LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – In 2008, Rajon Rondo’s Celtics oust­ed LeBron James’ Cav­a­liers from the sec­ond round of the play­offs. A year lat­er, Dwight Howard’s Mag­ic kicked James’ Cavs to the curb in the con­fer­ence finals. More than a decade lat­er, it was that tri­umvi­rate that dic­tat­ed a con­vinc­ing Lak­ers win over the Nuggets in Game 1 of the West­ern Con­fer­ence Finals.

With all due respect to Antho­ny Davis’ game-high 37 points, this is The Brow’s first con­fer­ence finals. Those three have enough hoops mileage to crack sev­er­al odometers.

Denver’s best counter? Paul Mill­sap, and his 116 play­off games. Across 14 sea­sons, Millsap’s been to the con­fer­ence finals twice, once as a rook­ie and anoth­er time, in 2015, with Atlanta. You Know Who was wait­ing there to sweep him out of the playoffs.

For the major­i­ty of the Nuggets, includ­ing fran­chise cor­ner­stones Niko­la Jokic and Jamal Mur­ray, last year’s sec­ond-round show­ing is all the expe­ri­ence they’ve got. And as com­pelling and inspir­ing as their his­toric run has been so far this post­sea­son, the Lak­ers are a dif­fer­ent ani­mal with a dif­fer­ent lev­el of motivation.

No one doubt­ed Los Ange­les’ tal­ent but their col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence may have been over­looked. Cer­tain­ly James wasn’t under­es­ti­mat­ed. His 9–1 con­fer­ence finals record is the type of sta­tis­tic that makes entire fran­chis­es shudder.

But what Ron­do and Howard did to the Nuggets in Game 1 was sheer gamesmanship.

Rondo’s sev­en points and nine assists off the bench carved up Denver’s sec­ond unit and main­tained the break­neck pace the Lak­ers pre­fer to play. Off turnovers, or even made shots, Ron­do was always scan­ning the court look­ing for an advan­tage. He and James totaled 21 assists com­bined. The Nuggets, as a team, had 23.

The angles he found – via pock­et pass­es, lobs and over­head dimes – took years to refine. One crush­ing alley-oop to Howard was launched more than 30 feet from the basket.

Howard played equal­ly as big a role in dis­man­tling Denver’s rhythm. If he wasn’t draped all over Jokic, goad­ing him into cheap fouls, then he was eaves­drop­ping on team hud­dles, pes­ter­ing and prod­ding the Nuggets every chance he got. Now in his sec­ond stint with the Lak­ers, Howard’s more akin to The Flea than the Super­man per­sona he rel­ished the major­i­ty of his career. But even after so many sea­sons in the league, his mus­cles and his pres­ence are too big to ignore.

“Dwight was real­ly good,” Jokic said. “He kind of picked up their energy.”

For the Nuggets to have any chance in this series, they can’t fall for Howard’s wily tricks or let Ron­do exploit them. Plus, the Nuggets have more press­ing con­cerns in the star pow­er of Los Ange­les’ two first-team All-NBA players.

In the sec­ond quar­ter, when the whis­tles blew as reg­u­lar­ly as Old Faith­ful, the Nuggets lost their com­po­sure. Fouls turned into frus­tra­tion, and turnovers turned into techs. The Lak­ers’ 17–1 run over the first five min­utes of the sec­ond quar­ter almost ren­dered the rest of the game mean­ing­less. The Nuggets have shown too much men­tal for­ti­tude to get undone by a tough whis­tle and a few play­off veterans.

If this post­sea­son has taught us any­thing about the resilien­cy of Denver’s young core, it’s that one game does not make a series.

“We’re not going to over­re­act,” Mur­ray said. “We just got­ta be better.”