Lakers News: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope's Denver Title Hopes, 2020 LA Title Regret
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Your Los Angeles Lakers will suit up for what could be their final game of the 2023 postseason tonight. Given that the team trails the Denver Nuggets 0-3 in their Western Conference Finals series thus far, every game from here on out in this best-of-seven series is a do-or-die for Los Angeles.
It's a strange reversal from the Lakers' relatively easy five-game Western Conference Finals defeat of the Nuggets en route to their 17th title in 2020.
One key starter for that LA team, however, has switched sides (though not by choice).
Swingman Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is Denver's starting shooting guard, after having being offloaded from LA to the Washington Wizards. Washington subsequently flipped KCP to the Nuggets during the 2022 offseason.
Caldwell-Pope spoke with Brandon "Scoop B" Robinson on his Scoop B Blog about how he feels regarding Denver's title chances this season.
"I can feel it," Caldwell-Pope told Robinson. "The way we’ve been playing, we don’t want anything less and we’re here for a reason. So I definitely feel like we can."
He went on to reflect about just how much his 2020 Lakers squad and his 2023 Nuggets squad appear to have in common.
"I do see a lot of similarities" between the 2020 Lakers and the 2023 Nuggets, KCP revealed. "As far as being together as a brotherhood, hanging out with each other, laughing and joking, being able to take that criticism from each other … I do see that a lot over and a lot of similarities that my championship had is here and I feel like that we can get it [a championship] here."
Caldwell-Pope also touched on a huge regret he has from his title run with the 2020 Lakers.
"The only thing that I would want from that is the championship parade that we didn’t because of COVID-19. But getting one here in Denver; it would be great to get one here too!"
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