Michael Malone on whether warming up in flip-flops impacted Nuggets in Game 4 vs. Lakers: "Is that ideal? No"

The Los Angeles Lakers finally ended their 11-game losing streak to the Denver Nuggets with a win in Game 4 of their first-round playoff series.

But despite the big performances by Anthony Davis, LeBron James, D'Angelo Russell, and Austin Reaves, the bigger story from yesterday's contest was Denver players wearing flip-flops during the shootarounds.

After the loss, head coach Mike Malone downplayed conspiracy theories that the Nuggets were taken out of their rhythm because they warmed up without their shoes.

"If you want to dig into stuff and say we lost because of some strange reason all our players didn't have their shoes when they got here for the normal warm-ups, we had guys at their shootaround with flip-flops — is that ideal? No. But I'm not an excuse guy. And I'm not going to point to the reason that we got our butts kicked in the paint because shoes weren't here," Malone said.

Wearing flip-flops during warm-ups

When the video first came out, many fans criticized the Nuggets for disrespecting their opponents by warming up in flip-flops. Others said that they may have gotten overconfident after 'toying' around with the Lakers during the first three games of the series.

It turned out that the team's equipment bus carrying the players' shoes arrived late at the Crypto.com Arerna. Because of that, the Nuggets were forced to begin their shootarounds wearing flip-flops. For now, it's unknown why the bus was late, but Malone says that wasn't an excuse for losing Game 4.

"Hopefully, we can figure out and make sure that never happens again. But there's no excuses, no explanations. We didn't get the job done. And the good thing about it is we have a chance to go home and get back to try to playing our brand of basketball and the opportunity to close it out in front of our fans," Denver's head coach added.

Nuggets go for a gentleman's sweep

The Lakers outscored the Nuggets 42-24 in points in the paint during the first half of Game 4 and held a 72-52 edge in that statistical department for the whole game.

Denver also went cold from three, shooting only 9-of-30. But L.A. didn't do any better, going 8-of-26 from long range. The purple and gold, however, finally won the battle of the boards 46-40, with AD pulling down 23 rebounds in the game. Overall, they outplayed them on Saturday night and looked hungrier for the win.

The good thing, however, is that Denver is still up 3-1 in the series—no team has ever come back from a 3-0 hole to win a best-of-seven series. While sweeping the Lakers again would have been an impressive accomplishment, completing the gentleman's sweep in Denver in Game 5 should also satisfy the defending champions.

Related: D'Angelo Russell on Darvin Ham telling him that he still believes in him: "I don't need that"