DENVER — The clock bled red at Ball Arena. Not the gentle red of a setting sun, but the violent red of an alarm screaming danger.
Eighty-five seconds remained in the first half, and the Lakers were drowning.
Jamal Murray had just lobbed a perfect pass so pristine that it should’ve come with a bow. Aaron Gordon flushed the pass through the rim, and the roar shook the Rocky Mountains.
Then Murray found Peyton Watson in the corner—swish. Then, with the fury of a man who’d seen every slight the basketball ever dealt him, Murray launched a 56-foot heave that kissed the backboard, danced on the rim and fell through as the horn sounded.
71-57, Nuggets. Game over, right? Another Los Angeles blowout, right?
“You know what I told them?” LeBron James said. “I told them, ‘That’s a great shot. But great shots don’t win games. Great defense does.'”
What happened next belongs in a museum of basketball brutality. What happened next was a second-half defensive barrage so comprehensive, so cold-blooded and calculated, that it turned a coronation into a crucible, a laugher into a lesson.
The Lakers committed a 115-107 heist.
Murray was magnificent. Obscene, even. The Kentucky guard scored 26 points in 24 minutes.
He did more than score. He painted, each shot a brushstroke of arrogance in hues of brilliance.
The Nuggets hit nine three-pointers in the first quarter, shooting 9-of-11 from deep. They led by 13. Then 16.
They took a 14-point halftime cushion into the half that felt like 40.
“We were playing good defense,” LeBron said. “But they were still knocking down shots.”
Meanwhile, disaster struck quietly.
Deandre Ayton, the Lakers’ defensive anchor, caught an errant hand to his left eye late in the second quarter. He disappeared into the recesses of the locker room and never returned.
The arena got quieter. The Lakers got smaller. The mountain got steeper.
Coach JJ Redick stood in the locker room in the bowels of the arena, his voice calm but his words carrying the weight of a man who’d seen this movie before.
He’d witness Murray torch his team as a podcaster and analyst. He’d watched the Nuggets’ role players turn into marksmen. He’d watched the Lakers’ defense look like a traffic cone in a hurricane.
“Man defense was worse than the zone,” Redick said. “So we picked it up. We got weird. We put two on the ball. We made them uncomfortable.”
The adjustment was simple in concept, brutal in execution: blitz Murray.
Run him off the three-point line. Make the other Nuggets beat you. Force them into decisions they didn’t want to make.
“We turned up our aggression,” James said. “We ran him off the line. We put a couple more bodies in front of Jamal. We know the streak he’s been on.”
The streak. Oh, the streak. Murray, a Laker killer, a thorn in the franchise’s side, is a fourth-quarter phantom who has haunted their dreams. But when you turn on the lights, phantoms disappear.
The third quarter began like a different sport, a different game. The Lakers held Denver to 17 points.
Seventeen. In a quarter. After surrendering 71 in the first half.
Murray missed both his shots in the third. He wouldn’t attempt another until deep into the fourth. He finished the second half 1-of-5 from the field.
Two points. After 26 in the first half. Obscene math.
“We’re flying around,” LeBron said. “Making him take tough shots. Able to clean glass.”
Clean glass, they did. The Lakers outrebounded Denver by 20.
Luka Dončić, the point guard with the teddy bear build and the assassin’s heart, grabbed 13 rebounds himself.
“Obviously, I’m a guard,” Dončić said. “But lately I haven’t been having a lot of rebounds. So if I get some more rebounds, that helps my team.”
Helps. Such a small word for such a massive impact.
The Lakers scored 58 second-half points, and Denver scored 36.
Los Angeles held the Nuggets to 7-of-21 shooting in the third quarter.
They contested everything. They rotated like a washing machine, each part knowing its function, each player trusting the man beside him.
Marcus Smart, who’d gone 0-for-4 in the first half, who looked lost and hesitant, suddenly found himself. He hit two massive three-pointers in the fourth quarter. He took a charge that shifted momentum like a shifting San Andreas fault line, and finished with 15 points, all of them enormous.
“Hit my first shot finally,” Smart said. “Seen the ball go in some more. Teammates trusted me.”
The bench, maligned all season, scored 32 points while holding Denver to 20.
Jaxson Hayes, pressed into service after Ayton’s injury, was +16. Rui Hachimura chipped in nine points. Drew Timme contributed nine points. The reserves didn’t just hold serve—they conquered territory.
The game was tied early in the fourth. Then Dončić, who’d been magnificent all night, took over.
Dončić secured his 52nd career 30-point triple-double, moving him past Nikola Jokić on an exclusive list. He finished with 38 points, 13 rebounds and 10 assists.
“He was on a mission,” James said. “He showed why he is who he is.”
With 6:42 remaining, Dončić stepped to the free-throw line and gave the Lakers their first lead. Then came a 16-0 Lakers’ run.
A two-point deficit became a 108-96 lead.
The Nuggets missed 11 straight shots. The building fell silent. The Lakers fans, scattered throughout Ball Arena like seeds in the wind, found their voice.
“We stayed together,” Dončić said. “After they hit nine threes in like eight minutes, it was a tough stretch. But we kept together.”
This matters because of history.
In 2023, Denver swept the Lakers in the Western Conference finals on its way to a championship, haunted by the ghosts that still roam those halls.]
“Most respect,” James said when asked about chatting with the injured Jokić before the game. “Jokić is one of the greatest players to ever play this game.”
The respect is real, the rivalry is more. And Tuesday night, the Lakers sent a message.
They can defend. They can adjust. They can lose their starting center and not flinch.
“That’s what championship teams do,” Redick said. “They make adjustments. They trust each other. They get weird when they need to get weird.”
The numbers don’t lie, but they do scream.
James was asked about the eight-game road trip looming ahead, about what this win means for momentum.
“Well, we take one game at a time,” James said. “We want to know on an eight-game road trip and we want to try to continue that on Thursday. We try to get the hell out of here as fast as we can.”
Get the hell out of here. After a win like this? After stealing a game in the most hostile territory, against a team that’s owned you, without your starting center, after trailing by 16?
Yeah. Get the hell out of here. And take the victory with you.
The Lakers left Denver with belief. They proved that defense travels, that adjustments matter, that togetherness triumphs.
They left with the soul of a rival in their pocket.