Lakers News: Michael Malone Calls Out Disparate Media Approaches To Denver, LA

He's not wrong.

After laying waste to a star-studded Phoenix Suns club in the second round of the playoffs, the Western Conference's top-seeded Denver Nuggets now lead your Los Angeles Lakers 2-0 in the Conference Finals.

Even still, a lot of the talk around the series has concerned adjustments LA can and/or perhaps should make, not the achievements of the club now likely to advance to the NBA Finals for the first time in its history (Denver made the ABA Finals in 1976, however).

Head coach Michael Malone is less-than-thrilled about the media skipping over his team in its breathless media coverage, per Sam Amick of The Athletic.

“You win Game 1 of the (West Finals), and all everybody talked about was the Lakers,” Malone said. “Let’s be honest. That was the national narrative, was ‘Hey, the Lakers are fine. They’re down 1-0, but they figured something out.’ No one talked about (how) Nikola (Jokic) just had a historic performance." 

"He’s got 13 triple-doubles now — third all time (in the playoffs). What he’s doing is just incredible. But the narrative wasn’t about the Nuggets. The narrative wasn’t about Nikola. The narrative was about the Lakers and their adjustments. You put that in your pipe, you smoke it and you come back, and you know what? We’re going to go up 2-0.”

Indeed, Jokic is averaging a triple-double in these playoffs thus far, and a high-scoring one at that. The 6'11" big man is notching 30.4 points on .549/.478/.798 shooting splits, 13.8 rebounds and 10.2 assists a night throughout the 2023 postseason.

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