LOS ANGELES — If there was ever an emotional or mental hurdle the Lakers needed to overcome against the Denver Nuggets, Saturday night’s 119-108 Game 4 victory at Crypto.com Arena provided that relief.
But there’s still a lot of work to be done by the Lakers, who have avoided being swept out of the playoffs for the second consecutive season but still trail Denver 3-1 in the best-of-seven first-round series.
Game 5 is on Monday night in Denver.
“We can’t rest on our laurels,” Coach Darvin Ham said. “It’s a beautiful thing for us to finally get a win against this team. These have been some hotly contested games. Hard-fought. When you break it down to the win-loss column, we’ve been on the short end of the stick. But, now that we ‘cracked the code,’ we’ve got to know this is a championship ballclub.
“Like, you crack the safe and they’re still going to protect the contents within that safe like crazy. With their lives. And they don’t want you to get what’s in that safe out and they don’t want you to get the safe out of their house. And we’re about to go to their house. So we’ve got to be focused.”
The Lakers beating the Nuggets for the first time since Dec. 16, 2022, with Denver winning the next 11 matchups, including last spring’s four-game Western Conference finals sweep, this past regular season’s 3-0 sweep and the first three games of this series, could give them a confidence boost they need ahead of a pivotal Game 5.
But they also draw confidence in knowing they’ve been ahead for most of the series even though the results don’t show it.
In the 192 minutes played in the series’ first four games, the Lakers have led for 136½ minutes (more than 71%). The Nuggets have led for just under 42 minutes and the games have been tied for a little over 14 minutes.
“We have a lot of confidence in our team,” All-Star big man Anthony Davis said. “We’ve had the lead a lot this series. And it’s just been our second half where we haven’t, actually our third quarters, where we haven’t been able to execute at scoring the basketball. Our confidence was never lost at any point in the game. But we come out and execute, come out at halftime, which was a big emphasis [Saturday], to come out and score the basketball. That kind of just gets us going.”
A stronger third quarter is part of how the Lakers were able to flip the script in Game 4 after the first three games followed a similar pattern: the Lakers had a double-digit lead in the first half before the Nuggets used the third to either cut into the Lakers’ advantage or completely erase it.
And even though the Lakers were still outscored in the third on Saturday, it was only by two points – significantly better than the 10.3 points they were outscored by in the third in the series’ first three games.
“We’ve talked about it,” LeBron James said. “We’ve been talking about it. It’s something that’s been an Achilles heel for us all season, coming into the third quarter with some energy and understanding that teams want to try to make that run when the second [half] happens.
“So we talked about it again [Saturday] and we were able to fix it. And it goes with more than just talking about it. You got to go out and be about it as well. And we did that.”
The Lakers also dominated the interior on Saturday with 72 points in the paint, the second consecutive game when they’ve scored at least 70 paint points.
“The paint [defense] was a joke,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “Every huddle, I sounded like a broken record tonight. Every huddle was, ‘Paint, paint, paint.’ Game 3, they had 70 and we found a way to win. [Saturday], they had 72. That’s an incredible number. … I just didn’t think we had the requisite physicality or urgency. This did not seem like a closeout game.”
The Lakers also held the Nuggets to nine offensive rebounds and five second-chance points, an area of weakness for most of the series.
“It gives us confidence,” Davis said. “Especially going up there, knowing that what we’re able to do, Game 1, Game 2, even though we didn’t get the results, but we know that we can get out early and it’s just about coming out of halftime playing with more pace, more physical toughness and execution.”
The Lakers still face an uphill battle.
Entering this postseason, every team that fell behind 3-0 in a best-of-seven playoff series had been eliminated in all 151 instances. Only 11 of those series have been pushed to six games, and just four featured a Game 7.
“Why not us?,” Ham asked during his Saturday media availability. “Just push through to the next game. Keep that focus. Don’t look too far down the road. Don’t worry about what happened behind us. Just every new game is a new opportunity for us to be more competitive, more together, more selfless.”
NUGGETS AT LAKERS
What: Western Conference playoffs, first round, Game 5
When: Monday, 7 p.m. PT
Where: Ball Arena, Denver
TV/Radio: TNT, Spectrum SportsNet/710 AM