When the Los Angeles Lakers jumped out to an 8-0 lead against the Denver Nuggets in Game 3 of their first-round series, you could almost feel the script coming together again.

Over and over, L.A. seems to fly out of the gates against Denver, seizes an early lead and then spends the rest of the game losing it.

The Nuggets won 112-105. They've beaten the Lakers 11 times in a row (when you include the postseason). And LeBron James and Anthony Davis are on the verge of being swept by this team for the second year in a row.

Down 0-3 to the reigning champions, it's time to examine how and why L.A. got to this point.

The biggest factors for this deficit are below.

5. Darvin Ham

Generally speaking, there's a lot more to NBA coaching than complaints from fans and analysts would suggest. There's so much happening behind the scenes that we'll likely never know about.

But there's also real merit to some of the criticism Ham has faced all year, especially as it relates to his rotation decisions. It took far too long for him to resort to the Lakers' most obvious starting five (D'Angelo Russell, Austin Reaves, LeBron, Rui Hachimura and AD). That may be impacting the team's continuity right now, but it's also a bit of a reach.

The bigger problems are more specific.

In this particular matchup, he may be trusting Russell a bit too much. In last year's sweep, he averaged 6.3 points, shot 32.3 percent from the field and was routinely targeted as a defender. Other than the first half of Game 2, this year's series has looked about the same.

That doesn't necessarily mean Ham shouldn't play him at all, but the matchup probably dictates he be less involved.

There was also the tactical error at the end of Game 2 when LeBron was called for a touch foul on Jamal Murray with less than a minute left and the Lakers up two. There was no reason to save the coach's challenge at that point. And given the way this postseason and challenges have been officiated, it felt like a play that had a decent chance to be overturned.

Instead, Murray drilled both free throws and held onto the momentum that eventually carried him through his game-winning shot.

AD's comments after Game 2 should've raised some alarm bells too. He told reporters, "We have stretches where we don't know what we're doing on both ends of the floor."

And while Ham and the team have rebutted that statement, the mere fact that it happens suggests there's at least some disconnect between the team and the coach.

Quotes like that aren't typical from highly functioning teams with even decent chemistry.

All of the issues above may not sound like much on their own, but piled up, they start to make it pretty difficult to win.

4. The Front Office

LeBron wanting to play in L.A. and AD forcing his way off the New Orleans Pelicans laid the groundwork for a pretty quick title run for the Lakers in 2020.

They won that championship by surrounding the two stars with size, defense and grit. And then they spent the next few years dismantling or letting that group go. They didn't want to spend enough to re-sign Alex Caruso, and they expended valuable assets (including Kyle Kuzma and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope) to acquire Russell Westbrook in 2021.

Anyone who'd even casually followed Westbrook's career had to know he wouldn't fit alongside LeBron and AD, but L.A.'s front office had to learn the hard way. And by the time the Lakers were able to unload Russ, they had to attach a first-round pick to him to complete the deal.

In the same three-team trade that sent Westbrook to the Utah Jazz, L.A. got Russell back, while the Minnesota Timberwolves got Mike Conley. It's impossible to know whether all teams would've signed off on a different version of the trade now, but hindsight suggests Conley's experience and leadership would've helped the Lakers far more than Russell has.

As a result of years of mistakes, the non-star Lakers are more of a motley crew than a well-fitting supporting cast for LeBron and AD.

Yes, the front office has had some wins, including signing Austin Reaves as an undrafted free agent and trading Kendrick Nunn and some second-round picks for Rui Hachimura.

But it's hard to win a playoff series when you're still recovering from the mistakes of the past (which might include one as recently as February, when the Lakers didn't move on from Russell).

3. D'Angelo Russell

The first half of Game 2 of this series felt like some kind of alternate reality.

Russell was 6-of-7 from three. He had 18 points and was plus-18 in 21 minutes. And the Lakers were up 15.

In the other 13 playoff halves he's played against the Nuggets over the last two postseasons, he's minus-65 with an 11.8 three-point percentage and 43 points on 64 shots overall.

It's almost impossible to survive a seven-game series against anyone, let alone the reigning champions and best player in the world, with a starter performing that poorly.

And the dreadful shooting is only part of this tragic equation.

Russell's disastrous plus/minus against Denver may have every bit as much to do with his defense. Last year, Bruce Brown hunted him out and attacked relentlessly. This time around, there isn't an individual player picking on him in quite the same way, but L.A.'s perimeter defense has been pierced repeatedly.

In basketball, when there are only five players allowed on the floor at a time, the struggles of one guard can have a much bigger and more noticeable impact than a wide receiver in football or forward in soccer.

And that's certainly been true of Russell, who just went 0-of-7 from the field for zero points in Thursday's Game 3.

2. Father Time

For the same reason, one individual superstar can go a long way toward contending.

Nikola Jokić is one of the most dominant playoff performers in NBA history. Since last season's season's title run, he's been pretty widely accepted as the best player in the world. And he's about to win his third MVP in four years.

Having one out of your five players on the floor at that level is huge. That's the kind of player LeBron was for much of this century. And while his performance is truly unprecedented for a 39-year-old, he's still a 39-year-old.

There's an argument he was still one of the league's 10 best players in 2023-24, but top-10 players don't typically carry a team quite like top-two or -three players.

Look at NBA history over the last 30-35 years. The Golden State Warriors had Stephen Curry. The Miami Heat had prime LeBron. The San Antonio Spurs had Tim Duncan. The earlier-2000s Lakers had Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. And the Chicago Bulls had Michael Jordan.

This version of L.A., the one with a subpar supporting cast assembled by Rob Pelinka and company, would have a much better shot with 2010 LeBron, but it's 2024.

And he's not the only one seemingly struggling with Father Time.

Davis is only 31, but it feels like an older 31. He was durable this season (the 76 games he played was a career high and a lot more than the 50 per year he averaged over the five campaigns prior to this one), but his injury history could age him quicker than other stars.

And one of the themes of this series has been him and LeBron gassing out in fourth quarters while Jokić is still sprinting up and down the floor on almost every possession.

AD is averaging a team-high 32.3 points in the series, but he's at just 4.3 with a 33.3 field-goal percentage in fourth quarters. Jokić, meanwhile, is at 8.0 points, 3.7 rebounds and 2.0 assists with a 62.5 field-goal percentage in the final frames of these games.

When your two best players are either past their primes or at the tail end of them, it's hard to outlast a team whose fifth-best starter (KCP) is the only one over 30.

1. The Denver Nuggets

Ultimately, the way this series is playing out has far more to do with the Nuggets than the Lakers.

We should've seen this coming. Denver just went 16-4 on the way to a championship last year. It was tied for the conference lead in wins in a brutal West in 2023-24. It has a generational leader in Jokić, who's on track for a top five to 10 career all time. And he's surrounded by a supporting cast that couldn't fit him any better.

Over the last two regular and postseasons, the Nuggets are plus-12.2 points per 100 possessions when Murray, KCP, Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon and Jokić are all on the floor.

Jokić is the engine, but Caldwell-Pope and MPJ provide timely shooting. Gordon can take over a game like few others from the dunker's spot, as he did in a Game 3 in which he had 29 points and 15 rebounds. And Murray is often responsible for taking over down the stretch.

The higher the stakes, the more he seems to transform into some kind of Kobe-Curry hybrid, as he did in the final frame of Game 2, when he hit a game-winning buzzer-beater over Davis.

L.A. is the more prominent team. It's one of the league's most storied and decorated franchises. But this specific Lakers team was the seventh seed for a reason, and it may have simply run into a juggernaut.