2023-05-21 08:55:22
The Denver Nuggets are one win away from reaching the NBA Finals for the first time in their history, following defeating the Los Angeles Lakers 119-108 for the third time in a row, Saturday, in the Western Conference final.
55 years following its founding and reaching the final of its western region 4 times, the Colorado State team is close to taking revenge on the Lakers, who stopped it 3 times at the threshold of the region’s final.
Canadian distributor Jamal Murray led his team to a deserved victory by scoring 37 points, including 5 hat-tricks, and Serbian giant Nikola Jokic, the best player in the league twice, added 24 points, including 15 in the last quarter and 8 assists.
Denver, who achieved two victories at home, delivered a decisive performance from start to finish, disappointing the hopes of the best scorer in the history of the league, LeBron James (23 points and 12 assists).
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LeBron, 38, a 4-time league champion with 3 different clubs, said, “It has become a series of one match. We can only think of winning the fourth match. We had some chances, but we didn’t take advantage of them.. Jamal gave a great performance in the first quarter, and the Nuggets played a game.” collectively.”
With a 0-3 delay, the hopes of the Lakers, the 17-time defending champion, became very difficult to turn the score around, knowing that the winner in 4 matches out of 7 possible reaches the league final to meet the winner between the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics (2-0).
And it did not happen in the history of the league that a team overturned its delay 0-3 in a series of 7 possible matches.
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Faithful to the mind
In turn, Murray told ESPN: “We stayed true to the same mentality as the playoffs. We kept them at a distance throughout the match. I felt like we executed the order during the match and hit first.”
Anthony Davis was the best scorer with the Lakers (28 points) and Austin Reeves added 23.
Lakers coach Darvin Hamm acknowledged his team’s inability to contain Murray.
The Lakers coach praised the Denver team, “They topped (the regular league) for a good reason, they have a group of players who can hurt you like what happened tonight.”
But Hamm refused to give up, despite the great lead of Denver, who is playing the fourth game on the grounds of Los Angeles. “The conditions, as you can see. Difficult, but not impossible.”
A group of Hollywood stars who sat on the edge of the field were unable to inspire the Lakers, such as Jack Nicholson and Denzel Washington, hoping that Monday’s match would be different at the “Crypto.com Arena” in order to avoid losing with a humiliating score of 0-4.
The Nuggets dominated the first quarter, taking the lead thanks to Murray’s killer shot.
Murray’s first quarter
After scoring 23 points in the fourth quarter of Game 2 in Denver Thursday, Murray hit hard Saturday and planted 17 first-quarter points in a dream start for the Nuggets.
And while the Lakers succeeded in containing Yukic relatively, he had no response in the face of Murray (26 years), who had suffered severe injuries in the past seasons, scoring 8 out of 10 attempts, ahead by more than 10 points.
On the other hand, the entire Lakers team was scoring less than Murray alone in the first quarter (7 out of 23 attempts).
But in the second quarter, the Lakers narrowed the difference to 6 points, but Murray kept scoring, putting his team ahead 51-41.
With an effort from Reeves, the Lakers equalized 55-55, ending the first half with the guests leading 58-55.
And Denver failed in the third quarter to repeat the offensive achievements of the first, so Jokic was subjected to a fourth mistake without the Lakers taking advantage of that, so he entered the last quarter, trailing 82-84. Jokic returned at the beginning of the decisive quarter, contributing to his team regaining the big difference and reaching safety.
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