The Lakers role players are failing LeBron James and Anthony Davis

If all the players not named LeBron James and Anthony Davis play poorly for the Lakers, they’ll keep losing to the Nuggets as they did in Game 3 on Thursday.

LOS ANGELES - The eleventh time wasn’t the charm for the Lakers as they fell to the Nuggets yet again on Thursday, losing 112-105.

The storyline between these two teams is as innovative as a Three’s Company rerun: you can guess how it went even if you didn’t watch it.

The Lakers got out to an early double-digit lead. Anthony Davis and LeBron James carried the team throughout. The Nuggets pulled away in the second half.

Now, the Nuggets now have a commanding 3-0 lead, just like last season.

The frustrating thing about these losses is that AD and LeBron have largely done their job. They’ve been stars making big-time plays in big-time games. Davis ended Game 3 with 33 points, 15 rebounds and three assists and James had a cool 26 points, nine rebounds and six assists.

However, that’s not enough when your starting guard, Russell, gives you zero points, Hachimura musters up just five points and the bench scores a bit more but gets destroyed on the boards and on their respective defensive assignments.

Fans and media alike can often center their mentality around the stars during playoff games, but the core around James and Davis has failed them this series.

The Nuggets continue to get great performances from Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon and solid shifts from players like Peyton Watson, while the Lakers can only count on James and Davis to play well consistently.

That’s not good enough at this level and no rotation decisions, schemes, or timeouts will fix it. If the supporting cast fails to support, then the stage starts looking empty as Davis and James try to be the two best players on the floor at all times for 48 minutes.

“Our offense has struggled and it’s super frustrating,” Austin Reaves said following the loss. “Losing sucks. That’s all anybody should care about in our locker room is us losing right now. It shouldn’t be anything else other than that and that’s it.”

The Lakers are Goldilocks and the Three Bears when they play the Nuggets.

You get an excellent D’Angelo Russell performance in Game 2, but Reaves struggles to score. When Reaves produces 22 points in Game 3, Russell puts up a goose egg. Rui Hachimura gives a valiant defensive effort in Game 1, then goes missing the rest of the series.

Everything that can go wrong does and while you can look from within for improvement, the situation is as clear as day, even on a Thursday night.

The Nuggets are just better.

“I think Denver’s just beating us, to be honest,” Reaves said. “You can talk about adjustments, you can talk about this and that, but at the end of the day, we got to go put our foot our best foot forward win basketball games... at the end of the day you got to man up and go win.”

Now the Lakers are down 0-3, a deficit no team has ever recovered from. It’s not looking grim for Los Angeles; it’s looking inevitable.

There will be plenty of time to consider what went wrong for the Lakers.

Was it not trading Russell during the trade deadline? Was it not pursuing at least a backup center via trade or the waiver wire? Or was this team doomed at the start? Was it a roster never built to beat Denver to begin with?

For now, though, the Lakers still have at least one more game to prepare for. It’ll be up to them if they have the pride and desire to fight and try to somehow get back into this.

“It’s as simple as win or go home,” Darvin Ham said postgame. “It’s as simple as that. We got to come with competitive pride, try to get one here, stay alive. It is one game at a time. That’s all we have is the next game. And so it’s all we should be concerned with coming in here Saturday. Have a competitive pride. Try to put this thing together and try to get us one.”

If they can’t get one on Saturday, expect things to get ugly as the season draws to a close and uncomfortable topics about what this team will look like in the summer begin.

You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88.