Los Angeles Lakers: Ranking their top championship threats
3. Denver Nuggets
The Denver Nuggets are one of the only six active NBA teams without a single NBA Finals appearance. To get there, they would have to go through the Lakers, which is not an easy task to do.
Another way of looking at it is that the Los Angeles Lakers would have to go through the young and talented Nuggets, in order to represent the Western Conference in the ultimate title series. As things currently stand, these two teams hold the top two seeds in the conference.
As a result, the only way these teams could meet in the playoffs would be with a conference finals clash. The Nuggets have managed to sneak into the conference finals twice in franchise history, once in 1985 and once in 2009.
Related Story. Lakers team awards at the midseason point. light
Unfortunately for them, what followed next in both cases, was a perfectly prepared Lakers squad, led by Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 85′ and Kobe Bryant in 09′. The Nuggets would go on to lose the series 4-1 and 4-2 respectively.
Despite being a top-tier team in the past two years, people still view Denver as a regular season team. Perhaps they’re right. Luckily for them, a team this talented is bound to break out at some time. Let’s keep in mind that everybody viewed the Raptors as a regular season team as well.