On Saturday evening, the Denver Nuggets suffered their biggest loss of the season with an overtime road loss at the hands of the Los Angeles Lakers. It appeared that the Nuggets had the game wrapped up by the end of regulation, but Lakers guard Austin Reaves engineered a perfectly executed missed free throw, which he then rebounded and scored to tie the game.
After the game, Nuggets head coach David Edelman explained what happened in the game.
"It's one of those things that's 100 in the NBA," Edelman said, according to Bennett Durando of the Denver Post, formerly of Twitter. "It happened. You give them credit. But there were a lot of things that led to it that we could have done differently, maybe better."
Some criticized the Nuggets for not placing a fourth player in the lane to join in the rebounding action for Reaves' second free throw, which went straight to an empty area of the paint, where another Denver player could have been deployed had they so chosen.
A loss to Los Angeles would likely erase the good vibes from Denver's recent solid win over the San Antonio Spurs, even without Victor Wembanyama.
It was a particularly brutal game for shooting guard Jamal Murray, who scored only five points and was shut out of the contest, a full 180 points from his usual dominance against the Lakers in recent years.
The Nuggets are currently 41-27, and are just a game and a half away from the Phoenix Suns to avoid the play-in tournament in the Western Conference.
The Nuggets now have a few days off before they next face off at home against the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday evening.
