Los Angeles Lakers teammates LeBron James and Anthony Davis analyzed what went wrong in Tuesday night's Game 3 loss to the Denver Nuggets.
The Nuggets controlled the pace for much of Tuesday's matchup. In fact, it wasn't until the fourth quarter that the Lakers started showing signs of life. In that final frame, Los Angeles mounted a 21-4 run, but it simply wasn't enough to erase a 20-point deficit. Jamal Murray's dagger 3-pointer near the end of the quarter sealed the proverbial deal, and Denver walked away with a 114-106 victory.
There were several glaring issues for the Lakers in Game 3. Overall effort seemed to be chief among them, and Davis touched on his team's lack of physicality through the first three quarters:
“First three quarters, they were more physical than us,” Lakers star Anthony Davis said, via Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports. “They played with more desperation. They played harder. They were getting 50/50 basketballs. They were the aggressors and it showed in the first three. And at the end of fourth quarter, we started playing our style of basketball, cut it to three, and had a chance to take the lead. But when you're down 20 and you're trying to battle back, everything has to go right. Kind of have to have a perfect storm. We had opportunities, and then they made plays at the end. We just didn't come out very aggressive and physical.”
While Davis had 27 points on 9-of-17 shooting, he only grabbed two rebounds. The Lakers were outrebounded by a whopping 44 to 25 margin.
Turnovers were another issue for the Lakers in Game 3, as they finished with 16 as a team. These giveaways led to 25 Denver points, and James feels that this lack of ball security must be addressed moving forward. The King, who racked up his 26th career playoff triple-double, also noted the fact that Denver shot 29 free throws. Surprisingly, he only took two shots at the stripe, which was his lowest total of this postseason.
LeBron gave the Nuggets plenty of credit, but he knows Los Angeles can be much better:
“I give credit where credit is due, though,” James said. “Denver came in and played exceptionally well. They played better than us, more aggressive than us through three quarters, 36 minutes, but you know, we've got into the penalty in the third quarter with, like, nine-and-a-half minutes to go and we had some turnovers that led to some easy buckets for them. We had 16 turnovers for 25 points and put them to the line 29 times. It's not going to be winning ingredients for us if we continue to do that and we knew that, even after Game 2, we talked about that, trying to assure that. Got to be better than that in Game 4.”
Game 4 between the Lakers and Nuggets is set to tip at 9:00 p.m. ET on Thursday night. Let's see if the Lakers make the proper adjustments.
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