Hoops Tonight - Lakers-Nuggets Reaction: Murray GAME-WINNER eliminates LeBron James & LA in Game 5

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We did start our reaction to Lakers Nuggets on live on YouTube, but we had some sort of tech difficulty that arose, so we're just starting from scratch here. At the beginning of this one, the Denver Nuggets and the Los Angeles Kers played yet another game that looked just like every other game they played, and the Denver Nuggets are advancing to the conference semi finals to play the Minnesota Timberwolves. We're gonna break it down from the perspective

of both teams. You guys do the job before we get started. Subscribe to a brand of YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLT so you guys don't miss any show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you guys get your podcasts under Hoops tonight, and then last but not at least, keep dropping mail back questions and those YouTube comments. We can keep hitting them throughout

the rest of the playoff front. So in a weird way, that game, to me embodied why the Nuggets are as successful as they are, because I know we have this tendency to just want a team, the best team or the best player, to always be playing their best and for things to always be the perfect set of circumstances. And the reality that's not how it works. You go back in in the late nineteen nineties, those Bulls teams that won, it's like a lot of guys are injured.

There's on court drama, off court drama. You're just kind of plugging away trying to get through. Even going back to those Miami Heat teams, it's like Wade's knee is giving him issues. Chris Bosh has gott an abdominal strain like it just it ends up being more complicated than you expect more often than not, and that's the beauty of hoisting the Lari O'Brien trophy. The one that the Nuggets got last year was unusual in the sense that

it lacked adversity in a lot of different ways. You never actually felt like Denver was threatened in that playoff series. That's unusual and a testament to how dominant the Denver Nuggets can be when they are healthy. Right. But we saw in this first round series here the first time a couple things go against Denver, Jamal Murray strains a calf muscle, CACP, tweaks an ankle all of a sudden, like the mobility of your backcourt fundamentally shifts. And we've

talked about this with Denver. Their roster construct depends on all five starters. I've had that qualifier with my Denver optimism all year long. I think they're the best team in the league, is the clear championship favorite, provided that all five of their starters are healthy, and when one of them gets hurt, it shrinks the gap between them and a team like the Lakers and could potentially be an issue down the line, which is why this game

was so important. Minnesota just beat the Phoenix last night. Anthony Edwards looked like it looks like he's on a mission to try to take over the NBA. So you have to win tonight because if you don't two days from now, on Thursday, three days from now, you're going back to LA to play the Lakers Incrypto dot Com Arena with all the momentum in front of their home crowd. A good chance that thing gets sent back to Denver

in seven. And yeah, Denver is gonna be favored in that game, and they probably I'd pick them to win that game, right, But all of a sudden, now you're hobbling into a Minnesota Timberworld Series. You needed this one, and once again from the opening tip, a bunch of stuff's not going your way. Lakers still playing really good basketball. By the way, Hopefully after this series, you guys will understand why I had some optimisms around the Lakers. I'd

sixth in my list of contenders. It's because Lebron James and Anthony Davis are a problem and when they get support from their role players, they can be really difficult to beat. And you saw they got, you know, thirty five point thirty three points from Austin Reeves and D'Angelo Russell tonight, and it was kind of a rougher reatch to Mura game, but they got some support and they were right there at the end of the games. That's the type of challenge that this was. Denver was turning

the basketball over a lot early. Cacp tweaks his ankle all of a sudden, It's like survival mode. You just got to find a way to get out, and everyone just found a way to contribute. The two main guys were Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Junior. Their shot making just saved the Denver Nuggets tonight. I thought we're gonna focus on Jamal murray shot making at the end of the game, and it was amazing at another driving layup and pick and roll hit a three off of that

major offensive rebound from Aaron Gordon. It that the game winner over Austin Reeves, which was like perfectly contested. Austin was this close. When I've watched it the first time, I actually thought Austin might have got a piece of it. No, he didn't. Jamal got just enough separation and knocked down the shot. We're gonna focus on the end, but the truth is is Jamal's shot making was saving Denver from the first quarter when the Lakers were coming out with

their hair on fire trying to get this game. Jamal and Reggie Jackson too. Shout at to Reggie Jackson. They made shots in that first half and kept the game close. Michael Porter Junior as well, Michael Porter Junior and Jamal Murray combined to go ten for seventeen from three and not like unbelievable. I in my time covering the league, in my time being a basketball fan, I can't remember a player other than Steph Curry where it's like, if he gets a decent look, it's just gonna go in.

