Los Angeles Lakers fans spent the summer of 2023 calling the Western Conference Finals “the closest sweep in NBA history.” Well, that isn’t quite true. Losing four straight games by only 24 combined points is pretty rare, but it wasn’t even the closest sweep of this decade. The 2022 Brooklyn Nets lost in four to the Boston Celtics by just 18 points. Within a year, those Nets had blown up.
The Lakers? Not so much. They largely ran back last season’s roster, swapping out Dennis Schroder for Gabe Vincent and cycling through a few new minimum-salary free agents, but otherwise retaining the bulk of the team that Denver had just swept. Rui Hachimura, Austin Reaves, D’Angelo Russell and Jarred Vanderbilt all got expensive multi-year deals.
No future draft picks were traded for immediate help. The theory seemed to be that internal development could flip the not-quite-closest sweep in NBA history into a win. Here’s a not-quite-a-secret flaw to that theory, though: there’s no such thing as a close sweep.
The moments when these teams have been closest to their true selves have invariably favored Denver. They played 11 clutch minutes against one another and the Nuggets won those minutes by 15 points. Sure you could fake a close score against Denver by beating them in the early going and winning the non-Jokic minutes, but when Denver starts to take things seriously? Game over.
The Lakers have experienced that phenomenon firsthand this season. They played seven more clutch minutes against Denver in the regular season and lost them by 17 points. They’re not even getting to clutch minutes this time around because Denver is turning it on earlier. The Nuggets have outscored the Lakers by 29 in three third quarters so far in this year’s series. Not-so-surprisingly, the Lakers are on their way towards another not-as-close sweep.
Most of the “why’s” that applied to last year’s matchup still apply to this one. Russell scored 25 points in last year’s series. He’s shooting 14-of-43 from the field in this year’s rematch and just went scoreless in Game 3. The Lakers fielded trade offers for him at the deadline but elected not to move him.
Additionally, they have no reliable point-of-attack defense that doesn’t compromise their offense. The supposed answer to that problem was Vincent, who himself lost a gentleman’s sweep to Denver a year ago in the NBA Finals as a member of the Miami Heat. He…
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