Patterns and issues emerge by game 4. It’ll be interesting to see what Ty does at this point. One big thing is just how short the leash on Russ might be. He deferred to MMorris last year, respecting his seniority all the way until the ship disappeared beneath the waves. And that was hard to take. A 2-2 series with a weird Kawhi curveball affecting games 2&3 is a very different story. No Kawhi raises the minutes for Terance and Amir, and that seems to be a big positive factor. And it’s also pushing Harden up to the top of his game, and even getting PG’s attention.

The first attack point for the Clips is going to Zu. If they can get it going again, it opens everything up. Two giant and dominant first halves is a nice wrinkle, and it’s not a complete accident or hot shooting variant. Part of the equation is defense and getting stops fueling the offense. Refs and foul trouble and some Kawhi flow clunkiness strangled the Zu option in games 2 & 3. I’d rather have healthy and unstoppable Kawhi of course, but given the reality Coffey’s ability to defend, avoid mistakes, and take shots is good fuel and support. He could easily do even more damage in game 5–he’s more than capable of going up another level or two.

Bottling up Luka more or less, whatever it is that’s happening, would be nice to see it continue, and there’s no reason why the Clips would steer away from what has worked so far (TMann). After 4 games it seems like there has to be some strategy to disrupt Kyrie even just slightly–he has picked up a lot of the slack, and it has been impressive and stunning at times to watch. He has extra lift on his jump as he’s shooting, even from 25+ feet, and there’s an amazing way that the ball settles in the bottom of the net on a lot of his shots. It’s a fearsome secondary and backup option, and Ty needs to figure out some way to neutralize it just a little bit, while not turning any focus or effort away from Luka. But the Clippers have the bodies and ability to do it, and Russ, even with his short leash, could be useful. PG needs to take his defensive game up, matching his first half offensive effort, and let’s hope he got past the foul funk of earlier games. Harden is playing good enough D too–the stars can make a difference on both ends.

Can’t believe we’re here again, with no Kawhi. Harden and the way he unlocks Zu and others, as well as his own scoring, makes this a very different script. The Clips can do it, taking them one at a time. Maybe Kawhi comes back down the road–the crazy thing is that he played so many games, at such a high level. Fingers are crossed.

Lakers also missed as many FTs than Denver actually attempted. They had a very friendly whistle, getting 27 FTAs to Denver’s 9.

Lebron played 44 mins and finished with 30-11-9. Just amazing what he does at this age.

Lakers had a squad capable of a finals run and I think they might’ve gone to 7 games or beaten the Nuggets if they had a healthy Vanderbilt and Reddish to throw at Murray and MPJ. Still, they messed up on a lot of the little things all season and it revealed itself today: bad double teaming decisions, weak perimeter defense, no real strategy to neutralize Murray, poor use of timeouts, missed FTs, turnovers, no chemistry between Lebron and Ham, Lebron wanting to do too much at times on the ball.

A logical thing for the Lakers to do is to bring this squad back, hope those wings can be in the rotation to give the defensive presence and replace Ham who totally lost the confidence of the team.

Denver will have its hands full vs Minnesota but it felt to me that they had a hard time taking the Lakers seriously until AD’s strong play made them realize that Jokic didn’t have as big of an advantage at the center spot and some other guys needed to step up to stave off a return trip to LA.

It might be easy to say that Minnesota looks stronger coming out of the Phx series than Denver does out of its series with LAL, but Minnesota doesn’t have 2 hall of famers like AD and Lebron and they still rely a lot on athleticism and size. Denver neutralizes both and one can trust their ability to execute and to make clutch shots more than one can trust Minnesota.

I think it will be a 6 or 7 game series but I’m not betting against Murray and Jokic in crunch time.