Thanks to Jokic, after rocky start, Nuggets power past LeBron's Lakers

DENVER — Unlike the crowd, which drowned out the Los Angeles Lakers' pre-game introductions, the defending NBA champion Denver Nuggets were a little late to the playoff party on Saturday night.

After a sputtering start, however, the Nuggets turned up their offense and defense, powering past the Lakers 114-103 — in no small part thanks to Nikola Jokic's 32 points and 12 rebounds — in the Western Conference playoff opener, marking a ninth consecutive triumph over the Lakers.

After watching LeBron James score 19 points, capped by a pull-up 3 from 32 feet in the final second of the first half that put the Lakers up 60-57, the Nuggets limited the NBA's all-time scoring leader to just nine points in the second half, mostly by denying him the opportunity to shoot in the fourth quarter until just 1:20 remained on the clock.

"We're not going anywhere," Nuggets coach Michael Malone said."This is the playoffs. No team in the playoffs, if they get down 12 early, is just going to just take their ball and go home. We still have plenty of fight left in us and we know that we were better than the way we played early on.

"That's a good team over there. They came into the playoffs playing extremely well, and they showed it. LeBron was on course, I thought, to have 50 points tonight, the way he was playing and shooting the ball."

James finished with 27 points and Anthony Davis had 32.

That wasn't nearly enough to match the prowess of the reigning champion, though.

Two other Nuggets matched Jokic's double-double — Jamal Murray (22 points, 10 assists) and Aaron Gordon (12 points, 11 rebounds) -and Michael Porter Jr came close with 19 points and eight boards.

Denver handed James just his fourth loss in 17 first-round openers, but Malone said, "We've got to watch the film to see what we can do better. This is going to be a hell of a series."

The Lakers haven't beaten the Nuggets since Dec 16, 2022. They'll try again Monday night in Game 2 at Ball Arena, where Denver is now 34-8 this season.

"To be honest, we are desperate, too. We don't want to lose at home,"Jokic said.

"I think every game is going to be interesting. So, hopefully we are going to match them and be even more physical than them."

Lakers coach Darvin Ham concurred with Malone's sentiment about a competitive series, saying:"Everybody's going to lose their mind over one game, and give them their credit, they held serve at home. They're a tough home team — tough to beat in general — but they're really good at home. But, we did a lot of good things out there tonight."

Denver just did more things better.

The Nuggets had 15 offensive rebounds for 18 second-chance points, 10 more than the Lakers, who grabbed just six offensive boards. The Nuggets also committed just four turnovers — and only one by their starters — while the Lakers turned the ball over a dozen times, including a whopping seven turnovers from James.

"I thought we played some good ball tonight, we just could have been better," James said. "You don't have much room for error versus Denver's team, especially at their home court. They're just a team that's been through everything. Obviously, they're the defending champions, so you gotta execute, you gotta make shots, you gotta defend. You can't give them extra possession."

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who scored all 12 of his points after halftime, made a trio of 3-pointers in a 13-0 run the Nuggets used to seize control in the third quarter at 89-74.

Porter excelled on the court, as coach Malone predicted he would, after a trying week for his family that saw one younger brother, Coban Porter, sentenced to six years in jail on Friday for a fatal crash while driving drunk and another, former Toronto Raptors guard Jontay Porter, banned from the NBA for betting on basketball and disclosing confidential information to other gamblers.

"I think I definitely tried to compartmentalize," Porter said. "Some bad and sad stuff happened to a couple of my brothers, but I got 15, 16 more brothers in here. So, I knew I had to be here for them and come in here and do my job."

The Nuggets entered the playoffs with a bullseye on their backs, but supremely confident of their chances to defend the title after tying a franchise record with 57 regular season wins, four more than last year.

Agencies Via Xinhua