The Los Angeles Lakers’ 123-100 victory over the Denver Nuggets on February 22 felt like a statement that the Lakers were for real. In that game, Luka Dončić enjoyed his first good game in the purple and gold, dropping 32 points and adding 10 rebounds and seven assists.
Nearly a month later, the teams are still fighting for the second seed in the Western Conference, with very little separation or clarity. Right now, it’s the Houston Rockets with the upper hand, because they are tied for the second seed with the Nuggets, one game ahead of both Los Angeles and the Memphis Grizzlies.
Tonight’s rematch, which will take place at 10 p.m. ET at Crypto.com Arena, will offer the latest twist in the NBA’s most exciting storyline headed into the postseason. There are injury concerns hanging over both teams, though — LeBron James remains out with a groin strain, while Nikola Jokić is questionable with elbow and ankle issues.
Even with Jokić questionable, Denver is a two-point favorite at DraftKings Sportsbook (-135 on the Moneyline) and the point total is set to 233. Meanwhile, the Lakers are +114 on the Moneyline.
Christian Braun 15+ Points (+105)
Braun is questionable for tonight’s contest with a left foot injury that kept him out of Monday’s 114-105 win over the Golden State Warriors, along with Jokić and Jamal Murray (ankle). But if he plays, he should be effective; his rapid improvement this season is one of the major reasons why the Nuggets should still have a chance at winning a title despite having the league’s 19th ranked defense. Since January 1, Braun has appeared in all but one game and averaged 16.0 points and 5.2 rebounds per game while posting an ultra-efficient 63.8% effective field goal percentage. Denver is 25-12 in those games, the league’s third-best record across that span.
This Los Angeles defense is no fluke — it has had the league’s fourth-best defense since January 1, a sample size that, at this point, accounts for more than half the season — and even the offense-oriented Dončić has been a significantly above-average defender since joining the Lakers. But since losing James — who is having one of the worst defensive seasons of his career — Los Angeles has allowed the 13th-most points. Austin Reaves will be too focused on providing elite shooting as Dončić’s co-star to stop Braun on defense.
Austin Reaves 4+ Three-Pointers Made (+130)
Speaking of Reaves, I argued that the league’s best third option — the contenders for that hypothetical award are probably him, Darius Garland, and Chet Holmgren — would make four three-pointers in the win over the San Antonio Spurs on Monday. When the game rolled around, he bettered that, making five of his 13 three-point attempts in a 30-point performance. Reaves is now averaging 28.0 points, 7.0 rebounds, and 7.6 assists since James’ injury, and if the Lakers can find a way to tap into this superstar version of Reaves in the playoffs, it will raise their ceiling tremendously. He has hit four or more triples in each of his past four games, the last three of which Dončić also played.
At some point, Reaves might be bound to cool off — after all, his three-point percentage for the season is 3.4 percentage points lower than the rate he’s been hitting at over his last five games — but I don’t think that’ll happen tonight with James still sidelined. Across his last five games, Reaves has posted a 27.8% usage rate, the eighth-highest among 60 players who have played all five games and totaled at least 150 minutes. In that span, he’s accounted for 26.9% of Los Angeles’ made triples, and since adding Dončić, the Lakers have averaged 15.0 made threes per game, the fifth-most in the league. For the season, the Nuggets have conceded the eighth-most made treys on the league’s 10th-best percentage.
Jarred Vanderbilt 2+ Assists (-105)
To be fair, when you think of Vanderbilt, his passing isn’t one of the first four things to come to mind: his perimeter defense, rebounding, aggressiveness, and even three-point shooting are all more notable parts of his game than his playmaking. That notion is valid; he’s only averaged more than two assists per game for a full season once in his career and has dished out more than one assist only eight times in 23 games this season. Besides one seven-assist performance, his best passing mark for the season is just three. You get zero bonus points if you can guess who he had that seven-assist game against.
Vanderbilt won’t have the same opportunity as he did in that game against Denver last Friday, given that virtually every important Los Angeles role player sat that day. That day, Vanderbilt started alongside Reaves, Jordan Goodwin, Dalton Knecht, and Alex Len, with Christian Koloko, Shake Milton, Markeiff Morris, Cam Reddish, and Bronny James getting minutes off the bench. Those players aren’t comparable with the ones who will take the court Wednesday, so Vanderbilt won’t get 24 minutes of playing time like he did that day. But by the same token, the players who are active today have more reliable jump shots than those who suited up that evening. Denver has been extremely susceptible to ball movement, allowing the most assists in the league.
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