The Denver Nuggets are fresh off winning the 2023 NBA Finals, and on their way to winning a title, they had to get past the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals. It was an interesting series for former Laker Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, but he's been continually trash-talking the Lakers all offseason long, and he isn't stopping as the new season approaches.
Caldwell-Pope won a ring with the Lakers back in 2020 before helping the Nuggets win theirs last season, and he hasn't been shy in roasting his former teammates throughout the offseason. Caldwell-Pope once again threw shade at the Lakers ahead of the 2023-24 season, saying that the Nuggets needed to hand the Lakers the sort of defeat they did last year.
"They're my brothers still but we (the Nuggets) had to give them that butt whoopin' [in the 2023 WCF]… We did something that hadn't been done in a long time as far as the Lakers getting swept."
—Kentavious Caldwell-Pope
(via @SiriusXMNBA)pic.twitter.com/H2xtJQSLlH
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) October 22, 2023
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has been saying stuff like this all throughout the offseason, and it will be interesting to see how the Lakers react to it when they square off in their season-opening contest on Tuesday night. It's a bit of an odd situation considering how Caldwell-Pope played alongside guys like LeBron James and Anthony Davis with the Lakers, but he doesn't seem worried about what he's saying at all.
If the Nuggets want to repeat as champions again this season, they are likely going to have to go through the Lakers again, making this trash-talk of sorts from Caldwell-Pope a bit dangerous. He's likely just poking fun at some of his old friends, but bulletin board material can be a dangerous thing in the NBA, and this continued banter is making an already must-watch game between the Nuggets and Lakers on Tuesday night even more interesting.
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