Thanks to the Clippers somehow putting up a -46.1 net rating over the last three second halves, we won’t get the anticipated battle for L.A. Instead, we get the 3-1 slayer Nuggets against the former 3-1 king LeBron James. Matchup wise, we’re getting some clashing styles on the offensive ends, so there’s a lot of pressure on coaches to put their guys in a good position, especially coach Mike Malone.
Denver Nuggets vs. Los Angeles Lakers (-7), 9:00 pm ET
Team Totals: Nuggets 102.5, Lakers 109.5
Injury News: Will Barton and Vlatko Cancar remain out, LeBron James is probable as usual, Rajon Rondo (back) is questionable and Dion Waiters is doubtful.
Nuggets Expected Starters: Jamal Murray, Gary Harris, Jerami Grant, Paul Millsap, Nikola Jokic
Lakers Expected Starters: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Danny Green, LeBron James, Anthony Davis, JaVale McGee (noted below why McGee should start)
Season Series: Lakers 3-1 (3-0 in games LeBron played)
Player Absences: LeBron James (1 game missed), KCP (1), Rajon Rondo (1), Gary Harris (1), Torrey Craig (1)
Playoff Offensive Rating: Nuggets 5th, Lakers 2nd
Playoff Defensive Rating: Nuggets 11th, Lakers 3rd
Season Defensive Rating: Nuggets 16th, Lakers 3rd
Season Pace: Nuggets 29th, Lakers 11th
Malone Quotes: Malone hasn’t had pre-series availability yet, so nothing really new here. I’ll try to add some on Friday.
Vogel Quotes: He suggested he expects to go back to the big lineup to start as the Lakers “return to form.” He said his offensive and defensive systems have changed “dramatically” from his Indiana days with more treys and smaller lineups.
Overall Notes
*The Lakers’ interior defense is pretty stout at 59.8 FG% at the rim for third best in the playoffs and they were in the top five in the regular season. Jokic can get hot in non-restricted paint shots, and the Lakers have been unbelievably good at 31.2% on those (10.9 attempts per game). The Nuggets have been in the middle of the road on interior defense.
*Both these teams aren’t really driving on their opponent, ranking as the bottom two in the playoffs (Lakers 32.5, Nuggets 33.3). Meanwhile, the Nuggets’ opponents were driving a ton with the Jazz at 58.0 per game and the Clippers at 49.6 (48.8 in the Dallas series). The Lakers kept the Blazers to 34.0 drives per game while the Rockets were at 52.6 (they drive a ton, obviously).
*The Lakers showed they can limit some wide-open looks from deep. The Rockets had 13.6 per game in their series, which came after the Rockets got 24.3 in the OKC series. The Lakers allowed just 11.2 per game in the Blazers series, too. As bad as the Nuggets defense was early, they actually kept the Clippers to just 9.1 per game, but the Jazz did have 18.3. I’d chalk that up to more of the Clippers falling apart.
Nuggets Notes
*Jamal Murray has been lethal as a shooter in the playoffs, putting up an absurd 74.3 eFG% on his 35 catch-and-shoot shots (80.0 eFG% in Clippers series). That’s only 2.5 per game, so it makes sense for Malone to play him off the ball a bit to get him good looks. For what it’s worth, Murray has a 98.6 eFG% on his 3-pointers off Nikola Jokic passes (35 attempts). He needs more of those. On the other hand, Murray is launching pullups at an absurd rate at 11.3 per game, turning in a very efficient 57.6 eFG% on those. The Lakers have faced some elite pullup shooting in the playoffs, keeping Dame 3.8 eFG% below his season average on smaller volume while Harden was a tick higher on pullup efficiency with a big dip on volume (4.2 more per game in the regular season). Murray is also really leaning on PNR handler shots at 9.6 possessions per game at 1.10 PPP, which is way up from 5.8 and 0.87 in the regular season. The Lakers were one of the best PNR defenses in the season at 0.83 PPP to put them just 0.01 off the No. 2 ranked Bucks. It was interesting that Jokic was used as a screener a bit more in Game 7 with a whopping 10 screen assists (4.6 on series, 5.0 in playoffs, 4.0 on the season). Still, he went up against a really tough Clippers defense that was limiting him for most of the series, but he cracked the code in the last two games with a 72.5 TS% in the last two thanks to coach Mike Malone setting up a wider variety of offensive opportunities for him. He’s not facing as much length in this series and he was able to create space better in the Jazz series, so he should have better success.
