LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – Niko­la Jokic had done absolute­ly every­thing with­in his pow­er to will the Nuggets to a win.

It didn’t matter.

Antho­ny Davis’ buzzer-beat­ing 3‑pointer crushed the Nuggets’ hopes of anoth­er dra­mat­ic sec­ond-half come­back Sun­day night and staked the Lak­ers to a 2–0 lead in the West­ern Con­fer­ence Finals. His dra­mat­ic shot, in the face of an out­stretched Jokic, dropped the Nuggets 105–103. It’s the first time in Denver’s last five play­off series that it’s faced a 2–0 deficit.

“I want to take those shots,” Davis said. “This is what they brought me here for.”

“It feels like we’re down in the series, and we’ve got­ta win Game 3,” Nuggets coach Michael Mal­one said. “Whether you’re down 3–1 or 2–0, obvi­ous­ly next game is the biggest game for us.”

Jokic, who scored 11 con­sec­u­tive points and had giv­en the Nuggets the lead with a bul­ly bas­ket over Davis only moments ear­li­er, fin­ished with 30 points and nine assists in the dev­as­tat­ing loss. Jamal Mur­ray added 25, but the Nuggets couldn’t cap­i­tal­ize after eras­ing a 16-point sec­ond-half deficit.

The Nuggets missed five free throws in the fourth quar­ter, includ­ing four from reserve P.J. Dozi­er. The lanky guard had some huge defen­sive moments to keep on the court.

“He feels awful about the missed free throws,” Mal­one said.

LeBron James had 26 points and 11 rebounds, his first-half ener­gy build­ing the lead that the Nuggets near­ly over­came. Davis scored 22 of his 31 in the sec­ond half, capped off by the stun­ning triple that saved Los Ange­les’ collapse.

Down 16 with 8:12 left in the third quar­ter, the Nuggets played with the com­po­sure of a team that had already made NBA his­to­ry. They hung in despite a bar­rage of Davis jumpers and kept plug­ging away on offense with care­ful, method­i­cal pos­ses­sions. Mur­ray led the charge with 10 points in the quar­ter, as he and Michael Porter Jr. found twine from 3‑point range. On defense, they forced six turnovers and held the Lak­ers to just 42% shoot­ing. The Nuggets closed on a 24–12 run and faced just an 82–78 deficit head­ing into the fourth.

It was the exact same tena­cious approach they used in com­ing back from two 3–1 deficits in the pri­or two rounds. Porter, in one of the most aggres­sive games he’s played in the post­sea­son, had 15 points on 6‑of‑9 from the field.

After review­ing film from Game 1, Mal­one felt there was noth­ing wrong schemat­i­cal­ly with his team’s approach. They just had to play bet­ter. Turnovers, tran­si­tion defense and urgency were all empha­sized between games.

The Lak­ers showed so much speed com­ing out of Game 1 that Mal­one said his team had to recon­sid­er how hard to crash the offen­sive glass off their own misses.

“But it’s def­i­nite­ly been a point of empha­sis hav­ing offen­sive rebound­ing dis­ci­pline,” Mal­one said. “Four and five can work the glass. We want one, two and three back. For our five men, if they’re on the perime­ter, don’t even take a step towards the rim, just get back.”

The Nuggets ben­e­fit­ed from a clunky first half where whis­tles and tech­ni­cal fouls slowed the pace of the game dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Los Ange­les took a 60–50 lead into half­time, which didn’t feel as large con­sid­er­ing how many errors the Nuggets had made. They had 13 turnovers over the first two quar­ters, includ­ing many that were self-inflicted.

Their care­less­ness detract­ed from an oth­er­wise decent half, where Jokic (14 points), Mur­ray (10) and Porter (10) all found some sem­blance of rhythm. Jera­mi Grant tried dili­gent­ly, but try­ing to stop James was akin to jump­ing in front of a train. Los Ange­les’ All-NBA for­ward poured in 20 points in the first half.

When Howard came off the bench mid­way through the sec­ond quar­ter, it seemed his only job was to intim­i­date. His ener­gy and phys­i­cal­i­ty were infec­tious, but also detri­men­tal. He picked up the Lak­ers’ first tech before assis­tant Phil Handy drew another.

“I think what you are see­ing time and time again is bench­es are very loud when things are going their way,” Mal­one said pre­scient­ly before the game. “It’s qui­et as a church mouse when things aren’t going their way. A lot of front run­ning benches.”

Fol­low­ing Game 1, where the offi­cials became far too big a sto­ry, the ref­er­ees put a quick stop to any extracur­ric­u­lar chatter.