Luka Doncic scored 21 points in the first quarter to help the Lakers beat the depleted Denver Nuggets on Wednesday at Crypto.com Arena.
The streamers eventually would fall Wednesday night. The huge cheers for Bronny James coming off the bench in the fourth quarter were bound to happen. Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” would play.
It was fated by the time fans started filing into the building.
The latest chapter in the Lakers-Nuggets rivalry was going to look a lot different, with word that Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray weren’t going to play buzzing around before the game.
The script was flipped, the Lakers and their fans used to seeing Nuggets come off the injury report ahead of games against them. But without Denver’s best players, all it was going to take from the Lakers was a focused performance to get the job done.
By midway through the first quarter, Luka Doncic was so good that the bar for “focused performance” suddenly had been significantly lowered.