It's like rooting against Michael Porter Junior. Horrible experience. Highly advise you don't do that. Like it honestly is just like it's terrifying every time he catches you just you just know it's going in. But MPJ pours in twenty six, Jamal pours in thirty two, just kept the game close,

and then down the stretch, guys made key plays. Jokic kind of a bad night by his standards again, twenty five points, twenty rebounds in nine assist because he's the best player in the world and his bad games are better than the vast majority of players good games. Right, but Ady was taking it to him up until he

hurt his shoulder. Right, but he had a few key plays down the stretch of this game, a big offensive rebound, put back transition play where he sprinted ahead of the field ahead of Anthony Davis and got Ruey Hachimura in a cross match and took him right to the front of the rim and made his little kind of signature hook shot across the lane. Again, just made big plays in the game. And then Aaron Gordon, I thought, by far the biggest play of the game. Lakers get a

stop for some miss. Lebron is trying to box Aaron Gordon out and he just goes right over the top of him and snatches the offensive rebound, kicks it out to Jamal Murray, knocks down the three that puts Denver up to now all of a sudden, it's a back and forth type of game. Lebron, to his credit, made a couple of plays at the end to keep him in it. But once again, when it comes down to it. The Lakers just never could get a stop on the Denver Nuggets. Austin Reeves did his best, the best he

possibly could in that situation. But again, this is a player I love Austin. I thought he hit a massive three at the end of the game too. But he's being asked to do a job that he probably shouldn't be asked to do, and he's done as well doing it as you could ever ask a player with his physical tools to do. But he's you know, arms just aren't long enough, just not quite athletic enough to get enough of a contest on that Jamal Murray shot and

it goes in. Game is over, and here we are once again with Denver out executing the Lakers down the stretch of a game. Just what an unbelievable basketball game. It's just again, like I think everyone wants to pretend like it's easy, and it's not. It's usually not. It's

almost always a grind. The year before, the Warriors were down two one having to go into Boston, right like going back to twenty twenty one, that series that the Bucks had to deal with with the Brooklyn Nets down two oh to the Phoenix Suns, teams like the twenty twenty Lakers who kind of ran through everybody in Denver and twenty twenty three who kind of ran through everybody.

That's somewhat uncommon in the NBA, right, Like, usually it's hard, and when it's hard, the championship teams just find a way to get it done, and Denver found a way to get it done tonight. Kind of a little quick breakdown of the game, Like the reason why the Lakers kind of kept it close over the course of this tail stretch of the series in large part had to do with them kind of figuring out how to guard and Kole Jokic. One. Anthony Davis is the best defensive

player in the world. I think he demonstrated that in this series in a big way while he was healthy. Just actually dissuaded Jokic a lot in one on one situations, timely doubles, really smart rotations. One of the big things. Remember the Jamal Murray dunk on Lebron That was a really interesting counter to what the Lakers were doing in

their windshield wiper rotation. So basically, Dade double Jokic from the first pass away and then immediately rotate up with the guy at the top of the key and then kind of shift everybody around and the advantage would be gone. There'd be a short close out on the weak side, usually at KCP, and then they close out and the advantage would be gone. But on the critical play at the end of the game, when Jamal Murray dunked on Lebron, what happened was is, if you watch it, Austin Reeves

is the windshield wiper rotation. So Ruy throws the first double, Austin rotates up to MPJ, but instead of standing on the perimeter where Dlo could have easily rotated to, Jamal cut down the lane. And when he cut down the lane, Jokic hit him and as a result there was an opening. Lebron was a step slow to get over in rotation and he dunked on Lebron. Just a massive execution adjustment from Denver to get a big bucket out of those

