For all the talk on what he is, or what he will be … let’s start with who Bo Nix isn’t.

He’s not Russell Wilson. Thank goodness.

“I know my role, OK?” David Morris, Bo Nix’s personal QB coach and founder of QB Country, told me with a chuckle. “And I’m not up there to try and tell Sean Payton how to coach quarterbacks. I’m here for Bo and when he needs advice in the offseason and (for) supplementary things I know. I know how lucky he is to be coached by him and by all those guys up there.”

If Nix commands a huddle half as well as he commanded the podium at Dove Valley on Friday, the Broncos are good to go.

“I’m excited to just embrace it all,” Nix said. “That’s what I was able to do at Oregon. You go around and you watch other teams and support the city. Not just the organization and the teams, but to be around for the rest of the city and just show up. Because ultimately, on Sundays, they’re going to show up for you. So that’s what I’m excited about.”

The franchise savior? He’s human. Which is a delightful change of pace from young Jay Cutler, the last Broncos quarterback (2006) to be drafted in the first half of the first round before Nix went at No. 12 on Thursday. Cutler was a crusty young sort, a curmudgeon before his time.

“I see (and) feel a lot of Jake Locker with Nix,” said Fox Sports analyst Brock Huard, an old Pac-12 QB himself, of the Broncos’ new rookie signal-caller. “Having to play early on a bad team would be incredibly detrimental to his NFL future.

“He’s a plus-athlete, plus-character prospect. His arm is good, not great, though the Rocky Mountain air would help. If Sean (Payton) goes back to his QB roots, Nix checks Bill Parcells’ wish list for the position: Tough. Productive. No drama. Leader.”

So he’s not Drew Lock, either.

No dancing. No COVID-19 shenanigans.

“We have a great opportunity here. It’s an unreal organization. (Denver) fans are incredible. They put so much effort to watch us succeed,” Nix said. “Everyone that is a part of the organization, that’s what our goal is. So for me, I just have to start from somewhere and just grow each and every day to be the best player that I can possibly be for my teammates and for my coaches.

“I’m so excited to be a part of this quarterback room with Ben (DiNucci), Zach (Wilson) and Jarrett (Stidham). Obviously, they’ve had great careers thus far. They’re all different, but I feel like we’re kind of all made up the same — just ultimate competitors and excited to grow as players.”

No ego. No conceits. No airs. Faith, family, football. Raiders first, social media sixth.

“He’s been coached hard,” Morris explained. “He expects that. By the same token, look, Sean Payton is one of the best. So anytime you can take coaching from him, it’s a great opportunity.

“Bo expects excellence and demands it of himself first. I think those two together, it’s going to be competitive — I kind of foresee highly competitive, exciting, creative things going on between those two.”

Nix is 24 and still came off Friday as wise beyond his years, measured and mature. A yes-sir, no-ma’am gentleman, without being remotely hokey.

Or remotely hockey.

“I know the Avalanche are really good, I hear,” the Broncos QB said. “I’m not necessarily a huge hockey fan, but I’ll watch a game …”

His eyes darted nervously, as if taking careful steps not to offend this puck-happy home.

” … or … match.”

Cue the scribe laughter.

Even Nix smiled at that one.

“I don’t even technically know what it’s called,” he continued.

All good. And if you bring your “A” version of it to Empower Field, dude, you can call it whatever you like.

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SANTA MONICA, Calif. — A Game 4 doesn’t have near the buzz of a Game 7.

That doesn’t matter to the defending NBA champion Nuggets, who spent Friday psyching themselves up for Saturday night’s Game 4 against the Lakers at Crypto.com Arena.

If they win, the Nuggets will sweep the Lakers out of the playoffs on their home court for the second consecutive year and advance to the second round. Last year, Nikola Jokic scored 30 points, snared 14 rebounds and dished off 13 assists as the Nuggets advanced to the NBA Finals for the first time in team history with a tense 113-111 victory.

Saturday night, Denver expects a battle royale.

