The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Denver Nuggets in 2020 to go to the NBA Finals and are still superior after the offseason.
The Los Angeles Lakers overcame the 3-1 Cinderalla story Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference Finals to move onto the NBA Finals and eventually win the entire thing. Now, after the shortest offseason in American sports history, the Lakers are still the better team.
This is a recurring series here on Lake Show Life in which I dive into the specific advantages that the Los Angeles Lakers have over each of the contending teams that will be fighting the hardest to make sure the Lakers don’t repeat as champions.
Let’s get into the Denver Nuggets.
1. The Los Angeles Lakers have a solution to Nikola Jokic
I could outright say that the Los Angeles Lakers have a better star duo than the Denver Nuggets and that would work. However, we could literally say that with every single team in the league, so I would rather get more specific with the other team’s stars.
With the Brooklyn Nets is the potential of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving not being as cohesive as Nets fans want them to be. With the Denver Nuggets, it is the fact that the Lakers have the best solution to Nikola Jokic.
Nobody is going to outright stop Jokic but the Lakers have the best chance in the league with their personnel and that showed last year in the playoffs, even with Dwight Howard instead of Marc Gasol.
Anthony Davis is one of the best defensive players in the league and makes life much harder for Jokic. When AD is not guarding him, the Lakers have one of the best defensive centers in meeting other big men at the point of attack in Marc Gasol.
They should stay away from having Montrezl Harrell guard Jokic. We saw in the playoffs how that can backfire.
Jokic was averaging 25.4 points, 10.8 rebounds and 7.0 assists per game in the playoffs before the Western Conference Finals. Against the Lakers, he averaged 21.8 points, 7.2 rebounds and 5.0 assists.