Sluggish Nuggets dominated by energized Lakers in Game 4

LOS ANGELES — When it’s all said and done, the Lakers’ domination of the Nuggets will probably be much ado about nothing.

But Saturday night, it was really something.

Leading from start to finish and playing with a fire the Nuggets lacked, Los Angeles, with its season on the brink, rolled to a 119-108 Game 4 victory at rocking Crypto.com Arena.

“We didn’t match their energy tonight,” Denver’s Michael Porter Jr. said. “We wanted to close it out tonight, but we knew that team wasn’t going to roll over.”

The Nuggets lead the first-round series 3-1 as they head back for Monday night’s Game 5 at Ball Arena, knowing that no NBA team has ever rebounded from a 3-0 deficit to win a seven-game playoff series.

“I learned in horse racing. It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish,” center Nikola Jokic said.

Still, Denver will carry the weight of the memory that the Lakers led at halftime in all four games of this series thus far. While coach Michael Malone said he was more concerned that the Nuggets weren’t ready to play Saturday night than he was about the four-game trend, he still believes Denver’s cold starts are an issue.

“That’s four games in a row that we have lost the first quarter and that we’ve been down at halftime,” Malone said. “To close a team out, you can’t play a half of basketball. If we are going to take this in five games in front of our home crowd, we are going to have to come out ready to play and sustain that for 48 minutes because that team is not going anywhere.”

The Lakers entered Saturday’s game as losers of 11 consecutive games to the Nuggets. Denver also swept them in last year’s Western Conference Finals. But with a dominating inside game and a balanced attack, L.A. led by as many as 19 in the fourth quarter. The night’s most telling statistic: The Lakers outscored the Nuggets 72-52 in the paint.

Before the game, Malone said the Nuggets couldn’t afford to shoot poorly and get pounded in the paint if they wanted to win. It turns out he was completely right.

“The paint was a joke,” he said. “I sounded like a broken record tonight. Every huddle was ‘paint, paint, paint.’ In Game 3 they had 70 (points in the paint) and we found a way to win. Tonight, they had 72. They had 42 at halftime. That’s an incredible number.

“I just didn’t think we had the requisite physicality or urgency. This did not seem like a close-out game. But give them credit. Their backs were against the wall, and they came out and handled their business.”

L.A. center Anthony Davis scored 25 points on 11-of-17 shooting and hauled in a game-high 23 rebounds. He’s been the Lakers’ most dominant player this series. LeBron James scored 30 on 14-of-23 shooting.

“We have talked a lot about sustaining our effort and sustaining our energy,” James said. “I thought the third quarter was very important. We’ve had a lead in a lot of these games and the second half they have jumped on us. … But we held the lead and were able to close it out in the fourth quarter.”

Porter’s long-range shooting (25 points, including 4-of-9 from downtown) and Jokic’s triple-double (33 points, 14 rebounds, 14 assists) kept Denver within range to stage a rally like it did in Game 2. But the Lakers never let up, and the Nuggets never made a serious second-half run.

Guard Jamal Murray, the hero of Denver’s Game 2 victory when he hit a buzzer-beater jumper, struggled shooting again. He scored 22 points but shot just 9 of 23 from the floor, including 0 for 4 on 3-pointers. He appeared to be grabbing his leg in the second half, but the Nuggets said he did not suffer an injury.