The Los Angeles Lakers got humiliated by the Denver Nuggets once again on Saturday night, losing 127-102.
This outing proved to be so uncompetitive after the second quarter that former Laker, Russell Westbrook, felt emboldened to openly mock his old team on Instagram afterwards.
Nuggets coach Mike Malone has been famously described as the Lakers’ Daddy over the past couple of years, and Saturday showed why.
But it’s not just Malone. The entire Denver squad absolutely owns Los Angeles.
After the game, Austin Reaves acknowledged that the Nuggets are the Lakers’ daddies.
“Last year was last year… Tonight they beat the s**t out of us.”
Reaves finished the game with 19 points, so he actually did his part.
Unfortunately he rest of his teammates did not.
J.J. Redick’s Takeaways From Nuggets Loss
Redick, for his part, tried to take a more systematic approach to his squad’s humiliating defeat.
“Schematically, certainly we’ll have to review some stuff,” Redick said. “Clearly, the spirit to compete just wasn’t there.”
“We’ll solve it like we solve other problems,” Redick promised. “But obviously, we’ll do it internally.”
Redick also acknowledged that the third quarter is where hings really got away from L.A.
“I have a pretty clear idea of what happened in the third,” Redick said. “But whatever it was, it was not because we were haunted by the ghosts of the past or something like that. It was kind of obvious to me what happened there. Just not the right spirit.”
The Nuggets have been much better than the Lakers for years, and it doesn’t look like that will change any time soon.