A surge in the second half was powered by a collective effort anchoring down on defense\u2014a rarity this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
DENVER \u2014 The Lakers stole a needed win in Denver on Tuesday, beating the Nuggets 115-107 without Nikola Joki\u0107 at the Ball Arena behind a commanding second-half surge and a triple-double from Luka Don\u010di\u0107.<\/p>\n
After allowing 71 first-half points to a Nuggets team that couldn’t miss to start the game\u2014hitting nine of their first 11 shots from 3\u2014the Lakers’ defense anchored down collectively, allowing 36 points in the second half and forcing Denver to go scoreless for six minutes in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
“It was awesome,” Don\u010di\u0107 said on the Lakers’ energy on defense. “Against Toronto, the zone worked for us. We tried [here] in the first half and it didn’t work. So we stuck to another plan. To change the plan in the middle of the game and stick to it was impressive by us.”<\/p>\n
Don\u010di\u0107 finished with 34 points, 13 rebounds and 10 assists and helped the Lakers surge to 58 points in the second half, outscoring them by 22 points. It was Don\u010di\u0107’s fifth triple-double of the season and 87th of his career, joining LeBron James and Magic Johnson as the only players in Lakers history with four or more 30-plus-point triple-doubles in a season.<\/p>\n
Another significant factor in the Lakers’ surge was shutting down Nuggets guard Jamal Murray, who had been the catalyst for Denver’s hot start, scoring four 3-pointers and 26 points in the first half. Then, after a decisive gameplan in blitzing and forcing the ball out of his hands, Murray was held to just two points in the second half.<\/p>\n
“It took him out of his rhythm,” coach JJ Redick said on the game plan around Murray. “By the time he had taken a shot in the second half, it was well into the fourth quarter. It was literally ‘Let’s take the ball out of his hands’.”<\/p>\n
James added more dunks to his year 23 mixtape, having two big-time dunks. His first one came in the first half with a two-handed slam, and the second one came in much-needed clutch time down the stretch with under two minutes left.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rui Hachimura found a cutting James for an easy one-handed tomahawk dunk to give the Lakers an eight-point lead, capping off a 24-14 run from the start of the fourth. The surge helped the Lakers go on to come back and close out the game, thanks to Denver going scoreless for six minutes and 30 seconds.<\/p>\n
James poured in 12 of his 19 points in the second half, adding nine rebounds and eight assists on eight-of-15 shooting.<\/p>\n
Marcus Smart was the only other player to score in double figures, playing a major role with all 15 of his points coming in the second half, with four 3s.<\/p>\n
Drew Timme continued his impressive contribution in a short stint in Denver, scoring seven points in his first two minutes. He finished with 9 points (four-of-six shooting) in 11 minutes and started the second half for the second straight game.<\/p>\n
The Lakers’ win improved their record to 26-16 and 14-8 on the road, pushing them up to fifth place in the West. They will travel back home for their next game against the cross-town rival Clippers on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A surge in the second half was powered by a collective effort anchoring down on defense\u2014a rarity this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3790],"tags":[7,762,1661,4034,1698,300,4044,185,251,150,4033,4043,368,326,6,67,4536],"class_list":{"0":"post-550612","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-lakers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-jamal-murray","10":"tag-jj-redick","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-la-lakers","13":"tag-lakers","14":"tag-lalakers","15":"tag-lebron-james","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","18":"tag-losangeles","19":"tag-losangeleslakers","20":"tag-luka-doncic","21":"tag-marcus-smart","22":"tag-nba","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-tst-los-angeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115932046600561180","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}