shocking it was even this close with the way denver shot the ball. ham needs to f*** off with the small ball. that, and lebron's missed FTs/hero 3 cost them the game fortunately, denver won't shoot that well from 3 next game
horrible pathetic showing at the out start, but I'm glad they made the game competitive, at least it shows the Lakers can compete with them lol
Next game start Rui and just put Murray into the blender every single time. For all of the glory Jokic gets which is well deserved, you need to break Murray otherwise he just goes crazy on offense and the PnR game. Lebron and the guards can expose him though and they don't have any rim protection. They really sell out to protect Jokic but they maybe vulnerable to going after Murray as Jokic isn't a rim protector
This is a spicy take but honestly.... Lakers in 5 is legitimately possible IMO. I think the series goes 6, but I think we win next game by about 8-10. We wipe them at home, they maybe win at home and we finish them in 6. I don't know what it was exactly, but something about this game tells me we are just better than this team. They were insanely hot from deep, role players balling, Murray cooking like 2016 Steph, Jokic has a historic game and they legitimately almost lost the game after leading by 20+. We are winning this series as long as AD continues to man up and I think he will. He is lights out and locked in.
I know everyone is saying that Denver shot lights out and they did but we shot the same percentage from 2 and 1% less from 3. Not sure if we will be as hot from 3 land again either.
Different shot quality. Lakers missed some wide open 3s and Denver made some ridiculous ones. This is what people are described as Denver shooting about the expected variance I do believe in momentum and those shots tends to go in when you're feeling it. So up the Lakers still to stop turning the ball over in unforced situations and fix the defense so they don't have that kind of confident again
I understand what you are saying and agree that Denver made so circus shots they won’t make again but at the end of the day our shooting number are almost exactly the same.
I'm with y'all: looked like we might lose by 30; we fought back and made it a thriller. I have no doubt that these really are the two best teams in the West, despite us getting the #7 seed. DEN was #1 for reasons we can all see. But I think we're better, and a lot of it has to do with us effectively "spotting" them a 15 point lead or whatever it was at halftime, and our relentless come back, which fell just short. DEN was up what? 21 in the 3rd? Crazy great first half by Joker and his guys shot lights out. Meanwhile our D was lax. Looked like we weren't quite ready and got punched in the mouth. The refs, I thought, did a pretty bad job. Zach Zarba buys way too many non-fouls and the Nugs do a lot of the hooking another guy's arm and make it look like a Laker is fouling them BS. If it works, it works. It shouldn't, but it did. Eric Lewis is a sham, and it's a shame. Despite that, DEN is who I thought they were: really good chemistry, with the shouldda-been 3rd straight MVP at the 5. But I still see us winning this muthuh of a series. Thrilling Game One, even though we lost. Yea man: get Game Two and HCA is ours again!
Game 7 on thursday. We better come out of the gates guns blazing... and playing D. 130+ points games in the PO are a disaster.
i did not look dumb later. also don't love that we gave one of the best coaches in the business lots of time to re-adjust to our counter. if you're going to show your hand, you better get the win. oh well. i won't believe we're out of it unless denver goes up 3-0 or 3-1, but winning game 1 on the road was kind of a nice formula for us.
I thought we were going to win this in 6 or 7 after being down 2-0 I still think it's going to happen . Thing is we absolutely can't lose this series because : 1) Lebron isn't going to get younger , both him and AD are relatively healthy for only the 2nd time in 4 tries and way worse 2) I'm pretty sure the Nuggets would lose to Foston cause they don't have HCA
They really outplayed us and out-hustled us early. Going with three guards isn't necessarily good: Jokic alone had twice as many rebounds as our whole team. Maybe go with Rui instead -- we're bigger and get some extra offensive firepower? We made it close in the 4th, so maybe we can steal G2 in Denver. If we do, I'll feel good about the series. Let's see what happens, it's still early.
This all sounds encouraging. AD and Bron have been realistic, but they don't look very concerned in the least. LBJ showed up with a drink and a smile. I think they know what needs to be done:
yeah, i don't think it's time to panic yet. they played well. if they play that well throughout, they'll deservingly win the series. but they have to do it three more times, and we can do better than we did in game 1.