Jokic double teams. And then the other reason why it was close is, you know, I still think Yokis is the best player in the world. Not a good defensive series from him. The Lakers sliced and diced him all over the floor. They had nothing they could do, couldn't guard Anthony Davis one on one, couldn't guard in ball screen. That ended up being a major issue in this series. And for the record, I think Lebron and ad Are

are a unique challenge in that regard. And so even though Anthony Edwards is a really good athlete that can get downhill in terms of the playmaking piece that the Lakers had, Minnesota doesn't quite have that type of like quick, you know, read and react type of a thing going down to get easy buckets on the back line. So it'll be an interesting kind of different series as we had to Minnesota, and I'll be curious to see if Minnesota can kind of capitalize in some of the stuff

that the Lakers were doing. But again, that's kind of what makes the Lakers the Lakers. It's not many teams are going to have a power forward that is six ' nine, two sixty that can dribble, shoot and pass the way that Lebron can, and then Anthony Davis on the other side of that two man game, and that that gave the Nuggets a lot of issues. As a matter of fact, if we go back to last year, Denver's defense was

better against all three opponents other than the Lakers. They did better against Miami, they did better against Minnesota, they did better against Phoenix. The Lakers actually had the most success scoring against Denver last year, particularly in the paint.

This matchup is a little tough for Denver on that specific front, right, And so because they kind of had some success guarding Jokic and because they were slicing and dicing him in the paint, that was what kind of kept the series close, right, But again, they just had

to find a way to linger around. They waited for the Lakers to laker right, Like in that late third quarter sequence, Anthony Davis gets hurt, he leaves the floor, Lebron gets tired, Lebron starts making bad decisions, Darvin Ham doesn't call a time out, and they turn a eight point deficit into a three point lead in a matter of minutes. That's the thing again with the Nuggets. It's just hang onto the rope, hang onto the rope. The Lakers will eventually let go, even if it's just for

a couple of minutes, they'll let go. They did. They flipped the script of the game, turned it into a dog fight, and as soon as it was a dog fight. The Nuggets just have better half court execution, especially on the offensive end of the floor, and they got the buckets and got one more than the Los Angeles Lakers did.

Once again, I felt bad for Anthony Davis because he was really having just an unbelievable series and having a lot of success, Like he closed the gap on Jokich in a big way in this series, and then his body let him down, and I feel really bad for him because that's a tough way to get kind of like he was still out there, he was defending, but he couldn't do anything on the offensive end of the floor, and you could tell that left arm was just limp. So I felt bad. I felt bad for Anthony Davis.

But at the end of the day, like this is where margin for error kind of plays a role, like Jamal Murray had a strained calf and casep sprained his ankle, But the Nuggets did the work early in the series and went up three to OHO. So like, even if they did happen to lose this game, they'd have two days off to get their shit together and try to close things out on Thursday. The Lakers by going down

three to oh because Anthony Davis got hurt. They didn't have the luxury of another game to figure that out. They had to win this one. And so again, like as I kind of zoomed back out of the series, the Lakers are good. They're a good basketball team, and they showed that. But the Lakers always just made a few more mistakes than Denver, and that really was the

difference in the series. I saw a lot of talk today, Oh, the Lakers led seventy three percent of the series, and I think after tonight's game they led sixty nine percent of the series. Right, So Lakers led the majority of the series, but they lost four games to one. And the reason why is it didn't matter how they played for stretch for the entirety of the series, because in

key pivotal stretches they got out executed. Game one, middle of the second quarter and then or end of the second quarter and then middle of the third quarter, two crucial execution lapses from the Lakers. They go give up a thirteen oh run in that or a ten to oh run in that second quarter, and a thirteen oh run in the third quarter. Game is over, right. Game two, you're up twenty in the second half, there's a half