“We had to win four close-out games to win the championship last year, so our guys understand that,” coach Michael Malone said from the team’s hotel. “This will be the hardest game of the series, and the Lakers are not going to go out without a fight. We know that. They have Hall of Famers and all-time greats playing for them, and their backs are against the wall.

“So how do we trick our minds into becoming the more desperate team? The more urgent team? They are not going to just give this to us. If we are going close this out tomorrow, we are going to have to go into (their arena) and take it from them. It will be a hell of a challenge.”

The Nuggets have trailed by double digits in all three games of this series before rallying to win. Guard Jamal Murray, who won Game 2 with a jump shot at the buzzer, said his team has not come close to playing its best basketball. He said that the Nuggets better come closer on Saturday night because he expects the Lakers to come out fired up.

“No one wants to get swept — let alone twice,” Murray said. “The (Lakers are) such a big organization. They have diehard fans, and it’s always loud in there, and they’ll have a lot of energy and emotion. They’re playing hard.”

Murray didn’t mention that the Nuggets have beaten Los Angeles 11 straight times, but that’s certainly going to provide some payback mojo for the Lakers.

In last year’s Game 4, Murray scored 25 points for the top-seeded Nuggets, who overcame LeBron James’ 31-point first half and a 15-point halftime deficit to finish off the sweep.

James finished with 40 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists, but he missed two shots in the final seconds. Aaron Gordon was officially credited with blocking James’ final shot at the buzzer.

After the game, James touted the Nuggets’ talent and teamwork.

“Me and AD (Anthony Davis) were just talking in the locker room, (and) we came to the consensus this is one of the best teams, if not the best team, we’ve played together for all four years,” James said. “Just well orchestrated, well put together. They have scoring. They have shooting. They have playmaking. They have smarts. They have length. They have depth. And one thing about their team, when you have a guy like Jokic, who is as big as he is but also as cerebral as he is, you can’t really make many mistakes versus a guy like that.”

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LOS ANGELES — They showered Darvin Ham with boos as the coach was introduced before opening tip. They bombarded him with more pointed chants before time expired in an otherwise lifeless building.

“Fire Darvin!”

But is this Ham’s fault? D’Angelo Russell’s? The bench’s? All of the above? The Nuggets have infiltrated Los Angeles and sowed instability within an American institution. The Lakers’ superstar foundation is crumbling under the overwhelming pressure of Denver’s starting lineup, which is on the verge of securing a second playoff sweep of Los Angeles in as many seasons.

“To beat a team like that in the first round, who I think if seeded differently, they could make it to the Western Conference Finals or something like that, it’s definitely a challenge,” Peyton Watson said. “But we’re up to it every time, and we love going out there and winning games.”

With every successive win — every identical win — the unthinkable becomes closer to reality. The Nuggets might just own the Lakers.

If they finish the job Saturday in Game 4, they’ll accomplish what not even the Steph Curry-Kevin Durant Warriors could, eliminating LeBron James via sweep two years in a row. Golden State needed five games in 2017.

“They do not have a weakness offensively,” James said. “… Definitely one of the better teams that I’ve played in my career.”

Maybe Denver will need five games in 2024. But if there’s any reason to believe that now, it’s this: The Nuggets are clearly a danger to themselves in this matchup. They are prone to stretches, even entire halves, of complacency against an opponent that can’t hold a lead against them. The ongoing 11-game win streak features six double-digit comebacks.

“I think in this job as a coach, you always have to put on the hat of, ‘We have to fight human nature.’ And how do you do that when you’ve beaten a team 10 times in a row?” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said before Game 3, a 112-105 victory. “… Well, we’ve been down 12, we’ve been down 20. We’ve lost the first quarter of both games. We’ve been down at halftime in both games. That’s cool in your home building when you have that crowd behind you, but now it’s just us.”

Those turned out to be hollow words. Denver spotted Los Angeles an 8-0 lead that grew to 12 before everyone other than Aaron Gordon decided to take Game 3 seriously.

What followed was a 24-point swing between the second and third quarters. Like clockwork.

