L.A.’s latest fall-from-behind loss was also its most gut-wrenching. Try as they might, the Lakers just can’t keep up with Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets.
In what might have been the greatest TNT doubleheader ever, past and present blurred in strange ways, zigzagging past the boundary lines of the individual games and reinforcing motifs and iconography across time. There are standout moments in the annals of NBA lore that have no precedent, and then there are the ones that carry a lineage. The 14-second heroics of Jalen Brunson and Donte DiVincenzo on Monday night will forever be in spiritual connection with Reggie Miller’s eight points in nine seconds against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden nearly 30 years ago. Likewise, there were echoes of 2013 in LeBron James’s block on Jamal Murray not three minutes into Game 2 of the first-round series between the Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets in the nightcap. That was but an amuse-bouche for the agony and ecstasy to follow. There was more history to reenact.
Forty-five minutes of game time later, Murray, the kung fu kid from Kitchener, Ontario, found a way to remold one of the greatest moments in Canadian sports history in his own image—on a night when the Philadelphia 76ers’ fate was once again at the mercy of a cruel bounce on the rim. Murray’s game winner over an outstretched Anthony Davis was a near carbon copy of what Kawhi Leonard wrought five years ago: a midrange baseline fadeaway buzzer-beater—on the same side of the court, from roughly the same spot—over a lunging defensive juggernaut, which resulted in a soul-reaving 101-99 Nuggets win on Monday night. You heard the frenzy of the crowd in that instant, but you felt the halting freeze hit Davis, his momentum carrying him into the Denver bench, where he had to take a few moments to process what had just happened—to him, to the Lakers, to what lies ahead. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if Joel Embiid felt a wave of psychic pain in that very moment, whatever he was doing.
For the Lakers, history is repeating in the worst way. Monday night was the third consecutive game against the Nuggets in which L.A. squandered a double-digit lead and their 10th consecutive loss at the hands of Nikola Jokic and Co., dating back to last year’s Western Conference finals. Denver carries the air of inevitability that all truly great teams do. No lead is safe. Security is an illusion. A 20-point Lakers lead in the third quarter eroded almost organically, like a time lapse of a river cutting through bedrock. That it felt so natural almost belies the historic implications. It was the Lakers’ second-largest blown lead in the playoffs in more than a quarter century. It was one of the worst collapses in franchise history. The series, if you can still call it that, stands at 2-0. For stretches in both games, the Lakers have looked like the better team, executing on offense with stunning clarity. But the Nuggets meet that sense of order and belief with an equal and opposite reaction. When they take the reins, L.A. can’t keep from letting go. But the Lakers can’t afford to resign themselves to fate and skip to the end—not when there’s a LeBron-shaped void at the end of the tunnel.
The Nuggets’ victory is just the latest capstone to a thesis that Jokic presented last year, after a mid-January win over the Orlando Magic. “I think the good teams win even when they play bad,” he said then. “And bad teams always find a way to lose games, even when they’re up.” Last night, on account of Murray’s heroics, Jokic issued an addendum of sorts. “I think he made the tough ones today and missed the easy ones. It was that kind of game, you know?”
Ever the consummate teammate, Jokic was gentle. Murray was on track for the worst playoff performance of his career, his confidence rattled after the first three quarters, when he shot just 3-for-16 from the field. But the Jokic-Murray pick-and-roll would pay dividends eventually. And it did. It just took time and some well-earned trust. Arguably the greatest perk of playing alongside Jokic is his all-consuming persistence, which has made the Nuggets ironclad in clutch time. He may look like he’s gasping for air in the final kick of a marathon from the second he steps onto the court, but few players understand as intuitively how to parcel out their energy. He only grows stronger, sharper, and more effective as the patterns of the game coalesce down the stretch. He’s the tortoise.
Which, unfortunately, makes Davis the hare. AD’s first 25 minutes approached perfection. He had 32 points on 14-of-15 shooting; he was the head of the spear on a varied defensive attack against Jokic; Lakers coach Darvin Ham synced his minutes to Jokic’s time on the floor during that stretch—in those 25 minutes, Davis was a plus-17, Jokic a minus-17. And then, nothing. AD vanished while Jokic compiled the rest of his 27-20-10 triple-double, a historic feat that has become workaday in Jokic’s hands.
While Murray’s moment will likely stand as the apex of the series and LeBron’s force of will lords over just about everything under the NBA’s sun, the Lakers-Nuggets tête-à-tête has always circled around Davis and Jokic, in some capacity. Each player has landed a remarkable buzzer-beating highlight over the other in the Western Conference finals—AD’s in 2020, Jokic’s in 2023—each one a harbinger of championship gold. Two years separate the two, in both age and draft class. Davis entered the 2012 draft as the best prospect since Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, his skills, reflexes, and hypermobility a reflection of the hard-nosed guard he was before a life-changing growth spurt. Jokic entered the 2014 draft as the doughy weirdo who flashed Vlade Divac passing chops and a sturdy low-post game at the Nike Hoop Summit; the full breadth of his skill set was sheathed by our perception and lack of imagination.
It can be jarring to watch the player Davis has transformed into over the course of his career, just as it can be for Jokic. There were moments when the Pelicans fancied AD as a wing on offense, occasionally adding certain wrinkles like running him off pindown screens so that he could rise and fire from 3. That vision of him as a futuristic three-level scorer has faded, the remarkable 3-point accuracy he displayed in the 2020 Finals a grand mirage. He has, instead, become the inverse: a stylistic mixtape of the early 2000s’ defining big men, mashed up with elements of the premier vertical spacers (think DeAndre Jordan and Clint Capela) of the 2010s. As a proto-unicorn who long carried expectations as a limitless two-way player, AD has in part made his journey by affixing limits on himself. In that sense, and how it’s affected his style of play, AD has embraced tradition more than any of his contemporaries. And it’s the reality of his game today—not the potential that enrobed it—that has made him one of the three best bigs in the league.
Where Davis has Marie Kondo’d his game, tossing that which no longer serves him at an elite level, Jokic keeps the expanse of his game compartmentalized, sorted, and ready to access when necessary—it truly is unfair that Jokic can be an above-average 3-point shooter when he cares to be. He hasn’t taken the matchup lightly, even if scoring over and around AD was light work in the second half on Monday. “He’s a great, talented player. He’s an offensive monster and defensive, too,” Jokic said of Davis after the game. “He’s a really good defensive player, and I’m not really a good defensive player one-on-one like that.” It was, as ever, a bit of self-deprecation from the Joker. The only player in the league capable of minimizing Jokic’s impact is Jokic.
The Lakers will have reinforcements on hand as the series heads to Los Angeles. Christian Wood and Jarred Vanderbilt should make their debuts in Game 3, when Ham will have more rangy, athletic bodies to continue varying the defensive looks in hopes of disrupting Jokic’s timing. (Honestly, anything besides putting poor Rui Hachimura on an island.) But the overwhelming feeling after the game was a sense of finality. Jokic’s perfunctory dominance and Murray’s buzzer-beater felt like an early epitaph, not just for this series, but for this era—a parting shot against the Lakers and a warning to every other challenger waiting in the wings. You can be perfect for the first 25 minutes, but where does that leave you when the game is on the line? In the path of the Nuggets’ two-man engine, which has always saved its best for last. The postseason is a protracted test of endurance. Front-runners beware.