PREMIUM
Stephen Nover's NBA September Total of the Month - Monster 20-5 (80%) NBA Streak!
(NBA) Denver vs. LA Lakers,
Total: 214.50 | -110.00 Under
Result: Loss
Total: 214.50 | -110.00 Under
Result: Loss
Twice the Nuggets have dug themselves out of a 3-1 playoff series hole beating the Clippers and Jazz. No NBA team had ever done that twice during the same postseason.
Denver is gutty and resilient. The Nuggets may be out of gas, too. This will be Denver's 19th playoff game. No team has played that many this season.
I'm not going to go against the Nuggets here. They've earned too much respect. But if the Lakers don't get them, fatigue might.
So I believe the right choice is Under the total.
The Nuggets play to the second-lowest pace of any of the original 16 playoff teams. That's not going to change here. Denver knows it has to keep the Lakers out of transition in order to limit fast break points, which is an edge LA has on the Nuggets. Look for the Nuggets to play slow and deliberate. The Lakers aren't a helter skelter team either. They ranked ninth of the 16 playoff teams in tempo.
Denver doesn't have a big scoring bench. The Nuggets heavily rely on emerging star Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic for their offense. The Lakers, however, finally may have found the right solution to slowing down Murray - having LeBron James guard him. This was the case during the fourth quarter of the last game. The Nuggets didn't score on eight of 10 fourth quarter possessions when James was on Murray. During this span, Murray was 0-for-3 from the field.
Murray, who is averaging nearly 40 minutes per game during the playoffs, clearly was bothered by James' physical style of defense. It's a double-edged sword, though, for the Lakers because it also tires out James to play such strong defense on Murray. James has to sacrifice some of his prolific offense to make this defense sacrifice. All of this is great for the Under.
As for Jokic, the Lakers have several big bodies and fouls to deal with him. So he's not going to get any easy baskets.
Denver is gutty and resilient. The Nuggets may be out of gas, too. This will be Denver's 19th playoff game. No team has played that many this season.
I'm not going to go against the Nuggets here. They've earned too much respect. But if the Lakers don't get them, fatigue might.
So I believe the right choice is Under the total.
The Nuggets play to the second-lowest pace of any of the original 16 playoff teams. That's not going to change here. Denver knows it has to keep the Lakers out of transition in order to limit fast break points, which is an edge LA has on the Nuggets. Look for the Nuggets to play slow and deliberate. The Lakers aren't a helter skelter team either. They ranked ninth of the 16 playoff teams in tempo.
Denver doesn't have a big scoring bench. The Nuggets heavily rely on emerging star Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic for their offense. The Lakers, however, finally may have found the right solution to slowing down Murray - having LeBron James guard him. This was the case during the fourth quarter of the last game. The Nuggets didn't score on eight of 10 fourth quarter possessions when James was on Murray. During this span, Murray was 0-for-3 from the field.
Murray, who is averaging nearly 40 minutes per game during the playoffs, clearly was bothered by James' physical style of defense. It's a double-edged sword, though, for the Lakers because it also tires out James to play such strong defense on Murray. James has to sacrifice some of his prolific offense to make this defense sacrifice. All of this is great for the Under.
As for Jokic, the Lakers have several big bodies and fouls to deal with him. So he's not going to get any easy baskets.