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The fact that Lakers center Dwight Howard has been trying to get inside the heads of Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets is no secret. Howard has publicly joked about waiting for Jokic outside his hotel room, even going as far as to ask Jamal Murray for his teammate’s room number – has jumped into the nuggets during games and in general has become a nuisance to the Los Angeles Western Conference Finals opponent.
But it turns out that some of the things we haven’t seen on TV can be even juicier than what we have. According to various reports from the bubble, Howard and his Lakers teammates have been talking about an almost incredible amount of sh—… stuff to the Nuggets.
The most recent instance of this came after Anthony Davis’ incredibly strong 3-pointer gave the Lakers a spectacular victory in Game 2 to take a 2-0 series lead. As if that wasn’t a hit enough for Denver, Howard decided to rub things up a bit, as captured by Sam Amick from The Athletic:
As the Lakers hounded Davis on the court after his shot, big man Dwight Howard broke away from the group and decided to taunt the Nuggets as they left the basketball stage. If you somehow haven’t noticed, Howard is leaning toward this badass approach.
“Go home!” He screamed over and over as he laughed, jumped, pumped his fist and came closer to the side of the Nuggets court with every second. “Go home!”
A small group of Nuggets staff members, including one of Jokic’s biggest supporters in the assistant strength and conditioning coach, Felipe Eichenberger, did not take kindly the taunts that had taken place throughout the game and returned to the court to shout. The two parties exchanged words and finally retreated to their corners that arrived with conflicting emotions.
Yet somehow, that wasn’t the worst trash talk Howard and the Lakers launched in the direction of the Nuggets. That game. That honor was what Jokic had been yelled at earlier from the bench, a scene from Chris Haynes from Yahoo Sports represented in his post-game column:
At the end of the first quarter of the Game 2 victory of the Lakers Western Conference finals on Sunday, Davis walked to his post near the Lakers bench while Denver Nuggets rookie Michael Porter Jr. was at the line. Nikola Jokic followed Davis and the two greats were alone.
Once the Lakers bench saw that Jokic was tasked with protecting Davis, it brought the noise with JaVale McGee and Dwight Howard yelling, “Thanksgiving, steak dinner, appetizers, filet mignon and potatoes, a glass of champagne!”
But lest you think this is just something the Lakers great men are doing, they are not alone in their efforts to belittle Denver. This is a fairly small effort for the entire team, and it started during Game 1.
Howard’s tireless physique with the Nuggets may have attracted most of the attention that night, but of LeBron supposedly yelling “get that shit out of here” after one of Howard’s blocks to Rajon Rondo and Markieff Morris casting his own shadow. , it wasn’t just the veteran center throwing humiliations in Denver (via Amick’s story from the first game):
Not long after Howard tried to break into the Nuggets group, Lakers forward Markieff Morris (whose twin brother and Clippers forward Marcus were dispatched by Denver in the second round) stopped in the middle. off the court as he stared at the Nuggets bench and kicked his foot. the hard wood and twisted it like he was killing an insect. The message was clear: Prepare for your playoff doom. Malone, in turn, shared a few chosen words in Morris’s direction.
When Malone used his only coaching challenge on a play that seemed unlikely to be disallowed on the next possession, Murray’s foul on the left side when James ran through him, Lakers point guard Rajon Rondo walked to the bench. the Lakers and yelled, “Thank you! Thank you, Mike!”
At least one Morris twin chasing the Nuggets hasn’t ended badly before … wait a second. Oh.
Now some might accuse the Lakers of talking too much here, or of tempting karma, fate, or whatever garbage universal force of retaliation one fears. That’s possible, but there is also another more tangible conclusion here: that the Lakers are really, really trying to denigrate and demoralize Denver.
Why? It may actually fit in with a playoff trend and, honestly, one that has been around all season. Lakers head coach Frank Vogel has spoken multiple times about wanting the Lakers to be the most physical team in the league, and throughout the year they have used that quality to wear down their opponents, both in individual games and, during the postseason, in the course of a series.
The physical exhaustion and mental toll it takes to play the Lakers had the Trail Blazers ready to fly back to Portland at halftime of Game 4 in the first round. The Lakers had practically broken the Rockets’ collective spirit by the end of Game 3 in the second.
However, the Nuggets, as we’ve seen throughout the playoffs, are not as mentally weak or outmatched as any of those teams. This is a team that has already come back from two consecutive 3-1 deficits. Long odds don’t scare them, and they won’t miss out just because they go down big. The Lakers’ trash talk, when viewed through that lens, appears to be an effort to bring out the spirit and fight outside of Denver, not just to beat them, but to intimidate and mentally destroy them, to make them question or meddle. in their own heads.
It remains to be seen if this approach will work, or if it will just blow up in the Lakers’ face and motivate the Nuggets more. But this team can smell blood, and it’s trying to make sure the Nuggets know they’re bleeding.
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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