dozen execution errors in that late third quarter run. After the Nuggets make their switch from a bunch of different players, the lead shrinks going into the fourth quarter, totally different game. Then you give up a bucket on eight out of nine tries down the floor at the end of the game Game three, you're up at halftime, and you just completely let go of the rope and give an incredibly poor effort in the third quarter. Those are the ones

you have to look back at again. If you do better in those situations, in those situations, you give yourself a better chance to win the series in the long run. Again, like if I look back, the Lakers are good, but the difference between them and Denver is their ability to sustain, their ability to maintain their composure, to maintain their execution, to maintain their effort. Denver did, the Lakers didn't. That's why they're a championship team. That's why the Lakers are

something less than that. It doesn't matter. You don't get bonus points for leading unless there are zeros on the clock, and Denver, more often than not eighty percent of the games in the series was leading when there were zeros on the clock. Looking for it looking forward to Nuggets Wolves, Obviously you need the Denver to rest up and get healthy. KCP is going to have his hands full with Anthony Edwards. I think that Denver will do a similar kind of thing to what Vogel did and bring Yokic up in

a high drop and test ants playmaking. Mind you, the Timberwolves were handling that really well and had a great playmaking series. I have a feeling that that's something that Minnesota will have some success against. I think they'll do similar things to Mike Conley, kind of sagging off and seeing if he's willing to score big differences in the series. Compared to the Sun series, the Wolves got offensive rebounds on almost forty percent of their own misses against the

Phoenix Suns. Denver, especially in their starting five, is just a much better defensive rebounding team, So I think that they'll just have a lot more success ending those defensive possessions. I think on the offensive end, it's going to be a big part of like Jokic is going to have to score. You know, this series, it was a totally different type of matchup. I think Anthony Davis is a better defensive player than Rudy Gobert personally, I know some

people disagree. I think Ad is he has more kind of strength to him, so you can kind of hold up a little bit better under the Jokich bullyball. But like the reality is is Jade McDaniels is gonna be on Jamal Murray. Jade McDaniels is gonna be on Jamal Murray, and that's just an entirely different class of perimeter athlete than Austin Reeves. To put it simply, Jade McDaniels, in

my opinion, is the best perimeter defender in basketball. And then they'll also put Anthony Edwards on him for stretches. So like that on ball defense piece is going to make it so that Jokic has to score more. He can't do what he did in this series where he just kind of gave up the basketball anytime he felt any resistance and just kind of cleaned up trash around the basket for offensive rebounds. Jokic is going to have to score. He's gonna have to score on kat He's

gonna have to score on Rudy Gobert. It's gonna be a huge element of the series. I think matchups are gonna be a big part of it too, Like in all likelihood they'll probably start with Ant on MPG and try to hide Conley on KCP right, and so getting into those situations where Michael Porter Junior is having some success on the offensive class with his height shooting over the top of Ant on the weak side is gonna be big obviously, like using KCP in actions to try

to attack Mike Conley to get in rotation. There's gonna be a bunch of different things that Denver's gonna have to look at. I'm not gonna get into the specifics into too much more detail tonight because we're gonna do a full series preview over the course of the next couple of days here, but it's gonna be a really interesting series. I think if I was ranking teams at this point in the playoffs, especially in light of the

chrisops Porzingis injury, Denver's won for me. Minnesota is now two, and I know I had Minnesota lower in my pre playoffs kind of like contender rankings, but at that point in time, Jamal Murray wasn't playing as well, or excuse me not, Jamal Murray. Anthonywards, I pulled these numbers earlier today when we were working with the nerds. But Anthony Edwards in the regular season twenty six points per game on fifty eight percent through shooting, with five rebounds and

five assists. In the playoffs thirty one points per game on sixty five percent through shooting, with eight rebounds per game and six assists per game. So he's just at a different level now than what he was in the regular season. Changes the calculus that entire team. I have them as the second best team and so on Boston just without Porzingis and with some of their execution errors, and they're just not a very serious team right now. They've been playing with their food a little bit with Miami.

