The Denver Nuggets were far and away the best team in the 2023 NBA playoffs as they won the championship in dominant fashion. The most surprising part of their run was the Western Conference Finals, where they swept the Los Angeles Lakers.
It didn’t seem, though, like a sweep was on the cards as the Lakers led 73-58 at halftime in Game 4, with LeBron James having scored 31 points. The Nuggets took over in the second half, however, to win 113-111 and Bruce Brown says they felt LeBron was done by the third quarter of the game.
“I thought they would get Game 4 just off of they’re down 3-0, and they’re gonna play way harder, but Bron ran out of gas,” Brown said on the Run Your Race podcast. “He had 30 in the first half… he was so passive to start the third quarter, we were like, ‘Oh, he’s done.'”
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LeBron played all but the last four seconds of that first half, and Theo Pinson felt that it showed he was tired. It is totally understandable that a 38-year-old was just gassed after putting in that much effort.
The third quarter saw James go 3-6 from the field for 6 points as he got more passive. He desperately needed his teammates to get going, but none of them really did, as the Nuggets won that quarter 36-16 to gain the upper hand.
LeBron played all 24 minutes in that second half but just wasn’t the same, with just 10 points in the period in total to finish the night with 40 points, 10 rebounds, 9 assists, and 2 steals. Perhaps if he was younger, he could have kept going, but his age and the fact that he was playing with a torn tendon in his foot, meant he just couldn’t.
LeBron James Praised The Nuggets After The Series
LeBron has faced some very good teams in his time with the Lakers, but after that series, he admitted the Nuggets were the best of the lot. It was only the third time in James’ career that he had been swept, with the two previous ones coming in the NBA Finals against the Spurs in 2007 and the Warriors in 2018.
Both of those were somewhat expected, though, as LeBron was a big underdog in them, thanks to the overwhelming disparity in talent. That wasn’t the case here, but the Nuggets, for the most part, just executed better than the Lakers in the big moments to claim a famous series victory.
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