Despite the obvious, maybe all time offensive firepower they’ve assembled, I can’t seem to shake the feeling that there is no chance in hell we see them making noise past the first or second round. Curious to hear the counter arguments, if that’s how you really feel.
Margin of victory is still a better estimator of how closely matched the two teams were on the court than game result.
If Team A sweeps Team B but every game is won by 1 point, then they beat Team C in 7 games but all 4 of their wins were by 40+ and their 3 losses were by 1, realistically which of Team B or C actually needs to improve the most to beat Team A in a series next year ?
If you want a practical example of this : the 66-win Celtics in ‘08 got taken to 7 by the 37-win Hawks, but they had a +84 point differential over the series (+12.0 ppg). Do you think if both teams had matched up again with minimal roster changes the next year that the Hawks would have that good of a chance of beating the Celtics just because it went to 7 the year before ?
You also have to account for variance in such a small sample. Per synergy the Nuggets overperformed their shot quality by +19 over the series while the Lakers underperformed theirs by -9. Keep in mind this accounts for what kind of shot is attempted and who is attempting it.
Meaning that if both teams had gotten the exact same shots they got in that series and had made them at the same %s as those players usually do, the point differential would flip by 28 points in favor of LA, which actually would result in a +4 for LA over the series.
Now these numbers aren’t perfect and there’s a rubberband effect to them so they’re usually overly flattering to the losing team, but there’s still some information there.
Lakers didn’t come close to winning the series against Denver. That doesn’t mean it’s not reasonable to expect them to have a pretty good chance of winning it should they meet again (especially since the Lakers got a bit better and the Nuggets got a bit worse).