LOS ANGELES — Hours before Game 4 of the Western Conference finals tipped off Monday night, NBA officials rehearsed the traditional postgame trophy presentation. The dry run, necessary because the Denver Nuggets held a 3-0 series lead over the Los Angeles Lakers, happened to take place during LeBron James’s customary warmup period.
James, the only player on the Crypto.com Arena court so early in the afternoon, kept shooting as dozens of staffers prepared for a ceremony the four-time MVP seemed determined to postpone.
Despite James’s best efforts in the last-gasp circumstances, the Nuggets completed their four-game sweep with a 113-111 victory to advance to the NBA Finals for the first time. Denver center Nikola Jokic posted his eighth triple-double of the postseason with a team-high 30 points, 14 rebounds and 13 assists to claim series MVP honors, and he helped seal the win with a fallaway three-pointer and a running layup in the final three minutes.
James had his first 40-point effort in a playoff game since the 2020 Finals, but he missed two potential game-tying shots in the final 30 seconds as Denver escaped.
The Nuggets, who overcame a 15-point halftime deficit with a torrid start to the third quarter, will await the winner of the Eastern Conference finals between the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics. Miami holds a 3-0 series lead with a chance to sweep Boston in Tuesday’s Game 4, and the NBA Finals will begin June 1 regardless of how long the East finals last.
For James and the Lakers, the defeat capped an improbable postseason run launched by the midseason trade of Russell Westbrook. James, 38, appeared to carefully manage his energy during the postseason, but he came charging out of the gate Monday with 21 first-quarter points, including a fortunate three-pointer that swished through even though it was intended as a lob pass.
By halftime, James had 31 points on 11-for-13 shooting, already his highest-scoring performance of these playoffs, and had played all but the final four seconds of the first half. He finished with a game-high 40 points to go with 10 rebounds and nine assists, and he nearly played all 48 minutes, saying afterward that the pregame trophy rehearsal had been “a little motivating factor” in what became a memorable duel with Jokic.
“I don’t like to say it’s a successful year because I don’t play for anything besides winning championships at this point in my career,” James said. “I don’t get a kick out of making a [conference finals] appearance. I’ve done it a lot, and it’s not fun to me to not be able to be a part of getting to the Finals.”
Facing elimination, Lakers Coach Darvin Ham pulled out all the stops by front-loading his rotation, dropping D’Angelo Russell and Jarred Vanderbilt from the starting lineup in favor of Dennis Schröder and Rui Hachimura. To fill in his second-unit gaps, Ham called on seldom-used center Tristan Thompson, who signed with the Lakers in April after not playing all season.
The rotation tweaks helped Los Angeles leap to an 11-4 lead, and Denver played from behind throughout the half. The Nuggets looked aggravated at times, with forward Aaron Gordon receiving a technical foul after tangling with James and Coach Michael Malone incurring one of his own for disputing Jokic’s third foul, which came shortly before halftime.
Los Angeles was in front 73-58 at halftime, but Denver managed to erase that entire advantage less than eight minutes into the third quarter. Malone tightened his rotation by leaning heavily on his starters, who all scored in double figures.
The Nuggets outplayed the Lakers down the stretch for the third straight game to secure their historic Finals breakthrough, and Jokic was simply breathtaking in the biggest moments. With just under three minutes remaining, he launched a step-back three-pointer over Lakers center Anthony Davis off one leg that swished through as the shot clock expired. Then, in the final minute of regulation, Jokic drove past Davis, evaded Schröder and flipped in a layup to provide Denver’s winning margin.
“[Jokic] is the best player in the league,” Nuggets guard Bruce Brown said. “He makes tough shots, and I loved the aggressiveness on the last bucket of the game. He just said, ‘F--- it, I’m going to get a bucket for us.’”
Denver still needed one final defensive stand, and James attacked the paint with four seconds left hoping to force overtime. As he drove left, Gordon and Jamal Murray double-teamed James and prevented a shot attempt. The ball ricocheted around as time expired, and Jokic raised both his arms to celebrate.
“You’re just happy that you won a game,” Jokic said. “You beat a really, really good team. Anyone could have won it, and we just found a way to win the game. LeBron showed us what he’s capable of in the first half [when] he was just dominating the game. But we found a way to make him take tough shots.”
As the season-ending loss sank in, James said that he and Davis agreed that Denver might be “the best team we’ve played” in the playoffs since the duo teamed up in 2019.
“[The Nuggets are] just well orchestrated, well put together," James said. “They have scoring. They have shooting. They have playmaking. They have smarts. They have length. They have depth. When you have a guy like Jokic, who as big as he is but also as cerebral as he is, you can’t really make many mistakes. Even when you guard him for one of the best possessions that you think you can guard him, he puts the ball behind his head Larry Bird-style and shoots it 50 feet in the air and it goes in.”
The Nuggets’ triumph has been a long time coming. After joining the NBA from the ABA in 1976, Denver lost in its first four trips to the West finals, most recently in 2020 at the hands of the Lakers. Undeterred, the Nuggets continued methodically building a contender around Jokic, a two-time MVP they plucked in the second round of the 2014 draft.
The 28-year-old has led Denver to five straight playoff appearances, but he has faced persistent questions about whether he could defend well enough to be the best player on a serious contender. In the series finale, Jokic again outplayed Davis, who finished with 21 points on 6-for-15 shooting and 14 rebounds.
This year, Murray, Jokic’s chief sidekick, returned from an 18-month absence after knee surgery and helped power a dynamic offense that ranked fifth during the regular season and first in the playoffs. Denver claimed the West’s top seed Dec. 20 and never relinquished it, capitalizing on its high-elevation home-court advantage to eliminate the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round and the Phoenix Suns in the conference semifinals.
Jokic and Murray then flummoxed the Lakers’ defense throughout the West finals, forming a devastating inside-outside combination that proved too much for Los Angeles to handle. After Los Angeles used big lineups to hold Jokic in check during their 2020 playoff matchup, the Serbian center overwhelmed the Lakers’ smaller front line this time around, while the 26-year-old Murray added 25 points and five assists in the Game 4 victory.
“I think our chemistry is at an all-time high, the way we play, the way we read the game without even speaking,” Murray said. “We talk that language on the court. It’s just beautiful basketball, honestly. We’ve got four more wins to go.”
Denver’s continuity advantage proved decisive as some of Los Angeles’s midseason pickups struggled to find productive roles as the series unfolded. Meanwhile, the Nuggets’ experienced and well-balanced starting lineup, which included guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and forwards Michael Porter Jr. and Gordon, consistently outplayed its Lakers counterpart.
Porter, a 2018 lottery pick who missed nearly two full seasons with back injuries, established himself as a reliable third scorer with his potent three-point shot, making Los Angeles pay for overcommitting defensively to Jokic and Murray. Caldwell-Pope got hot in Denver’s Game 3 victory, and Gordon scored 22 points in the closeout win.
“Nikola would be the first one to admit he is not going to win a playoff game, a series or a potential championship by himself,” Malone said. “Just one player doesn’t do it. We all believe in each other, and that belief in one another is a very powerful, tangible thing.”
After the final buzzer sounded, Jokic doubled over to celebrate as his teammates mobbed him and rubbed his head. The trophy presentation went off without a hitch, and Jokic was serenaded with “M-V-P!” chants from his teammates and Nuggets fans scattered throughout the Los Angeles crowd.
“I remember the days when you could hear the ball bounce on the floor and there was no fans,” Jokic said. “Now, we have a sellout every other night.”