The Denver Nuggets have won Game 1 against the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference finals. However, Lakers coach Darvin Ham believes that there are no concerns for his team and has trust in his players that they will come out all guns blazing in Game 2.
The Nuggets bagged a 132-126 win over the Lakers, who did give a good fight and a late push almost meant that even they could have sneaked past Nikola Jokic and his men. The Nuggets had a 21-point lead in the third quarter and courtesy of a good run from the Lakers, they slashed the deficit to only three points. Even Lebron James had a chance of tying the game with 45 seconds left on the clock but he missed the three-pointer and Denver held on for the win.
Darvin Ham was pretty relaxed after the loss and believes that his team will come back in the next game and do better than what they did in game 1. “There’s no doubt in my mind, we come out for Game 2, and we’ll be ready. We’ll go back and do what we need to do for our team physically. Start the recovery process now. Break down the film… Thank god it’s a best-of-seven, not an NCAA tournament. It’s the first of four. We’ll be okay, trust me,” Ham assured the fans.
It is for the first time the Lakers are trailing after Game 1 in this year’s postseason. They did not have homecourt advantage but they did not care. But against their toughest rivals, a loss like this can be concerning. However, Ham understands that it is not a time to panic. They are a couple of tweaks away from getting better of the Nuggets in Game 2.
The Lakers were trailing by 18 points at the halfway stage as Jokic went berserk with 19 points, 16 rebounds and seven assists. But later Ham made some tweaks and improved the coverage on him to somewhat neutralize the effect.
The Lakers finished seventh in the regular season and for that, they have not got an opportunity to get homecourt advantage in any of the series. They simply did not care much about in the series against the Memphis Grizzlies and the Golden State Warriors and hence the series ended in only six games.
But it is different against the Nuggets and winning three games on the bounce will be a tough job for Lebron James and his men. They would like to avoid Game 7 on the road and for that, they need to pull up their socks in the next few games. Winning Game 2 becomes imperative for Ham and also for the Lakers as a unit.