“To be honest, I think every game is tougher and tougher,” Nikola Jokic said. “You can see, they were up 20 in Denver, in Game 2. They were up 12 today in the first half. But yeah, I think it’s really hard to play against the same team over and over again. You kind of get bored with the style of the play or whatever. So you just need to — especially for us, because we won the last three — just trust what we are doing and don’t get bored with success. Because it can (go) wrong really quick.”

The Nuggets are so bored of this matchup that they’ve inadvertently become thrill-seekers, dangling a win in front of the Lakers every night only to pull it out of reach at the last second when Anthony Davis tries to snatch it.

Moments of redemption for the Lakers are short-lived against Denver. Davis’s dominant first half against Jokic in Game 2 was forgotten because he didn’t score in the fourth quarter. Russell’s 23-point bounce-back was superseded by his scoreless Game 3. In the first and third games, he combined to shoot 6 for 27.

The variations of a Los Angeles second unit have failed to take any advantage of Jokic’s rest minutes. Before Game 3, Taurean Prince was the only Lakers bench player who’d scored a point in the series. Nothing from Spencer Dinwiddie. Nothing from Gabe Vincent.

They finally contributed more offense in Game 3 — but the bench was still an inefficient 8 for 19 en route to 19 points.

Davis has been the Lakers’ best player according to the box scores. Los Angeles is plus-25 points with him on the floor in the first halves of these three games — and minus-41 with him on the floor in the second halves.

“This team’s been having the type of run they’ve had against our ball club; I think it’s just a lot of disappointment,” Lakers coach Darvin Ham said. “Have to do a better job of staying focused, staying positive throughout it all, because again, you have those disappointment moments, what we call disappointment lags — that disappointment can spill over two, three, four possessions. And you see that someone makes a mistake, drop our heads, and we start jogging back instead of sprinting. But we have to fight through all of that. This is a hell of a team. … They push you to the limit in order to try and beat them.”

Moreover, the Nuggets push themselves to the limit in order to beat the Lakers. Not because they have to; because they can.

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The Denver Nuggets beat the Los Angeles Lakers 112-105 in Game 3 of their Western Conference first-round playoff series at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on Thursday night, April 25, 2024. Denver leads the series 3-0.

Quick hits from the Nuggets’ Game 3 victory over the Lakers on Thursday night at Crypto.com Arena in the Western Conference playoffs.

1. Nuggets just stuck a dagger in the LeBron-Anthony Davis Era. Maybe no matchup in this series underscores the differences between the defending NBA champs and the Lakers right now than that of Aaron Gordon and LeBron James. While the former put up 29 points and 15 rebounds, killing L.A. on the glass, the latter seemed to check out for stretches in the second half once the Nuggs took the lead for good. Insiders think a quick postseason exit for the Lakers could hasten the exit for the 39-year-old NBA icon out of Los Angeles, breaking up the LeBron-Anthony Davis duo as anchors of this franchise. AG recorded two slams, contributing six points to a 9-0 Denver run that put the No. 2 seed up 69-61 and forced a Lakers timeout with 6:21 left in the third quarter. King James had never lost 10 straight to any NBA franchise before this series. Here’s to history, folks. Because the Lakers are very, very, very much that.

2. Bo who? Joker’s still best passer in town! Former Oregon QB Bo Nix was on the hearts and minds of Broncos Country after being tapped by Denver with the No. 12 pick in the NFL Draft, but it didn’t take long for Nikola Jokic to remind the universe that he’s still the best passer in the Mile High City. About 90 seconds into the third quarter, the Joker grabbed a defensive rebound and spotted Murray streaking like Marvin Mims Jr. past midcourt. Jokic rocked and fired a rainbow over the Lakers’ defense that hit his longtime running mate in stride, and the Blue Arrow did the rest from there, laying it up to tie the game at 55-all. Nix and Zach Wilson have their work cut out to match that dime, kids.

