The Los Angeles Lakers have lost eight of their past nine playoff games against the Denver Nuggets. They seemed to make progress toward rectifying the issue by winning three of their first four encounters with Denver after trading for Luka Doncic, but wounds were reopened on Mar. 5—or perhaps they never actually healed.
Denver defeated Los Angeles 120-113 in a game that not only hurt the Lakers' odds of securing home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs, but revealed how weak their roster truly is.
The Nuggets have faced more adversity than just about any team in the NBA this season. They've lost five starters to relatively long injury absences, playing 40 games without Aaron Gordon, 36 down Christian Braun, 26 without key offseason acquisition Cameron Johnson, 16 sans Nikola Jokic, and 14 down Peyton Watson.
Despite that fact, Denver is 39-24 and now 1.5 games clear of Los Angeles in the standings with both teams within the final 20 games of the season.
The Lakers have dealt with injuries of their own, with LeBron James missing 18 games and Austin Reaves sitting for 26. Both are back in the rotation now, but another hit came against Denver when starting center Deandre Ayton went down with an apparent knee injury.
What the Nuggets proved during their win over the Lakers is what the fundamental difference is between the two sides: One team embraces the value of internal development while the other doesn't.
Nuggets further expose Lakers' woeful youth movement
Losing Ayton is no easy hurdle to leap over, particularly with less than ideal depth at the center position. The Nuggets were without both Johnson and Watson, however, yet they managed to overcome their injury woes due to the work the organization has put in across multiple seasons.
23-year-old wing Julian Strawther stepped up in their absence as an unsung hero, posting 18 points in 29 minutes—outscoring every Laker but Luka Doncic and Jaxson Hayes.
Strawther is a former first-round draft pick whom Denver landed at No. 29 overall in 2023. He's been loosely featured in the rotation, but when injuries struck, the commitment to his development ultimately paid off—against the Lakers and otherwise.
Strawther is averaging 12.5 points per game since Feb. 1 after averaging 4.5 before then—much as Watson broke out when Braun went down earlier in the season.
Lakers overburden stars while Nuggets turn to developing talent
Unfortunately, the Lakers' path to overcoming injuries has led them to overburdening their stars and creating unsustainable dynamics. They haven't plugged in new supporting players to help fortify the depth of the rotation and evenly distribute the workload, but tasked Doncic with developing a co-starring situation with either James or Reaves depending on who's been available.
It should thus come as no surprise that once James and Reaves both factored into the rotation, chemistry was an issue on at least one end of the floor.
To make matters worse, the Lakers only have one under-25 player who consistently features in the rotation: Jake LaRavia. LaRavia has been a revelation, but the absence of developable talent and up-and-coming athletes who can provide two-way value has been a key weakness all season—and he can't fix that flaw alone.
Unfortunately, it was yet another loss to the Nuggets that revealed just how far behind the times the Lakers are in regard to the internal development of rotation-caliber players.