*Nikola Jokic has turned into just a ridiculous offensive weapon in the playoffs, putting up a 60.3 eFG% on his 112 catch-and-shoot shots and he’s at 57.8 eFG% on his pullup shots. However, things get a little tougher here after crushing Montrezl Harrell and still putting up big numbers against Ivica Zubac, who played better than expected. In the season series against the Lakers, the Nuggets did try to space him out a bit more as a shooter at times, and he had much more of a two-man game going on with a whopping 90.9% of his shots coming off an assist with Murray assisting him three times per game — Murray has also assisted Joker 3.1 times per game in the postseason (under two times per game in regular season). His offense is going to be a lot tougher to come by, so utilizing him as a facilitator more will help. He only put up a 16/6/6 line in four games against the Lakers over 31 minutes, so that comes to just 21/7/7 if we extend it to per 40 minutes. It’s not a bad matchup, but the Nuggets won’t have to feed him out of necessity as much.
*The Jerami Grant side of this should be easy, and we can basically treat him on LeBron James like Kawhi Leonard based on Malone’s comments from before (gonna recycle this from Clippers Game 1). “Jerami’s role is going to be more pronounced as we move into the postseason,” Malone said back on Aug. 12. Back in July, Malone was saying he was using Grant as a three as an experiment, and the talk around the team was for Grant to be on bigger-bodied threes like Kawhi and LeBron. Grant was used almost exclusively on Kawhi at a ridiculous 176.2 partial possessions with Torrey Craig at a distant second (48.3). Grant had 224 of his 230 minutes when Kawhi was out there, and Kawhi didn’t totally shred him at a 54.2 eFG% per the matchup data. Expect a similar plan.
*Gary Harris was basically the Paul George guy, getting 204 of 219 minutes while PG-13 was out there. He had 11 of those 15 in the last two, which coincides with how Harris was useful as an offensive player and Malone had talked about it just before that stretch. “[He has] become that much harder to guard,” Malone said. In this series, Harris isn’t going to have be as responsible on the defensive end, so he may have a higher offensive upside.
*You’d assume this is going to be a rough one for Millsap (more below on AD). AD is just too quick and skilled to not dominate this matchup, while Millsap doesn’t add much on the other end. Of course, Malone has given Millsap a long leash, so expect him to start for at least the first two.
*The Mason Plumlee side of this is interesting. He wasn’t used much in two-center lineups against the Clippers at just three minutes total, and he was used next to Jokic for under a minute in the Jazz series. Malone went to the Jokic-Plumlee lineup for just two minutes in the season series, but it’s worth noting that did come in the most recent game. If Millsap gets thumped, mixing in some Plumlee could help soften the blow to get a bigger body on AD.
*Torrey Craig is an interesting chess piece to use, as well. He was starting as a F combo next to Jerami Grant back in February, including the Feb. 12 loss to the Lakers. Craig was supposed to be the Donovan Mitchell stopper in the first series, but that didn’t happen as Mitchell was arguably the best offensive player in the first round. He will likely be the backup plan to Grant, but he’s probably the next man up if the Millsap plan fails.
*The Michael Porter Jr. question remains the same. When will Malone be willing to sacrifice his poor defense for more offense? Malone did talk up MPJ’s improved defense as the playoffs have gone along, so he might have to go to him because Millsap could be in trouble early. Plus, the starting frontcourt is looking at more foul risk.