3. First quarter blues (again). Props to coach Michael Malone and to Nikola Jokic for not letting the first quarter of Game 3 turn into a repeat of the second stanza of Game 2. Because it could’ve. Two minutes in, Denver was 0-for-4 from floor, had already given the ball away twice, and were staring at an 8-0 deficit after three monster Lake Show dunks. At the 7:51 mark of the first quarter, the Joker had already picked up two fouls. After 12 minutes, the Lakers had 22 points in the paint. But thanks to Aaron Gordon being everywhere and Jokic’s hoops IQ, the latter didn’t pick up another foul the rest of the first half as the Nuggets hung around. And hung around. And hung around.

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D'Angelo Russell struggles with his shooting and Anthony Davis and LeBron James can't rescue the Lakers in a 112-105 loss to the Denver Nuggets in Game 3.

D'Angelo Russell struggles with his shooting and Anthony Davis and LeBron James can't rescue the Lakers in a 112-105 loss to the Denver Nuggets in Game 3.

LOS ANGELES — As Nuggets and Lakers alike filtered back onto the floor and started to get shots up, the tension in the sea-level air wasn’t a feeling of unfinished business, but rather un-started.

The Lakers led 53-49, but Game 3 hadn’t truly tipped off yet. Every player, coach and spectator in Crypto.com Arena understood the reality: The second half is the battleground of this series.

And within two minutes of this battle, it no longer mattered that Denver trailed the entire first half, because Denver was back in front, back in charge, back in control of this Sisyphean cycle the Lakers can never escape. For the third time in as many games, the Nuggets erased a double-digit deficit Thursday night, winning 112-105 to take a 3-0 lead in the first-round series.

“I guess there goes the pregame speech about winning the first quarter and being up at halftime,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “So let’s continue to let them outplay us in the first half and settle into the game.”

The Nuggets have now won 11 consecutive games against the Lakers. They’ve trailed by 10 or more points in six of those wins.

Four of Denver’s starters scored 20 or more to nullify another 33-point game for Anthony Davis. Jokic amassed 24 points, 15 rebounds and nine assists. Jamal Murray added 22 points and nine assists.

And in his 43rd career playoff game, Aaron Gordon played one of his best, relying on physicality and competitive will to keep Denver afloat in the first half. He ended up with 29 points (a playoff career-high), 15 rebounds and three assists, including a nifty no-look feed to Jokic in transition that forced a Darvin Ham timeout. It narrowed the second-quarter deficit to four — as close as the Nuggets had been since falling behind 8-0 in a disastrous first two minutes of the game.

It was nothing more than the Lakers’ regularly scheduled head start. Six of the eight points were on fast breaks, and all of them were in the paint, Michael Malone’s two biggest fears and points of emphasis. Malone used a rapid timeout. Jokic got two quick fouls. Murray was back to pre-buzzer beater Murray. Open 3-pointers were still awry. The Nuggets started the night 2 for 14.

“Neither team could make a shot,” Malone said.

But their uncanny ability to linger in spite of their blips prevailed. Gordon tipped in a Jokic miss before the halftime buzzer to get back within four, and the first two minutes after the break were exponentially more important. A Murray run-out in transition and a long outlet pass from Jokic produced a game-tying layup. A 3-pointer from Michael Porter Jr. on the next possession gave Denver its first lead, 58-55.

It was Ham’s turn to call the early timeout as a feeling of deja vu set in. Nothing worked. The Nuggets assembled their own double-digit lead by the end of the frame.

Porter continued to be a force of consistency in an imperfect series for his team. He scored half of his 20 points in the fourth quarter, feasting on the Lakers’ three-guard lineup and even hitting a “too small” gesture after one jump shot. He also found Gordon twice in the dunker spot for assists.

Through three games, Porter is 47.8% from 3-point range on more than seven attempts per game. The rest of the Nuggets are a combined 17 for 81 (21%).

“I have the utmost confidence that we’ll start to make those (wide open) shots,” Malone said pregame, reiterating his usual refrain that the Nuggets only care about the quality of attempts they’re generating.

