Luka Doncic’s hot first quarter sparks Lakers to win over shorthanded Nuggets

The streamers eventually would fall Wednesday night. The huge cheers for Bronny James coming off the bench in the fourth quarter were bound to happen. Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” would play.

It was fated by the time fans started filing into the building.

The latest chapter in the Lakers-Nuggets rivalry was going to look a lot different, with word that Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray weren’t going to play buzzing around before the game.

The script was flipped, the Lakers and their fans used to seeing Nuggets come off the injury report ahead of games against them. But without Denver’s best players, all it was going to take from the Lakers was a focused performance to get the job done.

By midway through the first quarter, Luka Doncic was so good that the bar for “focused performance” suddenly had been significantly lowered.

The Lakers handled the Denver Nuggets 120-108, Doncic’s monster first quarter enough to cover up for sluggish, sloppy play that might’ve cost them if Jokic and Murray were on the floor.

Doncic scored 21 points in the quarter, including nine in the first three minutes, to give the Lakers a lead that grew to 30 in the second half before they fully eased off the gas.

The Nuggets outscored the Lakers by 16 in the fourth quarter and still lost by 12, Doncic able to spend the final 12 minutes on the bench with the Lakers set to host Milwaukee on Thursday.

It’ll be the Lakers’ sixth game in eight days. They’re 3-2 in the first five.

Doncic finished with 31 points, nine rebounds and seven assists. And while he cooled off significantly after the first quarter, his presence again allowed the Lakers (43-25) to take and make wide-open threes all game. Dorian Finney-Smith, Gabe Vincent and Dalton Knecht combined to make 10 threes on 17 attempts.

“Sometimes teams send three guys at him. It’s just amazing that he finds the open man time and time again,” Vincent said of Doncic. “He makes the game so easy for us, you know, whether he’s getting to the free-throw line himself or walking to the rim or making a tough shot when we need one or finding the open guy over and over again. … He makes the right read every time and that’s something that’s invaluable.”

While the Lakers earned a 2-2 split with Denver this season, a valuable asset in a tight West race in which they should finish ahead of the Nuggets in tiebreaker scenarios, it didn’t really offer much insight as to where either team stands heading into the final four weeks of the season.

Before the game, Denver coach Michael Malone forcefully said that Jokic and Murray weren’t “resting” as the Nuggets competed without their dynamic duo for the second straight game. Both players are dealing with injuries, he said.

Without them, Denver didn’t have a chance, the Lakers riding a dominant quarter from Doncic during which he was able to get whatever he wanted near the basket or behind the three-point line, leading them to 46 first-quarter points.

“When you’ve got one player that scores 21 of ‘em,” guard Austin Reaves said, “you’re gonna score a lot of points in the quarter.”

The Lakers continued to earn high-quality shots in rapid succession, putting together enough good defensive stretches to keep Denver from seriously threatening.

The Lakers finish one of the toughest stretches of their schedule Thursday, the final of three sets of back-to-back contests.