One NBA executive is of the belief that the Los Angeles Lakers match up poorly against the Denver Nuggets, who are the defending NBA champions.
“Asked about the matchup involving the Lakers and the Denver Nuggets, one Eastern Conference executive quickly responded, the three dots on the phone barely registering,” Dan Woike wrote.
The league executive provided the following response.
“Bad for the Lakers!” he replied.
The Lakers are set to take on the Nuggets in the first round of the 2024 NBA Playoffs, with Game 1 of the series scheduled for Saturday night.
Denver dominated the regular-season series against the Lakers, considering the team won all three matchups between the two squads.
In the most recent game between the Lakers and Nuggets, the latter earned a 10-point victory thanks in large to a dominant performance from perhaps the league’s best player in Nikola Jokic. Jokic came up just three assists shy of a triple-double, as he dropped 35 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists on 16-of-25 shooting from the field and 2-of-2 from the free-throw line.
The closest the Lakers got to picking up a win against the Nuggets came on Feb. 8. Anthony Davis did his best to carry Los Angeles to a victory in that game, as he racked up 32 points, nine rebounds, three assists, three steals and four blocks, but the Lakers still lost by eight points.
While it takes four wins to eliminate a team in the playoffs, if the Lakers were to take Game 1 of their first-round series, that would be a great step in the right direction toward shocking the world and eliminating the Nuggets. After all, approximately 77.9 percent of NBA teams that take the first game of a series go on to advance.
But beating the Nuggets at Ball Arena will be a tall task. The Nuggets finished the regular season with a record of 33-8 at home, which was tied with the Oklahoma City Thunder for the top home record of any team in the Western Conference.
Hopefully, the playoff experience of some of the Lakers’ best players in LeBron James and Davis will shine through in the opening game of the series and propel the team to a win in a hostile environment.
