The NBA season is finally upon us, and what a doozy the league gave the world on opening night to tipoff the 2023-24 season. The Denver Nuggets are receiving their rings against one of the teams they took down on their quest to a championship in the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers seem to remember the Nuggets rubbing their Western Conference Finals win over the Lakers in their noses a bit too much, which should make Tuesday's game great theater.
This game will be great to watch; that's one prediction. But here are two mold Lakers bold predictions for their season-opening battle with the Nuggets.
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Anthony Davis will collect more points and rebounds than Nikola Jokic
Anthony Davis was on an absolute rampage during the Lakers' preseason games. In 91 minutes of preseason action, Davis scored 72 points on 23-42 (54.7%) shooting from the field. Those are exceptional numbers. Davis looks as springy and nimble as ever and also flashed a renaissance with his jumper.
Granted, the sample size is exceptionally minuscule, but Davis shot 6-13 from three during the preseason. He hasn't shot it better than 26% from three in a season since the Los Angeles' title season in 2019-20.
Davis, of course, also maintained his dominance in the paint, shooting 12-15 on shots inside of five feet in the preseason. He's done so going iso on bigs like Kevon Looney.
He's also benefitted greatly from the Los Angeles' influx of shooting added over the summer by having clean runs to the rim while rolling in pick and roll.
Davis has also looked completely locked in on the defensive end of the floor. The most notable example of this came in the Lakers' last preseason game against the Phoenix Suns. Davis had six blocks in 23 minutes and five in the first quarter alone.
Of course, tonight represents an entirely different animal. Nikola Jokic is far Jusuf Nurkic's superior. This game actually matters in the standings, too. It will be far from a cakewalk for Los Angeles. But Davis looks locked in and ready to make a statement. What better stage to do it than on opening night against the reigning Finals MVP, two-time MVP and arguably the best player in the world?
The Lakers beat the Nuggets
There are a few intangible-based reasons that could point to the Lakers winning this game. For one Los Angeles seems to want to make a statement in this game after not only losing to Denver in the playoffs, but with the extra chirping the Nuggets did at the Lakers' expense after they won the championship.
No one is criticizing Denver here, by the way: When a team wins a championship, they can do what they want! But that doesn't mean others can't feel slighted by that, either. The Nuggets also are receiving their rings tonight, which will prolong the warm-ups and can throw a team off their rhythm. This has happened before and it is the Denver's first time going through this, so a slow start can't be off the table.
But focusing on the actual basketball aspect of things, the Nuggets are a new team. The Lakers mostly added to the new team they assembled on the fly last season during the offseason after adding Gabe Vincent, Taurean Prince, Christian Wood, Jaxson Hayes and Cam Reddish in the offseason. Denver lost key contributors like Bruce Brown and Jeff Green and mostly replaced them with draft picks and young development prospects. It wouldn't be a shock if one or more of Peyton Watson, Julian Strawther, Zeke Nnaji, Hunter Tyson, Jalen Pickett or Collin Gillespie emerged as legit rotation players at some point in 2023-24, but to ask them to do so in the first game of the season might be too much of an ask.
The Nuggets do have probably the best starting five in the entire NBA, arguably the best player in the NBA (Jokic) and arguably another top 15-20 player in the NBA (Jamal Murray). That alone is going to be more than enough on a lot of nights and could propel them to victory on Tuesday. But the Lakers are the deeper team (for now) with more to prove than the Nuggets. That could be enough to lift them to a win over the defending champs.
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