I think Minnesota is playing better basketball right now. And so that series, that Minnesota Denver series, could very well end up being the series that determines who wins the NBA Championship, although Boston, I know, will have something to say about that in the finals. Excited to break that one down and get a prediction to you guys in

the next couple of days. On the Lakers front, moving forward, they're going to look back at this series as just a sea of missed opportunities, missed a bunch of free throws Tonight, Lebron misses a box out on Aaron Gordon late in the game that very well would have sent this thing back to Los Angeles. The game two, late game execution errors as they as they blew that twenty point lead, the back to back massive runs that they gave up in the second and third quarter in Game one.

A lot of missed opportunities for the Lakers in this series. Ruey hatch Mura basically no shows. The series d LO gives you three good games and two atrocious games. Austin kind of a really good defensive series, struggled to make shots for the most part, right like just a lot of meat left on the bone, and quite frankly like they need a new coach. This is something that they need to address in this offseason. I think that they're closer than people think, but at the same time, there's

a very small window here. I think he got maybe one more year out of Lebron James where he's at a superstar level, and then there's probably going to be a substantial decline, and it's very likely that that decline starts next year at his age and so there's an opportunity here if they can make some moves on the margins. But they're close. But you cannot go into a series

like this again at a massive execution disadvantage. You have to address that at the head coach, and you have to address that for eighty two games in the regular season. You need to establish habits of being an execution and decision making team throughout the entire regular season so that when you get into these situations, you don't make those kinds of mistakes. And I wanted to hit Lebron for a second because it was like, you guys own a Lebron fan, and Lebron fans hate me because I'm willing

to say stuff like this. But Lebron's series was so weird to me. I felt like he had his hands in everything good, but also in everything bad. Those two runs in Game one, the second quarter run in the third quarter run, it was Lebron's decision making that was the problem, and he made several mistakes in both of those runs. He would get tired and then his decision

making would slip. Moving forward to Game two, when they made the switch to put Gordon on Anthony Davis Lebron kind of froze eighty out of the game and started attacking with ruey and ball screens and wasn't really the right way to attack KCP as a perimeter player. Just wasn't the right way to do it. I thought it was a poor decision. Game four or Game three, it

was him that was losing. Aaron Gordon constantly on the back line, as he was getting offensive rebound put back after offensive rebound put back after cut on the baseline for a dunk. And then tonight it was like he was awesome for most of it, but then it's like there's this weird third quarter stretch where he's clearly tired and he's settling for bad shots and turning the basketball over.

And then in the fourth quarter makes so many big plays but then misses the biggest Like how could you miss that box out on Aaron Gordon just let him reach out. Literally all he had to do after he had him boxed out was go get the basketball. But he sat down in his stance and just let ad or ag go right over the top of him. It was like such a bizarre Lebron series because like, genuinely he was awesome, or like making mistakes, like big mistakes at critical points in the game, and it was just

back and forth between that throughout the whole series. There's honestly one of the weirder series I've seen Lebron play, because like he's just usually not the guy that makes execution errors and it was part of you know, and honestly, this is where I go back to the eighty two games thing that was kind of part of the story of the Lakers this year, Like it was just from the top down that just execution slip lapses, and Lebron was also responsible for part of that. So again, I

think he still got good basketball in him. I want to see him play in this environment again. I want to see him do it on a team that's got a little bit more talent. And I hope that they can do that in LA or that Lebron can find a different place for him to do that. But man, like this close, this close again to sending that thing back to LA and potentially extending this series. All right, guys, that is all I have for tonight. As always, as

sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting the show. We're gonna be back at for sure tomorrow. Night to cover the Game five between the Mavericks and the Clippers, But we actually know tomorrow's Game five Philly versus New York the Clippers MAVs game I think is on Wednesday, but we're gonna be back live on YouTube tomorrow night. Keep an eye on my Twitter feed. I'll let you guys know when I'm doing the series preview on Nuggets Timberwolves. Again.

I appreciate you guys rocking with me and I will see you tomorrow. The volume