1.You can’t beat the Lak­ers when… From a phys­i­cal­i­ty stand­point, Game 1 felt like the var­si­ty (Lak­ers) against the fresh­men (the Nuggets). And every time one of the var­si­ty mugs ran over some­body or threw an elbow, the ref­er­ees got awful­ly qui­et. When­ev­er the kids got a lit­tle chip­py, the whis­tles came fly­ing. The Lak­ers’ 32 trips to the free-throw line in the first half were the third-most ever for an open­ing two quar­ters in NBA post­sea­son his­to­ry. Ridiculous.

2. Mid-game blues. Felt a lit­tle like that open­ing tilt in the Clip­pers series didn’t it? The Nuggets start­ed strong, match­ing the top seed’s inten­si­ty for a quar­ter and change — and then fell apart and nev­er got off the mat again. Los Ange­les outscored Den­ver 67–41 in quar­ters 2 and 3, stretch­es of the game that belonged to the Nuggets dur­ing their stun­ning come­back against L.A.’s oth­er club. In the sec­ond stan­za, Den­ver turned it over sev­en times and com­mit­ted 10 fouls.

3. Dwight Howard makes us miss Jor­dan Clark­son. Remem­ber how Clark­son couldn’t stop com­ing off the Jazz bench and get­ting under your skin? That’s Howard’s role in this series, only the skin he’s get­ting under is Niko­la Jokic’s. Once Super­man entered the game, the Jok­er was all over the place, pick­ing up three fouls by the ear­ly part of the sec­ond quar­ter and look­ing entire­ly out of sync, even by Big Hon­ey stan­dards. Mean­while, the Lak­ers’ 34-year-old big man fin­ished with 13 points and two blocks.