Shai goes for 40 as Thunder drop Nuggets
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What happened in the Thunder vs. Nuggets game?
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily. Coming up, the Thunder slapped the Nuggets. So we talked to Andrew Schlecht after that. The Celtics handled the Lakers and LeBron's going to miss a little bit of time. So we're going to go through that a little bit. And Jokic put up a stat line that we have never seen before. Is he the MVP or is it still Shea? Good morning, everybody. Good morning, guys. How's it going? Good weekend. Morning.
Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's so excited.
Event weekend. Yes. Really busy weekend. Zena, you're watching 85 basketball games every day. How about that Lakers Celtics game? Saturday night.
It was good. It had me a little distracted from the crazy Warriors Pistons slugfest. Yeah, but it was a little bit more elevated basketball, I think. And it was a good fight until I think that third quarter fell apart for the Lakers there.
Yeah. So we'll go through the game a little bit. I thought the Celtics, they came out. Obviously, they were ready for this. I mean, it's a marquee matchup. Their defense looked excellent. they broke out a big lead and then the Lakers started making a comeback and you might've missed it because LeBron injured what we found out injured his groin and he went to the bench and then disappeared, went to the locker room and I'm sitting there and I'm hearing the report. OK, LeBron's in the locker room, but I'm thinking it's LeBron James. He's coming back. This is the thing that they needed. I felt to for the Lakers to complete the comeback. It was all set up perfectly for LeBron to come in and be that final push in the last five minutes. He wasn't there. They ran out of gas. And I mean, Jason Tatum had 40. Jalen Brown had 31. Just that was a Celtics just.
statement i think yeah that was that was like the picture-perfect celtics game uh and i we've been talking a little bit over the last couple weeks of like oh are the celtics bored are they really entertained with the regular season when they get up for contests like this when they're competing the way that they did like that's the mark of a real championship team they they were so locked in for the entire game that you were like man this this team can absolutely still defend their title uh from the lakers side It's just brutal that this injury comes now to LeBron because they're already dealing with Rui Hachimura being hurt. Luka has this back spasm soreness thing that he's dealing with as well that we'll kind of have to monitor over the next couple of weeks. And they were climbing up the standings like they're second in the Western Conference.
And how does that look over the next couple of weeks when they have a daunting schedule like this? It is a tough schedule for the Lakers moving forward, too. So dealing with LeBron being out for a couple weeks, dealing with Luka, maybe dealing with something tough, tough, tough outcome for the Lakers.
What I was happy about, though, that this game was a perfect example of why I think small ball really matters.
Oh, yeah.
Without with the Lakers not having Jackson Hayes and then Rui Hachimura is out. And then obviously the size that LeBron James brings, even though he's not a center, it still does dissuade folks from going into the paint. Um. you saw the battle of who could play better without their big Boston didn't have Chris stops either, but Al Horford has been in that five position. He plays that incredibly well and is very comfortable in that position. So I thought that this was, this ended up being a battle of who has the better small ball rotation and also who can like sustain. They're still their defensive intensity with that small ball rotation and Man, the way that Jalen Brown was getting steals, getting lanes, they were making it so hard for LA to get anything in terms of driving lanes to the basket. And so that helps when your guards do their job on the perimeter. That definitely takes some pressure off of the paint protection inside.
Yeah. I mean, the Lakers overall, just not much defensive playmaking. They block one shot in the game. You know, this is again, they didn't have any bigs available. And then LeBron losing him for for the end of the game. I mean, he had what he had, 22, nine assists, 14 rebounds up to that point. So he had been hugely productive in the game. Let's let's look ahead, though.
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