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In the NBA playoffs, Game 4 is often the pivotal game in a series. Unless a team is up 3-0, it’s an opportunity for the team that is on the wrong side of a 2-1 deficit to tie things, and an opportunity for the team that is ahead to almost close things off. . With the Lakers leading 2-1 over the Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference Finals, that’s exactly the scenario both teams will head to tonight.
With the Nuggets taking the most recent game, and nearly winning Game 2, they currently have all the momentum, even if they don’t have a series lead. This team won’t give up even if the Lakers take a 3-1 lead, but unless LA really believes it should tank to avoid activating Denver’s 3-1 deficit magic powers, the onus is definitely on the purple and gold. a decisive lead in the series tonight.
Here are four things you could do to get into an NBA Finals game.
Start Dwight Howard
There’s no point beating around the bush in this case, everyone probably knew it was coming. And this isn’t even an argument that JaVale McGee was terrible defending Jokic, and he actually did a decent job in Game 3 in particular. NBA.com matchmaking data is not perfect and is noisy across a sample size of three games. But with those warnings pointed out, in 19 partial possessions against McGee, Jokic has thrown 5-11, delivered the ball once and the Nuggets have scored 24 points overall. That’s okay, but it’s not as good as the Lakers have done with Howard in it.
In 35.5 partial possessions while facing Howard, Jokic has shot 3-7 from the field and turned the ball over five times while the Nuggets have scored 26 points as a team. That’s essentially the same number of total points on nearly 20 more possessions, which is pretty good considering Jokic is averaging 24.3 points on 54.2% shooting overall.
And as if that’s not enough of an argument to make sure Howard is paired with Jokic for as many minutes as possible, he’s been invaluable on offense as well:
In the latest Lakers capsule of exceptionalism, I mentioned the Dwight / McGee stamp as another counter-rotation to Denver’s previous rotation.
Dwight doesn’t fully endorse Jokic on this play, but it does make him have to keep his weight on Dwight, making this AD unit have 0 rim protection. pic.twitter.com/yJyRpjbbAO
– Cranjis McBasketball (@Tim_NBA) September 24, 2020
We’ll see if Vogel eventually makes this change, but considering he’s started Howard in two of three halves of a second in this series so far and publicly mentioned that he’s already considering this move twice, this seems to be the most likely of these strategies for the Lakers to try.
Enter the zone (defense)
Honestly, this could refer to the Lakers’ overall Game 3 engagement outside of the fourth quarter, but what we’re really referring to here is something the Lakers were quite successful with as they tried to make a furious comeback in that period. : Zone defense.
Zone defenses have been more successful in the NBA this year, and in doing so, the Lakers in Game 4 allowed their guards to wreak havoc and force bad passes with pressure on the wing, while maintaining the protection of the rim like a net. security behind them. It’s not something that can work for an entire game, but anything that allows a team to do a 28-8 run in the fourth quarter before running out of gas is at least worth throwing in for a few seasons here and there to see. . if they can catch different Denver lineups off guard again.
Stop playing Markieff Morris downtown
Our own Sabreena Merchant wrote an entire column detailing why this is a bad idea, including this rather staggering statistic:
The Lakers have played 19 minutes with Morris at five in three games against him. Nuggets and they have been outscored by 17 points during that span. That’s the equivalent of losing a game by 43 points. It’s a small sample, but so is a seven-game series, so it’s probably worth considering what went wrong in those stretches.
As Sabreena points out, this isn’t an argument for the mothball entirely, but they should probably keep it all four moving forward.
Respect the Nuggets
This was originally going to be a note about forcing trouble by going more to the basket, or trying to target Jokic more on defense to fatigue him and get him into foul trouble, but honestly, while those are important notes, the Lakers just need to take too. seriously to the Nuggets. It is something that they have paid attention to, but actually they have not.
From his disappointment in the second half in Game 2 that required fast-paced heroics to avoid losing the game to not showing up for three quarters at either end of Game 3, a big part of this is just the Lakers having to commit to playing winning. basketball at both ends for an entire game. If they use their defensive pressure wisely to force turnovers live like they did in the fourth and keep pushing the rim in midfield, there’s no reason they can’t make this a short series. But if they want to keep playing with their food, there’s also no reason they can’t end up like the Clippers – an announced team that started sizing its championship rings too early.
The Lakers are the best team here, but the Nuggets are not just going to accept defeat. It’s time for the Lakers to take that decision out of their hands.
Notes and updates
Game 4 will begin at 6:00 pm PT and, like all Western Conference Finals, will be televised on TNT.
For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast at iTunes, Spotify, Stapler or Google Podcasts. You can follow Harrison on Twitter at @hmfaigen.
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