LOS ANGELES — At the start of the historic celebration of the Denver Nuggets, LeBron James, the star forward of the Los Angeles Lakers, walked from his home court, his face expressionless.
On Monday night, the Nuggets took a last breath from the Lakers, who kept their season alive for weeks after it was thought to be over. Even after the final buzzer, some of the Denver players couldn’t believe it was over and they had actually done it.
The Nuggets are going to the NBA finals for the first time in franchise history after completing a four-game sweep of the Lakers in the Western Conference finals with a 113-111 victory on Monday.
Now, Denver awaits the winner of the Eastern Conference finals, where the Miami Heat have a 3-0 lead in the series against the Boston Celtics. Game 4 in the East is Tuesday in Miami.
Nuggets center Nikola Jokic was named the most valuable player in the Western Conference finals. He smiled warmly as he held his trophy and his court mates surrounded him and patted him on the head. He had 30 points, 14 rebounds and 13 assists on Monday.
“Even if you guard him for one of the best possessions you think you can guard him, he puts the ball behind his head Larry Bird-style and shoots it 50 feet in the air and it goes in ,” James said, then he smiled. in anger. “Like he’s done four or five times in this series.” He added, as he took off his hat and pointed at it: “So you will do it to him.”
Denver has never played in the NBA finals in its 47 seasons in the league. Now the longest drought belongs to the Sacramento Kings, which hasn’t been since 1951, when they were known as the Rochester Royals. The Pelicans, Timberwolves, Clippers, Grizzlies and Hornets have never been.
“I’m really happy for the guys and for the organization and how we fought,” Jokic said. “I remember the days when there were no people in our – you could hear the ball bouncing on the floor and there were no fans.”
For the Nuggets, Monday’s win capped a year-long process in which their core players grew together, dealt with challenging injuries and faced questions about their ability to compete in the West. Jokic won the league’s MVP Award twice, but only once reached the conference finals.
Denver lost star guard Jamal Murray in April 2021, when he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. Nuggets Coach Michael Malone said the day after the injury Murray tearfully asked if the Nuggets would trade him, calling himself “damaged goods.”
“I hugged him,” Malone said. “I said: ‘No, you are mine. We love you. We’ll help you get back, and you’ll be a better player for it.’”
Murray is out for the rest of the season and all of 2021-22. In this year’s playoffs, Denver’s patience paid off.
Murray is starting to look like the player he was before the injury and Jokic continues to play at an elite level, fully supported by Denver’s cast of talented players.
The Nuggets climbed to first in the West in December and never fell out of the top spot. In the playoffs, they beat the Timberwolves, 4-1, in the first round and the Phoenix Suns, 4-2 in the second round. Despite Denver’s dominance throughout the season, the oddsmakers did not favor them to win the championship. The Nuggets embraced that.
“We’re the underdogs,” guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope said. “We don’t get enough credit for what we do.” He continued: “We don’t talk about a lot of things, we take that personally. We just use that energy, keep proving everybody wrong.”
Even after the first two rounds, some believe that the Lakers are in danger of being the team that finally defeats the Nuggets.
That confidence in the Lakers only developed during the playoffs.
For a while, the Lakers seemed to have lost their lives due to roster issues and injuries to their stars James and Anthony Davis. They started the season with a 2-10 record. In December, when the Nuggets were solidifying their position atop the West, the Lakers were 13th.
Guard Russell Westbrook, who struggled with the Lakers last season, is still ineligible and pulled from the starting lineup after three games. Davis injured his foot on December 16 against the Nuggets and missed 20 games while he recovered. Not long after Davis returned, James missed several games due to a foot injury that some doctors he consulted said required surgery.
But February’s trade deadline changes helped. The Lakers fired Westbrook and brought in role players — Jarred Vanderbilt, D’Angelo Russell and Malik Beasley. They also traded Rui Hachimura in January.
They rose to seventh in the West at the end of the regular season, and defeated Minnesota in overtime in the play-in tournament to earn the seventh seed for the playoffs. In the first round, they silenced a noisy Memphis team, which spent most of the season in the top three of the West, defeating them, 4-2. Then they upset the defending champion Golden State Warriors, 4-2, who dominated them in the clinching game of the second round.
All the while, Darvin Ham, their first-year head coach, reminded them how little people expected them to make the playoffs.
But the Nuggets have become a different kind of opponent. They are more cohesive, less dramatic and stronger in the center than Memphis and Golden State.
“We compete every night,” Ham said. “We have been competitive in every game in this series. I just told the guys to look at what it means, how it feels now, what we’ve been through for a whole season and what we have to do to get to this point.
In the Lakers’ first two series, their opponents sniped at them verbally, whether it was Grizzlies guard Dillon Brooks calling James, 38, old, or the Warriors accusing them of flopping. for favorable calls. The Nuggets took a different approach, showing respect on the court until the end.
“I wouldn’t say I’m scared, but I’m worried,” said Jokic after the Game 3 victory in Denver. “Because they have LeBron on the other side, and he can do everything.”
James will make more mistakes in this series than ever before. He went 0 for 10 from 3-point range in the first two games, made big mistakes late in Game 1 and was mocked for missing a dunk in Game 2. He has dragged the team through postseason inconsistency so far, but the Nuggets refused. don’t make him do it again.
A few hours before Monday’s game, James was doing pregame warm-ups when a group of broadcast workers held a rehearsal for the Western Conference championship trophy presentation on the court a few yards from him. James used that as motivation.
He scored 31 points in the first half, making all four of his first quarter 3-point attempts.
“It’s scary,” Caldwell-Pope said. “We know who LeBron is.”
James finished with 40 points, 10 rebounds and 9 assists. On the final play of the game, James drove to the basket and attempted to shoot a game tying shot through the Nuggets crowd. Murray was there, and as James gathered to shoot, Murray put both hands on the ball and did not let go.
“I knew I had to be there,” Murray said.
The clock ran out and the Nuggets bench emptied in celebration.
“It’s like a little shock,” said Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon. “You’re just, like, not sure, like, are you sure we don’t have more time on the clock? Are you sure we don’t have another quarter to play or another game to play? Just one more chance for them to win? Then it’s like: ‘Oh. No. We won.’”