Denver started the game with its traditional matchups instead of the cross-matching that turned the tide 72 hours earlier in Game 2. But when the Lakers got Jokic in early foul trouble, Malone maneuvered his defense in and out of various looks, including the one with Jokic on Rui Hachimura, Gordon on Davis and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope on LeBron James.

“When Nikola gets in foul trouble, I’m sure everybody thinks I’m gonna take him out,” Malone said. “Well, we can’t afford to take Nikola out. So we switched up the matchups. And we got him on somebody not named Anthony Davis. And then we went zone, just to keep him out of foul trouble, not get him his third. So being down four and Nikola not getting his third foul in the first half, those were two big wins.”

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LOS ANGELES — As Nuggets and Lakers alike filtered back onto the floor and started to get shots up, the tension in the sea-level air wasn’t a feeling of unfinished business, but rather un-started.

The Lakers led 53-49, but Game 3 hadn’t truly tipped off yet. Every player, coach and spectator in Crypto.com Arena understood the reality: The second half is the battleground of this series.

And within two minutes of this battle, it no longer mattered that Denver trailed the entire first half, because Denver was back in front, back in charge, back in control of this Sisyphean cycle the Lakers can never escape. For the third time in as many games, the Nuggets erased a double-digit deficit Thursday night, winning 112-105 to take a 3-0 lead in the first-round series.

The Nuggets have now won 11 consecutive games against the Lakers. They’ve trailed by 10 or more points in six of those wins.

Four of Denver’s starters scored 20 or more to nullify another 31-point game for Anthony Davis. Jokic amassed 24 points, 15 rebounds and nine assists. Jamal Murray added 22 points and nine assists.

And in his 43rd career playoff game, Aaron Gordon played one of his best, relying on physicality and competitive will to keep Denver afloat in the first half. He ended up with 29 points (a playoff career-high), 15 rebounds and three assists, including a nifty no-look feed to Jokic in transition that forced a Darvin Ham timeout. It narrowed the second-quarter deficit to four — as close as the Nuggets had been since falling behind 8-0 in a disastrous first two minutes of the game.

It was nothing more than the Lakers’ regularly scheduled head start. Six of the eight points were on fast breaks, and all of them were in the paint, Michael Malone’s two biggest fears and points of emphasis. Malone used a rapid timeout. Jokic got two quick fouls. Murray was back to pre-buzzer beater Murray. Open 3-pointers were still awry. The Nuggets started the night 2 for 14.

But their uncanny ability to linger in spite of their blips prevailed. Gordon tipped in a Jokic miss before the halftime buzzer to get back within four, and the first two minutes after the break were exponentially more important. A Murray run-out in transition and a long outlet pass from Jokic produced a game-tying layup. A 3-pointer from Michael Porter Jr. on the next possession gave Denver its first lead, 58-55.

It was Ham’s turn to call the early timeout as a feeling of deja vu set in. Nothing worked. The Nuggets assembled their own double-digit lead by the end of the frame.

Porter continued to be a force of consistency in an imperfect series for his team. He scored half of his 20 points in the fourth quarter, feasting on the Lakers’ three-guard lineup and even hitting a “too small” gesture after one jump shot. He also found Gordon twice in the dunker spot for assists.

Through three games, Porter is 47.8% from 3-point range on more than seven attempts per game. The rest of the Nuggets are a combined 17 for 81 (21%).

“I have the utmost confidence that we’ll start to make those (wide open) shots,” Malone said pregame, reiterating his usual refrain that the Nuggets only care about the quality of attempts they’re generating.

Denver started the game with its traditional matchups instead of the cross-matching that turned the tide 72 hours earlier in Game 2. But when the Lakers got Jokic in early foul trouble, Malone maneuvered his defense in and out of various looks, including the one with Jokic on Rui Hachimura, Gordon on Davis and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope on LeBron James.

“You go through the plays (before the series), you go through your coverages, but you’re also going through all the adjustments that you could go to at some point,” Malone said. “And this group, the core has been together for a while. I think those guys have built up through repetition and countless games.”

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