The former Cleveland Cavaliers small forward made his highly-anticipated first appearance for his new side in their first pre-season outing of the campaign.
James made a 15 minute cameo in the defeat but still shot nine points, three rebounds and three assists as the Lakers were beaten.
Fans have been desperate to see the 33-year-old in action since his arrival in Los Angeles – and NBA legend James admits it was good to face real opposition again, rather than his team-mates.
“Yeah, I mean, of course you take something from it, because we’ve been working on habits for the first week,” he said.
“It’s good to go against a different opponent instead of each other.
“We knew there were going to be times where we struggled, not move the ball as well as we liked to, a couple breakdowns defensively.
“But it’s good to have those things you can work on.
“You have something to look forward.”
Rajon Rondo, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Brandon Ingram and JaVale McGee lined-up alongside James, who played most of his minutes in the opening quarter.
“We were trying to move the ball, share the ball, get the ball from side to side, and communicating defensively, flying around, gang rebounding,” he added.
“We gave up some offensive rebounds in early on the first quarter, but if we clean those up we can get out in transition. Our pace was good and our space was good, too.
“There’s a lot of communication.
“I can’t break down everything that we talked about, but we talked about a lot.
“That’s going to be good for our ballclub.”
The Lakers play the Nuggets again on Wednesday evening before welcoming the Denver outfit back to LA later this month when the NBA season gets underway.