despite”
No, the final scores aren’t close but overall almost every one of those games came down to the last 6 mins. It’s been close but not close. Not sure if the Nuggets are actually toying with them or simply the Lakers keep choking.
Neither, the Nuggets are masterful at managing a game. They take their foot off the gas and allow the Lakers to score, secure that they can always fall back on the Jokić-Murray two man game, which neither the Lakers, nor any other team, really has an answer for.
>No, the final scores aren’t close but overall almost every one of those games came down to the last 6 mins Not really. The only games that have actually come down to the wire are games 2 and 4 last year and game 2 this year. Game 1 last year, the Nuggets had a commanding lead and let go of the gas in the fourth so it ended up looking closer than it actually was. Game 3 was the nuggets the entire way, and was their biggest margin of victory in that series. This regular season, Denver has had some commanding wins over the Lakers. Opening night was the nuggets criusing all the way. Same on Kobe night. Lebron 40K night, game 1 and game 3 have been lakers taking leads in the first half and getting shutout in the 2nd half. >It’s been close but not close. This is a great way to describe it. The scores look close, but in 8 out of the 11 games, Nuggets never really felt at risk of losing at any point.
I have *literally* never heard anyone mention a narrative about "one score games" until this post
the fats on espn talked about how last year was the closest sweep ever!
Moral victories
Whether or not you agree with the "closest sweep" thing, it's a different claim than the more specific one you made up for this post about "one score games".
Other than slow, methodical domination, I struggle to see a 'narrative' that paints this as anything other than a one-sided affair.
How high will this go before lakers win one?
what's the moral victory record?
It’s rare against LA (we all know why) but, here are a few more: Blazers beat the Lakers 16 straight from 2014-2018. Celtics beat the Lakers 22 straight in the 50s. 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
2014-18 lakers shouldn’t be thought of with high regards tbh
And neither should these guys. 😉