On Monday evening, LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers suffered their tenth (!) straight loss to the Denver Nuggets and went down 0-2 in their current first round playoff series vs the reigning NBA champions by blowing a 20-point second half lead and ultimately falling victim to a fallaway jump shot from Jamal Murray at the buzzer. The Lakers played about as well as they could have for the first two and a half quarters of this game, as the team got a vintage performance from Anthony Davis and also saw James turn back the clock for parts of the first and fourth quarters en route to what looked like a tied series heading back to Los Angeles.

Instead, James missed a wide open three with under twenty seconds remaining that would have put the Lakers ahead, and Murray cruised down to the other end of the court and hit an insanely difficult jumper in front of his bench, which Davis then promptly crashed into.

One person who was so devastated by the loss that it took him a full 12 hours to articulate his emotions was none other than franchise legend Magic Johnson, who took to X, the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter, to express his thoughts on Tuesday afternoon.

“Last night I was so devastated I couldn’t even tweet… An unbelievable shot by Jamal Murray, and an outstanding comeback by the Nuggets,” wrote Johnson.

Magic then wrote another tweet breaking down what he thought went wrong from the Lakers' perspective.

“The Lakers have nobody to blame but themselves. They did everything they were supposed to do but win the game! AD and LeBron both did their part, they got scoring help from Russell, and they still lost,” wrote the Hall of Famer.

An inevitable collapse

Although they went up by 20, there was never a point during the Lakers vs Nuggets game on Monday where the LA lead felt completely safe. Watching the Lakers play throughout the second half was like watching a structure on the verge of collapse slowly begin to buckle, as the Denver avalanche was inevitable.

While James and Davis both stuffed the stat sheet for the second game in a row, the Lakers still have yet to get any sort of production from either Austin Reaves or Rui Hachimura, two players who were crucial to their playoff run a season ago.

On the bright side, if there is one, D'Angelo Russell had far and away his best game vs the Nuggets in recent memory, but it still wasn't enough to get over the hump. Making matters even more demoralizing for the Lakers was the fact that they shot 43% percent from beyond the arc compared to the Nuggets' 23%, and still lost the game.

With Game 3 coming up on Thursday from Los Angeles, it remains to be seen what kind of psyche the Lakers will come out with after suffering such a devastating loss. That game is slated to tip off at 10:00 PM ET from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.