The Nuggets and Lakers have been cosmically intertwined in the NBA Playoffs for the last half-decade, even when they aren’t playing against each other.
Sure, there’s the 2020 series between them, and the 2023 series, and the 2024 series. But last weekend, they even found themselves in parallel predicaments on the road, despite being situated on opposite sides of the bracket.
Both teams trailed 2-1 in a first-round series. Both teams were protecting a double-digit lead away from home entering the fourth quarter of Game 4. Both teams, led by a first-year or interim head coach, chose to ride their star players all the way to the finish line, desperate to avoid a 3-1 deficit. Both teams coughed up their big leads.
Only one escaped with a series-tying win.
And so it’s Lakers coach JJ Redick who has worn the criticism for his over-reliance on starters, while Denver’s David Adelman has moved on to his Game 5 relatively unscathed in the court of public opinion. Adelman pointed out the difference himself on Monday, defending Redick unprompted.
“By the way, I see JJ Redick getting killed for playing those guys,” the Nuggets interim coach said while answering a question about his rotation. “If (the referees) don’t reverse that call and (the Lakers) win that game, did JJ Redick make the right call? Yeah.”
Indeed, the Lakers would’ve had the ball down by one point for the last possession if not for a successful Timberwolves challenge that allowed them to stretch the lead to three. Redick didn’t make a single substitution in the second half. Los Angeles led by as many as 12 in a 116-113 loss, with LeBron James going scoreless in the fourth quarter.
Adelman’s rotation was a little less extreme, and it helped that he had a safer cushion by the fourth quarter (22 points). Nikola Jokic and Christian Braun were the only two Nuggets to play the entire second half, but Michael Porter Jr. and Aaron Gordon also never sat in the fourth quarter. Only two bench players were used after halftime for a combined eight minutes.
“I think the challenge of the rotation is more so, when do you give our starters a break to get them back in? And the mistake, if you want to call it that, I felt that I made was I should’ve had two of the (starters) out to start the fourth, not one,” Adelman said.
“And Jamal was the only fresh body we had coming in at the nine-minute mark. I think it would’ve helped to have two mentally fresh guys coming in at the eight or the nine. … You can’t worry about what they’re going to say afterward. It’s tough. Our starting five has to be on the court the majority of the game.”
Denver’s bench has been a fatal flaw all season, standing in stark contrast to the Clippers’ depth throughout this series. The Nuggets have a 59.3 offensive rating in 28 minutes without Jokic, and an even more laughable 49.1 in the same amount of time without Murray. Meanwhile, Nicolas Batum, Derrick Jones Jr., and most recently Bogdan Bogdanovic have made major impacts off Ty Lue’s bench. The Nuggets had even fewer options than usual in Game 4 with sixth man Russell Westbrook out. (He remains questionable for Game 5.)
But when any team blows a 22-point lead in the fourth quarter, there’s never only one reason for it. The Nuggets had two off-days to reexamine what went wrong during a 32-9 Clippers run and make necessary adjustments before Tuesday’s pivotal Game 5.
Tired legs may have been one factor. But so was Lue’s defensive curveball. The Clippers went to a 2-3 zone with Bogdanovic and Kawhi Leonard functioning as the head of the snake. They draped Jokic off the ball. They combined for a timely trap on Murray that led to a Leonard fast-break dunk. Denver’s off-ball movement went stagnant.
“I just thought we got conservative … They kind of turned it up, and we just kind of relaxed or tried to coast the rest of the game,” Murray said. “In games like this, you’ve gotta play aggressive all the way through, miss or make.”
Murray had his worst game of the series, a 5-for-17 shooting performance. But he was one of Denver’s only players able to knock down jumpers against the zone as the game tightened. Braun, who was otherwise spectacular, shot 1 for 5 in the fourth.
“Getting more organized,” he emphasized. “I think that we kind of looked at it. And that was kind of what they wanted us to do, was stare at it. We kind of tried to hope that the time ran off.”
“We stared at it,” Adelman concurred. “It was like we were sitting in a park or something. I didn’t understand it. That’s on me.”
With Bogdanovic on the floor instead of Kris Dunn, the Clippers were also able to remove some offensive fat. Dunn has been their Westbrook in this series: Denver gladly helps off of him to pressure more capable on-ball creators like Leonard and James Harden. Bogdanovic is a 38.2% career outside shooter to Dunn’s 32.7%, and the Serbian guard had already buried one 3-pointer with a hand in his face Saturday.
As the quarter progressed, the Nuggets got into a bad habit of over-helping. Norman Powell started barraging them with catch-and-shoot 3s, accelerating momentum.
“They got into us in the fourth quarter,” Adelman said. “I thought the officiating crew did a great job, because we got into them early in the game. They called the game the exact same way in the fourth quarter. No excuses. We didn’t handle it well.”
And reinforcements aren’t exactly arriving to help the Nuggets handle it better in Game 5. As Adelman noted Monday, benches tend to shorten more toward the end of a competitive series. His starters are in for at least two more games of heavy minutes.
“Not everybody can be OKC and just chill for a week,” he said. “So we’ve gotta do what we’ve gotta do to win games.”
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