Lakers top Nuggets in West finals opener
Antetokounmpo wins 2nd straight NBA MVP award
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Florida, Sept 19, (AP): Anthony Davis had 37 points and 10 rebounds, LeBron James added 15 points and 12 assists, and the Los Angeles Lakers rolled to a 126-114 victory over the Denver Nuggets in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals.
Slow starters in the previous two rounds, the top-seeded Lakers put this one away in a hurry, opening a doubledigit lead in the first half that they easily extended in the third quarter.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope scored 18 points and Dwight Howard rejoined the rotation with 13 in a powerful return to the conference finals for the Lakers, who hadn’t been to the NBA’s Final Four since winning their last championship in 2010.
Los Angeles dropped Game 1 against both Portland and Houston before winning the next four games. The Lakers quickly knocked off any rust for another long layoff in the bubble against a Denver team that’s had things much tougher.
Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray each scored 21 points for the Nuggets, playing in the conference finals for the first time since the Lakers beat them in 2009.
Denver overcame 3-1 deficits against Utah and the Clippers, becoming the first team to do that twice in a postseason. The Nuggets immediately fell behind again, digging themselves a big hole when Jokic and Murray each picked up three fouls in the first half that just got deeper in the second half.
Game 2 is Sunday.
Davis scored 14 points in the first quarter, but the Nuggets shot nearly 64 percent, with Murray’s 3-pointer as time expired giving them a 38-36 lead.
Alex Caruso converted a three-point play to open the second and start a 17-1 run by the Lakers to start the period and make it 53-39 before the Nuggets made their first field goal after more than five minutes. The lead stayed right around there for the remainder of the half, as the Lakers paraded to the foul line while Jokic, Murray and Paul Millsap went the bench with three fouls. Los Angeles shot a whopping 24 free throws in the period – more baskets than either team made in the half – and led 7059 at the break.
An 11-2 burst in the third blew it open at 92-71 and the Lakers cruised home.
Meanwhile, Giannis Antetokounmpo’s historic year earned him a historic awards sweep.
The Milwaukee forward is the NBA’s Most Valuable Player for the second consecutive season, receiving that award Friday. He got the Defensive Player of the Year award earlier in these NBA playoffs.
The 25-year-old Antetokounmpo becomes just the third player in league history to win MVP and Defensive Player of the Year in the same season, joining only Hall of Famers Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon.
“Michael Jordan, one of the best players who’s ever done it, if not the best,” Antetokounmpo said. “Hakeem, a guy that I look up to, he came from where I’m from, Nigeria, where I have roots. ... Just being in the same sentence with them, that means a lot to me.”
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Antetokounmpo – who was in his native Athens, Greece, with his family when the award was announced – received 85 votes. There were 101 votes available; 100 from a panel of global sports writers and broadcasters who cover the league, plus one additional vote through fan balloting.
“It feels good to get this award announced when I’m back home,” Antetokounmpo said, after telling NBA Commissioner Adam Silver – who was in possession of the trophy Friday – to hang on to the hardware until he returns to the US.
“I’m going to ship it to Greece,” Silver said during the televised announcement show on NBA TV.
“No, don’t do that,” Antetokounmpo replied. “I’ll come get it when the season starts.”
LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers got the other 16 first-place votes and finished second, and James Harden of the Houston Rockets finished third. James has been first, second or third in the MVP voting now 11 times in his career, and Harden has been a top-three finisher in each of the last four seasons.
James, a four-time MVP, said he was not pleased initially when he saw that he finished second by such a wide margin. “Not saying that the winner wasn’t deserving of the MVP, but that (ticked) me off,” James said.
He later said Antetokounmpo “had a hell of a season”, but said he has some doubts about how awards get decided.
“I don’t know how much we are really watching the game of basketball, or are we just in the narration mode, the narrative,” James said.
Antetokounmpo’s numbers this season were unprecedented, with averages of 29.5 points, 13.6 rebounds and 5.6 assists per game. Nobody had ever averaged those numbers over a full season; Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor both had seasons where they topped Antetokounmpo’s averages for points and rebounds, though both fell just shy of matching his assist average.
And the numbers weren’t inflated by big minutes, either. Antetokounmpo was fifth in the NBA in scoring, second in the league in rebounding – but only 71st in minutes per game. He led the Bucks to the NBA’s best record this season, before Milwaukee were ousted from the playoffs by Miami in the Eastern Conference semifinals.