Nuggets open as giant favorite to beat Lakers in NBA Playoffs

The biggest favorite to win in the first round of the NBA Playoffs are the Denver Nuggets, who will take on the Los Angeles Lakers for a second straight season.

Last year the two West foes met in the Western Conference Finals, where the Nuggets swept the Lakers in four games. That quick work is part of a larger eight-game winning streak against the Lakers for the Nuggets. The dominance has led to some in Denver to call the Nuggets the Lakers daddies which in turn brought some ire from the Lakers. That didn’t translate to the court for Los Angeles, who lost on Opening Night, Kobe’s Statue Day and a third time against Denver in SoCal this season.

This will be just the second trip for the Lakers to Denver since Game 2 of the West Finals last year. They never got back to Colorado because of the sweep and they only came to the Mile High City on ring night this season.

Whatever the reason is, bookmakers are bullish on the Nuggets, opening the series odds at -450 for Denver to win and +350 for Los Angeles. Those have since moved to -375 for the Nuggets and +300 for the Lakers, signaling some money has come in on LeBron James squad. As have some takes, with Skip Bayless being the first of likely many to pick against the reigning champion Nuggets. Still, the team looking to go back-to-back is a giant favorite to win the West outright, with the odds holding at +135 despite the opponent not being known.

It’s no shock that the sharps are all over the Nuggets like this after they showed very little championship hangover this year and have proven to rise up when needed repetitively. Some fan money will probably keep coming on the Lakers, just like the media takes, but odds are Michael Malone will just use that as motivation as he did last year.

The Lakers and Nuggets are very similar teams from last season. James and Anthony Davis are LA’s starring duo, and they have fallen over and over to Jokic and Murray. The Lakers won four more games this season than last and will benefit from more time off between games in the first round than the bunched-up nature of the late stages of the postseason. Los Angeles also added Gabe Vincent to their team, who Denver saw playing for the Heat in the NBA Finals a year ago. Vincent missed most of the season, so they picked up former Colorado Buffaloes star Spencer Dinwiddie late in the year. D’Angelo Russell, who struggled in last year’s series, has been playing good ball and hit the biggest shot of Tuesday’s game. Davis played a career-high 76 games and was a Defensive Player of the Year candidate. But it all comes back to James, in his 21st season and seeking a fifth championship. This year James has shot a career-high from three and stayed mostly healthy though he’s dealing with an ankle lump currently.

The Nuggets also won four more games in this year’s tougher Western Conference. The 57-win team earned the No. 2 seed because of the wild final weekend of the season. Had Denver not lost to the bottom-feeding Spurs, the Nuggets would’ve set a franchise record for wins in an NBA season and would be facing the winner of Pels vs. Kings/Warriors. But fate put the Nuggets against the Lakers again.

The two teams’ matchups have drawn a ton of media attention from before last year’s playoffs, through the series and after it. James and Davis said they had conversations about the Nuggets in the offseason and then the two teams faced off for Game 1 of the regular season when Denver raised the championship banner and beat the visitors. The series will certainly draw eyeballs for on and off-the-court reasons but it could be James’ final pass of the baton to Jokic, after he sore-losered threatened retirement after last year’s sweep.

The two franchises have met in the postseason eight times before now with the Nuggets only win coming last year to advance to the NBA Finals. This is the third run-in between James and Jokic in the playoffs, the other came in the bubble’s conference finals, and this year’s is the rubber match.

The series begins on Saturday and the full schedule for it can be found here.