Davis just ripped out Nuggets’ hearts
And there it was: NuggetsLakers, The Playoff History, summed up in about 2.1 seconds.
The man in the blue shirt and the bowtie is counting again. Slowly. Loudly. Michael Malone’s Nuggets are face down on the canvas for the third time in four weeks, eyes swollen shut, bleeding from the forehead, cartoon birdies circling overhead.
1! … 2!. … 3! …
At least this time, they saw what hit them. Or rather, who.
“That’s a shot Kobe Bryant would hit,” Los Angeles Lakers coach Frank Vogel said of the Anthony Davis 3- pointer at the buzzer Sunday that gave the Lakers a 2- 0 series lead in the Western Conference Finals. “So, to me, ( Davis) coming off, just flying to the wing like that, the catch- and- shoot with the game on the line, in the biggest moment of our season, nothing but net. It’s a Mamba shot.”
Lakers 105, Nuggets 103. It was a Mamba game. The minute you pin the Purple and Gold to the ground, a Hall of Famer reaches into your chest and rips what’s left of your heart straight out.
4! … 5! …
Where do you go after this one? Group therapy? Exorcism? So many demons. So little time. “The message is, ‘ We’re down 2- 0,’” Malone said softly. “’ Let’s go out and win Game 3.’”
We know better than to count them out completely. After 3- 1 once, 3- 1 twice, you never, ever say never.
But this one? This one left a scar. The three missed free throws, two of them by reserve PJ Dozier, over the final six minutes.
The last shot, mostly, and whether Mason Plumlee dropped the baton when it came to closing AD down in the corner.
This series feels different. The karma feels different. The basketball gods have traded their Maxie Miner shorts in for a unibrow and a 6- pack of Sprite. History is history now. If the Nuggets can somehow get off the mat after Game 2, Malone is coach of the century.
Because it’s one thing to get dragged behind the woodshed. It’s another to ball out, as this bunch did Sunday, to leave everything out there, to clean up old mistakes, to get stops, to force turnovers, to get to the line, to surpass the Lakers’ intensity …
… and then have Davis plunge a dagger in between your shoulder blades as the horn goes off.
The Nuggets went to the freethrow stripe 14 more times. They fought back after being down 16. They led by 1, 103- 102, with 2.1 seconds left.
It was Clippers all over again. Until it wasn’t.
“We were in ( this) before, I think, ( in) the second or third game against the Clippers and we had it and kind of lost it at the end,” the Joker said. “We put in the effort. We put in the fight. We lost the game. But I think we played well most of the game.”
They won the second half by leaps and bounds, which is another reason Sunday hurt so stinking much. The third- quarter bite was back. The effort was, too.
But a 10- point halftime deficit against LeBron James feels more like 15 or 20. You expend so much energy, mental and physical, just trying to claw back to within shouting distance that when the time comes to push the turbo button, fumes are the only thing left in the tank. And yet the fumes were flying. Somehow.
Denver outscored the Lakers 24- 12 over the final eight minutes of the third. Dozier went after
Los Angeles, defensively, like a man possessed. Jokic scored 11 straight points over the last three minutes of the fourth quarter to flip an eight- point deficit into a 1- point Nuggets lead with 20.8 seconds on the clock.
Cue the twist ending.
The one with the rusty blade.
6! … 7! …
“This the Western Conference finals,” Malone said. “No moral victories. No silver linings.”
No second chances. No mercy. No margin, either. For all those comebacks, all that history, the Nuggets are staring at an 0- 2 hole in a series for the first time under Malone’s reign.
It’s just a number, granted. But the man in the bowtie is counting louder now, and you hope, underneath all that ringing, that the Nuggets can hear his pleas.