L2M report confirms Nikola Jokic lane violation in Thunder-Nuggets Game 4 The officials during Nuggets-Thunder Game 4 did an excellent job, nailing every single call in the final two minutes.
The Denver Nuggets and the Oklahoma City Thunder played one of the uglier playoff games that you’ll see in Game 4 on Sunday, with the Thunder eventually pulling away with a 92-87 win to even the series at two games each.
Sometimes in the playoffs, close games are affected by missed calls at the end of the game, but not in this case. The NBA’s Last Two Minute Report came out on Monday, citing that no called were missed, called or uncalled, during the final two minutes of a very tense contest in Denver.
That includes a controversial double lane violation called on Nuggets star Nikola Jokic and multiple Thunder players entered the lane early on a free throw. The call resulted in a jump ball at center court. While the officials did their jobs, it was the Thunder who were the calmer and sharper of the two teams.
Unlike in Games 2 and 3, Oklahoma City was able to get stops on defense and made just enough shots on the other end to come away with the victory. Both teams really struggled to score throughout the day, which could be attributed to playing an early afternoon game on Sunday less than 48 hours after a brutal overtime clash in Game 3 late Friday night.
While the Thunder have one of the best defenses in basketball and the Nuggets have had some success defensively in this series, both teams were consistently missing good looks and looked exhausted during the first half.
This is now a tied series, so that fatigue factor could play a big role in the final three games. That would seem to favor Oklahoma City, who plays more players in its rotation and puts less of a load on its starters throughout games.
The Thunder are also much younger than Denver is and played just four games in a first-round sweep while the Nuggets played a grueling seven-game series with the Los Angeles Clippers.
