DNHQ Rooting Guide: (2) Denver vs. (7) L.A. Lakers; plus open thread

Can LA force a Game 6 back at home?

See the master index at Dub Nation HQ Rooting Guide For Other Teams.

Denver Nuggets

Ex-Warriors

• Current DEN head coach Mike Malone was an assistant coach for the Warriors from 2011-2013 under Coach Mark Jackson. He did a great job, getting honors as the best-regarded and best-paid assistant coach in the league, and lots of praise from Stephen Curry and Draymond Green.

Warriors Villains 

• No one is a real villain.

Petty Rivalries

• Nikola Jokic. The dazzling playmaker who plays like a guy at the YMCA made a deal with the devil. He’s beat out Steph Curry for MVP in recent years. But there is massive mutual respect between Draymond Green and Jokic.

• DeAndre Jordan. Now in his declining years, he was part of the Lob City Clippers, but was the least annoying prominent face. We studied that rivalry throughly before and found Dub Nation mostly didn’t care about DAJ. Past efforts by the front office to get DAJ resulted in stupid cap moves including losing Jeremy Lin. He also encouraged KD to leave the path of light to form the Jugger-Nets.

Team Grudges

• DEN has played GSW surprisingly tough in the Dynasty years. But GSW had the upper hand in the 2022 title run, beating a not-ready Nuggets team (injured Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon self-reportedly not high enough IQ yet).

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L.A. Lakers

Ex-Warriors

• D’Angelo Russell. As far as I know, DLo tried hard with the Warriors to the best of his ability (which seemed to not include defensive focus), and he helped us net Andrew Wiggins in trade (plus the draft pick that became Jonathan Kuminga), which led to the 2022 NBA Championship.
  
  DLo did not get voted Honorary Warrior For Life, but with a majority of fans having good will for him, he qualified for Honorary Warrior.

Friends

• None.

Unrequited Love

• Parts of Dub Nation really wanted to acquire Jarred Vanderbilt (All-NBA Motor) and Rui Hachimura.

Warriors Villains

• LeBron James. LeBron pioneered the age of players assembling as mercenary super squads at resource-rich franchises and then leaving when they’ve strip-mined everything for maximum short-term gain.
  
  LeBron combines all-time genius level play and athleticism (explosiveness plus invulnerability) with petty crap. One sequence that sums it up: His 2018 Finals Game 1 regulation performance was one of the best games I’ve ever seen; he then follows that with a mental meltdown after J.R. Smith’s meltdown; then smashes a whiteboard in the locker room after and breaks his hand and ruins any chance of an upset; then shows up to the post-Finals press conference in a “oh you mean this?” hand cast so that people would ask him the story.

• Anthony Davis. AD pioneered the age of players having multiple years left on their contract forcing themselves off the team via PR tricks, sudden injury issues and generally abandoning their team and contract.
  
  AD forced a trade to the Lakers by sieging the Pelicans well before his contract expired to team up with LeBron, though NOP took an amusingly long time to call his bluff. He won no fans in Dub Nation when the heavy favorite Lakers got a ref-colored win in the Play-In and he followed it with giddy trash talk.
  
  AD played a big role in the 2023 LAL victory over GSW with a lot of Dub Nation mad at his camping in the lane and getting a friendly whistle.

Petty Rivalries

• Austin Reaves worked his way up from the G-League, works hard on both ends, and has become possibly the worst sport-destroying foul-baiter on the planet. He must be stopped for the sake of impressionable children, the elderly, people looking in the direction of his games, marine habitats and basically all terrestrial lifeforms.

  • Update: AR seems to have toned down the foul-baiting, but there was a stretch in 2022-23 when he was Must-Not-Watch-TV.

• LAL picked Jalen Hood-Schifino at #17 right before GSW’s #19 Brandin Podziemski. You can either think this has no impact on GSW, or you can hope that JHS doesn’t end up being a superstar that didn’t quite fall to GSW.

Team Grudges

• Most of Dub Nation wished ill on the Lakers franchise long before LeBron and AD showed up to strip-mine. Now that they’re together, it is a recipe for Dub Nation disgust. That doesn’t even bring in the recent ref-fueled playoff defeats in 2023 and 2021.

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Bonus Video

Jonathan Kuminga's 138 dunks this season are the most by a Warrior in the play-by-play era. (1996-present)