Two-time NBA champion and former Denver Nuggets guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope had some surprising thoughts about the club’s first round series victory over the Los Angeles Lakers back in April.
The Nuggets, then the defending champions, dispatched the Lakers in five games, ending Los Angeles’s postseason for the second straight year. But Caldwell-Pope, during an episode of The Draymond Green Show that aired Wednesday, explained that the Nuggets expended much of their energy on securing the top seed in the Western Conference, then shared that doing so made Denver feel like “the Lakers should have beat us.”
“It was a three-way tie for first,” Caldwell-Pope said. “I feel like that’s where we spent most of our … You know how towards the playoffs guys get their rest … But I feel like that’s where we spent most of our energy and time, trying to get that first place. Playing catch-up.”
“We get to the playoffs … we have no gas. We felt like the Lakers should have beat us,” Caldwell-Pope continued as Green agreed with him. “We was down every game, at least 10, maybe higher, 20-something [points] … Like just taking that energy, using it there. So it was a lot that went into that season. We wish we could have did better.”
Denver became just the fourth team in league history to win the first three games of a series after trailing at halftime in each contest. Whether such sleepwalking in the first halves of games was related to fatigue or not, the Nuggets managed to defeat the Lakers, then pushed the Minnesota Timberwolves to the brink in a seven-game series eventually won by the latter.
Wherever the Nuggets go from the disappointing end to the 2023-24 campaign, Caldwell-Pope won’t be along for the ride, as the veteran guard in June inked a three-year deal worth $66 million with the Orlando Magic.