Lakers Notes
*As usual, the big question on the Lakers rotation is how much we see AD at the five. We had 52 minutes of an AD-McGee frontcourt against Jokic, and it didn’t work out for the Lakers with a -16.1 net rating, and they were +2.7 with Dwight and AD vs. Joker. AD at the five was a +28.3 net rating in 56 minutes and AD put up numbers in that sample at a 37/13/3 line with 5.1 blocks and 1.9 steals per 36 minutes — LeBron 40/7/11 in a 25-minute sample with AD at the five vs. Denver. That means it’s probably close to 24 minutes of AD at the five out of the gate. AD at the five hasn’t quite been as productive in the postseason compared to the regular season, sitting at 29/12/3 per 36 over a 222-minute sample. Although, we have to give credit to P.J. Tucker for some of that — he did torch the Blazers’ bigs. He’s going to see a lot of Paul Millsap and OMG he lit him up via the matchup data. In 58.3 partial possessions, he scored 30 points on 70.0 TS%. The matchup data has AD struggling a bit against Jokic in a smaller sample at 26 points on 51.0 TS%. AD’s averages in the four games were 29/9/2 in 37.5 minutes per game, and that figures to rise here.
*LeBron James also had a pretty good line against the Nuggets over three outings, averaging a 29/6/12 line in 39 minutes per game. His offensive efficiency has really shined with a 65.4 TS% in the postseason from 57.7 in the regular season after the Rockets really defended him well with a lot of bodies in front of him to keep him from getting downhill in halfcourt. He’s been shooting it well in the playoffs with a 53.7 eFG% on his jumpers, up from 45.1 on the regular season, and he’s even better at the rim per shot at 76.6% from 68.7%. A big reason why his efficiency is up is because he’s cut down his mid-range shots from 15.2% of his shots in the regular season to 7.6% in the postseason. Jerami Grant kept Kawhi to a 54.8 TS% after his 63.9 TS% in the Mavs series, but a big part of the reason was Kawhi used 23.2% of his shots in the mid-range and he made just 37.5% of those shots to really pull him down — he also struggled at the rim at 54.1%. LeBron won’t be doing either of those things. The matchup data doesn’t have much on LeBron vs. Grant at just 18.4 partial possessions (4-of-7 from field), but expect LeBron’s DFS value to help you stack Grants like Horace.
*Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has been everything the Lakers could’ve asked for with some great perimeter defense, but he’s also been lights out as a shooter at 70.0 eFG% on catch-and-shoot shots (45 attempts). He’s going to be much more important in this series against much bigger lineups, and he should be a decent bet for 30 minutes. You can basically say the same thing for Danny Green as another perimeter defender to throw at Murray and Gary Harris.
*As mentioned in the Vogel quote, JaVale McGee and Dwight Howard figure to be a bigger factor, especially after the Joker’s success against the Clippers’ bigs and based on AD not wanting to guard bigger-bodied centers. They were at over 30 minutes combined in the first series against the giant Blazers PF/C combo and were down to zero at times in the Rockets series, so it figures to be in the 22-28 range in this series. That means Markieff Morris and Kyle Kuzma may have capped upside.
*Speaking of Kuzma, he had one of his best games in the bubble against the Nuggets, scoring 25 points with a game-winning shot. Vogel will likely try to match his minutes with MPJ, and the Lakers probably won’t be closing with a center to give him an opportunity there.
*Going bigger overall will also take minutes from guys like Rajon Rondo and Alex Caruso. Rondo can be a better on-ball guy while Caruso has made some savvy plays all over. It might be tough to look at them for Game 1.
Matchup Helps: Anthony Davis, LeBron James, Jamal Murray, Gary Harris, Nikola Jokic
Matchup Hurts: Paul Millsap, Markieff Morris, Rajon Rondo, Monte Morris
