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The Nuggets started their NBA title defense by showing they still fear nothing about the Lakers

DENVER — Upsetting the reigning NBA champions on their home floor can be a Herculean task. But it sure seemed like the Los Angeles Lakers had the Denver Nuggets right where they wanted them during Saturday night’s 2024 playoff opener.

Through roughly 18 minutes of play, everything was coming up Lakers. The seasoned Nuggets seemed to be feeling some first-playoff game jitters. A motivated L.A. team, led by a superb LeBron James, surprisingly owned a 12-point lead late in the first half. An anxious Ball Arena crowd of Nuggets fans buzzed early, expecting a 2.5-hour party. Instead, they waited for that with bated breath.

The Nuggets won 114-103 anyway to take a 1-0 series lead in a final result that never felt all that close.

What happened? Nikola Jokic’s Nuggets have been here before. So they never blinked. They never panicked. It was business as usual for an experienced group that’s seen every possible situation.

“I just think we understand we’re not trying to do anything different,” Jamal Murray explained. “We’re not trying to make stuff up. Everybody knows where they should be, and everyone knows that if they’re where they should be, they’ll get an open shot. That’s the beauty of this team. It’s just pure basketball.”

Murray perhaps undersells the Nuggets’ two greatest traits — their cohesiveness and mental toughness.

That’s because what the Lakers achieved at times on Saturday night wasn’t normal. This was a quality playoff team — not your average No. 7 seed — delivering haymakers that somehow never knocked the Nuggets to the mat.

On four days’ rest, James looked incredible. There were moments when it felt like the all-time great was in complete control of the proceedings. Of course he was going to play 41 minutes in this pivotal situation. His top running mate, Anthony Davis, left it all on the floor on both ends of the court while playing 45 minutes. He essentially played the entire evening, with L.A. pushing all of its chips in for the Game 1 road shocker.

The Lakers thought they had the Nuggets on the ropes. How could they not? Their free-throw disparity was 19 attempts to the Nuggets’ six — an absurd advantage to have at the charity stripe in any context, let alone a tense postseason setting. Check the below stat out, and that’ll tell you all you need to know:

Yet, there the Nuggets were, cruising to a comfortable win despite shooting only 46 percent from the field and just 35 percent from the 3-point line. That poor shooting didn’t matter, with Denver committing just four total turnovers while dominating the Lakers in the paint and on the glass. It was tantamount to a person closing their eyes and methodically counting to 10 while playing “hide and seek” only to find someone hiding mere moments after they opened their eyes.

If the Nuggets were uniquely pressed by the upstart Lakers, they sure didn’t carry themselves like it.

“We’re not going anywhere, this is the playoffs,” Denver head coach Michael Malone said of his team’s response to the Lakers landing a few body blows. “You get down 12 early; you’re not just gonna take your ball and go home. We still have plenty of fight left in us.”

As this series looks ahead to Monday night’s Game 2, it’s worth wondering whether the Lakers do have any answer for Denver. The Nuggets have now won nine straight over their Southern California rivals dating back to January 2023. Saturday night was a mostly sound effort for the Lakers, but aside from the time and day, the script was no different from any of Denver’s previous eight consecutive victories.

No matter what the Lakers scratch and claw to achieve, the Nuggets are never caught off guard.

Los Angeles head coach Darvin Ham professed that he’s saving some adjustments for defending Jokic, who dropped an effortless 32 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists. That’s curious, considering Ham had essentially the same message of keeping something in his back pocket after Denver took Game 1 of last year’s Western Conference Finals.

We all know how that turned out.

If the Lakers are going to make a real run at this series, Saturday night was a missed golden opportunity. An All-Star-caliber guard on most evenings, Murray shot an uninspiring 9-of-24 from the field. Aaron Gordon — perhaps the most critical Nuggets player needed to a repeat title pursuit — was in uncharacteristic early foul trouble, forcing Denver to play its “break glass in case of emergency” big man, DeAndre Jordan. James and Davis might have produced their best possible respective individual performances while playing significantly high minutes with another game less than 48 hours away.

And the Lakers still lost. Again.

The Nuggets played like champions. The Lakers wilted like pretenders. Still, if there’s anyone who’s not counting his chickens before they hatch, it’s Jokic, who understandably doesn’t want to motivate an opponent with a chip on its shoulder.

“To be honest, we are desperate, too,” Jokic maintained. “We don’t want to lose at home. I think every game is going to be interesting.”

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