3. Jerami Grant’s night won’t be reproduced
The Denver Nuggets got a huge boost in this game from forward Jerami Grant and it really was the difference in the result of this game. If Grant had a cold night from the floor then this entire game could have been different, perhaps leading to a Lakers’ win.
Grant was the Nuggets’ second-leading scorer with 26 points. He was wildly efficient from the floor, making seven of his 11 field-goal attempts and got to the charity stripe 12 times, making 10 of his free-throw attempts.
Grant is a solid role player but he is not going to produce at this high of a level again for the Nuggets, especially against a solid defensive team with size in the Lakers. Frank Vogel will make the proper adjustments (as he has all season) and there will be some regression towards the mean with Grant’s efficiency.
This is a guy who averaged just 12 points per game in the regular season and 10.8 in the playoffs, counting his 26 points in this contest. Again, if he misses three more of his shoots and gets to the line eight times opposed to 12 then the Lakers would be getting an 8-10 point swing.
As stated early in the article, this felt like one of those games where the Lakers came out sluggish and everything seemed to go the Nuggets way. The chances of the Lakers shooting this bad and rebounding this bad and Jerami Grant scoring another 25+ is slim to none.
Of course, if two of these three things happen again then the Los Angeles Lakers will be in trouble. Luckily, that is unlikely for the Lakers.