No Dwight, no problem: How the Lakers shut down Nikola Jokic

The Nuggets have had a bad case of the third-quarter blues all season.

Coming into Thursday night’s matchup against the Lakers, the Nuggets had the NBA’s 16th-best third-quarter offense but also the 23rd-ranked third-quarter defense. So when Denver entered the half with a 12-point lead, you expected the worst.

Like clockwork, the Lakers outscored the Nuggets 37-17 in the third, and by the end of the quarter, Los Angeles had essentially put the game on ice. The Nuggets recorded just two assists in the third while the Lakers shot 14-21 from the field. Los Angeles then led by double digits for most of the fourth and handed the Nuggets a 114-93 loss in the two team’s first meeting since last season’s Western Conference Finals.

In the fateful third, the Lakers had eight fastbreak points against a Nuggets defense that refused to get back in transition. Denver also turned the ball over six times against the NBA’s top-ranked defense in the period. Four of those giveaways were credited to Jamal Murray, who had a game-high five turnovers on the night.

“It was all us. That’s why it’s so much worse,” Murray said. “When we hurt ourselves, we beat ourselves. We know we’re up. We’re up at half. And then we just get lazy. We get lackadaisical. We turn it over. We don’t get back. It’s all the simple stuff we’ve been talking about since training camp.”

Despite the Jazz’s 11-game winning streak and the Clippers’ impressive start to the season, the road to the Finals still goes through LeBron and the Lakers. The reigning champs are deep, experienced and more talented than they were last season. Defensively the Lakers are elite and showed what they’ll do to a team that plays a sloppy stretch of basketball.

The Lakers also revealed how their new-look roster could defend Jokic in a playoff series, or nine days from now when the two teams face off in Denver. The Lakers opened the first quarter by playing Jokic 1-on-1 in the post. It’s a strategy teams have deployed against the Nuggets over the last few weeks after Jokic hit double-digit assists in each of his first six games to open the season.

But after Jokic easily backed down Marc Gasol and scored on the Nuggets’ second and fourth possessions of the game, the Lakers gradually started to send more double-teams his way. The result worked in Los Angeles’ favor. The Lakers forced the Nuggets’ role players to hit shots, which they didn’t at a high enough clip, and Jokic had his worst offensive game of the season. He finished with a season-low 13 points on 6-16 shooting.

As a team, the Nuggets shot 8-28 (25.6%) from three. Paul Millsap was 0-5 from distance. Michael Porter Jr. was 0-4. Murray, JaMychal Green and Monte Morris each hit two triples, but it wasn’t enough to offset the poor shooting from the rest of Denver’s roster.

Jokic admitted postgame that he could have been more aggressive in looking to score before the double-team arrived. He added that he and his teammates missed a lot of quality looks around the rim too. As a team, the Nuggets shot only 48.8% from less than eight feet. Denver’s season average from that distance is 59%.

“In the last quarter we had a lot of open looks for three, and it was kind of short, it was in and out,” Jokic said. “I think we missed a lot of layups, but of course AD was there most of the time and he’s a really good shot-blocker. So I think we need to be a little bit more focused on the finishing.”

Murray, who added 20 points on 7-17 shooting and five assists, was pleased with the shots Denver created throughout the night. These two fourth-quarter threes that came as a result of the Lakers doubling Jokic were high-quality looks.

“We got great looks,” Murray said. “We were 8-28 from three. I mean, we generate the shots we want. They double Jok and we make them pay. But we just didn’t convert the way we normally do.”

Just like the Nuggets have a much different makeup this season with no Jerami Grant and a revamped second unit, the Lakers have shuffled in new personnel as well. Gone is Dwight Howard, who defended Jokic in the Conference Finals as well as anyone has over the last few seasons. His physicality and aggressiveness got to Jokic at times. Howard was able to routinely bait Jokic into foul trouble throughout the series.

Gasol, Davis, Montrezl Harrell, and Markeiff Morris are the Lakers’ answers to Jokic this year. And if Thursday night was an example of the defensive attention that Jokic should expect when the Nuggets and Lakers meet, Denver’s role players will have to be better.

The Nuggets also can’t have lengthy defensive lapses like they did throughout the second half. Not against the Lakers. Not against a punisher like LeBron. Not against the favorites to bring home the Larry O’Brien trophy for the second-straight season.

“I think our players get tired of hearing it, but I really don’t care. I’m going to keep preaching it,” Malone said. “Understand why you win and why you lose in this business. Pretty simple. We had gone 11-4 in our 15 games prior to tonight. We had the eighth-best defense in that stretch. Tonight, to give up 114 (points), 66 (points) in the paint, 25 (points) in transition, is not even close to where we need to be.”