LOS ANGELES — On Oscar weekend in Hollywood, the Nuggets and Lakers staged a classic.
The Nuggets came all the way back from down 17, coughed up an 8-point lead in the fourth quarter, then lost in overtime on a Luke Doncic baseline jumper with 0.5 seconds left.
Austin Reaves forced overtime with a miraculous sneak-attack that seemed to catch the Nuggets off guard. They had intentionally fouled him with a 3-point lead and five seconds left — seemingly enough time to make both free throws and keep extending the game.
Instead, he purposefully missed the second off the front of the rim, retrieving the rebound himself and sinking a game-tying floater with 1.9 seconds left. Spencer Jones had been too slow to box out the shooter.
Nikola Jokic amassed 24 points, 16 rebounds, 14 assists and five steals. With Denver trailing by a point in the last minute, he launched a rainbow cross-court pass out of a double-team that somehow fluttered over defenders and perfectly into Tim Hardaway Jr.’s shooting pocket in the opposite corner. Hardaway buried the go-ahead shot with 31.7 seconds left for a 115-113 lead.
Jokic picked Reaves’ pocket at the other end. After Aaron Gordon split a pair of free throws, Jones and Cam Johnson successfully executed the foul-up-three strategy on consecutive Laker possessions, only for the free throw to go awry.
Gordon led the Nuggets with 27 points. Johnson and Hardaway combined for 38. Jamal Murray fouled out with only five points early in overtime, bringing an early end to his worst game of the season.
The Nuggets have been fighting one battle after another for the last week, facing four Western Conference playoff teams in four different cities. With the loss, they finished the grueling stretch with a 2-2 record going into a two-day respite.
All of their most feasible two-way tiebreakers were sorted out in the process. The Nuggets clinched their season series against Houston last Wednesday but finished 1-2 against the Lakers. They had already clinched the head-to-head tiebreaker over Minnesota.
Los Angeles has been good to them in recent years. Crypto.com Arena is a building with particular sentimental value to Jokic and Murray, who made a habit of pulling out close road wins during the 2023 and 2024 playoffs. Murray clinched Denver’s first NBA Finals appearance with a defensive stop on LeBron James in the Lakers’ house.
Defense was absent from the Nuggets’ game plan early in this clash, though, and Murray Supreme was nowhere to be seen. The Lakers picked apart their visitors in the pick-and-roll. Doncic was able to score at will and find teammates for open 3s early. He had 12 points, five boards and five assists by the end of the opening frame.
LeBron James and Austin Reaves spearheaded a 10-2 run as soon as Jokic took his seat on the bench. Denver bottomed out with a 49-32 deficit halfway through the second quarter. After Johnson and Jokic combined to miss three open 3s on one possession, there was a creeping sense that it simply wasn’t the Nuggets’ night.
Then they got a stop. Johnson knocked down a 3-pointer. Christian Braun scored a pair of buckets in transition. The 7-0 run wasn’t much — Los Angeles even pushed the lead back to 16 at one point before halftime — but it was the first sign of reanimated life from the Frankenstein Nuggets.
Their real comeback push arrived in the third. Down 79-67, Johnson and Jokic engineered a 9-0 run highlighted by a Jokic 4-point play, interception and fast-break dunk in quick succession. The Nuggets ratcheted up their defensive intensity and were rewarded as Los Angeles finally cooled down. Jokic eagerly took advantage of bad transition defense, looking for long outlet passes to Braun and Bruce Brown.
It was tied at 87 by the end of the third. Tim Hardaway Jr. gave Denver its first lead since 7-6 on a 3-pointer to start the fourth. Yet again in the City of Angels, the Nuggets were first-half sinners and second-half saints.
