3 Lakers most to blame for tough Game 1 loss to Nuggets

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The Los Angeles Lakers did their best to pull off a late rally against the Denver Nuggets in Game 1 of their Western Conference Finals series, but ended up falling just short of their goal, suffering a 132- 126 when opening the series. The Lakers showed a great fight, but were ultimately unable to overcome their slow start to claim victory here.

For the most part, the Lakers did their job when it came to scoring on offense, but they couldn’t slow down Denver on the other side of the ball. Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray both utterly destroyed Los Angeles throughout this game, which hurts even more considering they only dropped a few points before winning.

It will be a tough loss for LA to swallow, but they will have another chance to steal home court advantage in Game 2 on Thursday night. But first, it’ll be important to take a look at what went wrong for the Lakers in Game 1, so let’s pick the three players most responsible for that loss and see why that is. .

Including Anthony Davis on this list might seem extremely myopic, and well, based on his offensive output, that point can’t be disputed. Davis was getting everything he wanted on offense for the Lakers (40 PTS, 10 REB, 3 AST, 14/23 FGM) and looked like the player the Lakers would need him to be if they intended to win. this series.

The problem was that Davis got cooked by Jokic on the other end of the floor. Jokic scored 20 of his 34 points on 8/10 shooting while guarded by Davis, while racking up 11 assists to a single turnover with Davis also guarding him. Davis actually scored 22 of his 40 points while being guarded by Jokic, but the Nuggets got the win, so it didn’t really matter.

To win this series, Davis will need to be the anchor of the Los Angeles defense, but in Game 1 he let Jokic go wild which resulted in a loss. Even in a game where he had 40 points, Davis has to take some of the blame thanks to his inability to slow Jokic down for much of this contest.

Dennis Schroder probably didn’t expect to play 32 minutes in this contest, but when the pivotal moment of the fourth quarter approached, he ended up being the playmaker Darvin Ham got stuck with during the time of clutch. It didn’t quite work out, however, because Schroder couldn’t slow down the second half of Denvers’ dynamic duo with Murray on defense.

Schroder was a bit of a non-factor on offense throughout this one despite seeing so much of the action (6 PTS, 5 AST, 3 REB, 2/3 FGM) that n certainly didn’t help. But defensively, he was the main culprit on Murray’s big night, as Denver’s star goalie scored 13 points on a 4-6 shot when Schroder was against him. It’s not as bad as Davis, but Schroder hasn’t done as much as him on offense.

The Lakers’ guard depth didn’t increase in this game (more on that in a second) and it ultimately saw them lose a pair of big performances from Davis and LeBron James. Schroder will likely continue to be picked defensively throughout this series if he is to continue to see big minutes, so hopefully the next player on this list can bounce back from a tough Game 1 outing.

1. Angelo Russell

DAngelo Russell has been running hot or cold for most of these playoffs, so he picked a really bad time to have a tough outing in Game 1. Russell finished with just eight points on 4-11 shooting with assists as well, but that was about it. He looked lost for much of the night offensively, struggling to hit his shots or find open teammates.

Things got so bad for Russell that he ended up being benched in favor of Schroder with the game on the line. Again, as we just saw, Schroder wasn’t particularly effective in any area of ​​this game, which only makes this development more frustrating. If Russell can’t play like a starting-caliber point guard, the Lakers are toast.

Game 1 showed just how important Russell will be to Los Angeles going forward. Even with Davis and James doing everything they could to win this game, they couldn’t because of the quality of Jokic and Murray. Russell will have to play to his typical standards in Game 2 and beyond or Denver could end up making quick work of LA in this series.

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