The Clippers’ season ended on Tuesday night as they fell to the Phoenix Suns during Game 5 of the Western Conference Quarterfinals. Keep reading for a full recap of the Clippers’ Game 5 loss to the Suns.

Recap

It was a win-or-go-home scenario for the Clippers as they entered Footprint Center on Tuesday night. Undermanned again, they’d need their very best stuff in order to extend the series. And once again, they began the game with the competitive spirit required to do so. Despite losing the first quarter (32-30) for the first time all series, Norman Powell and Ivica Zubac set the tone for what would be an inspiring first half of basketball for LA.

Things only got better in the second quarter as the bench unit stole the show. Behind strong play from Bones Hyland and Mason Plumlee, the Clippers put forth a 40-point frame to take a nine-point lead into intermission. A made Russell Westbrook free throw out of the break brought LA’s lead to 10, which initially seemed like it would be one of the final highlights of the Clippers’ season. That’s when the Suns turned to their unsolvable superstar, Devin Booker. 

Unsolvable still may not be a precise enough term to describe Booker in the eyes of the Clippers. As in the prior four games, Booker attacked in isolation, got to the midrange, made contested shots, and whatever else he preferred. The result? Twenty-five points in the frame, single-handedly outsourcing LA by a point. Booker’s big quarter was part of a 50-point Phoenix third quarter that ultimately put the game far enough out of reach for the Clippers ever to make it respectable once more. The Suns’ lead ballooned to as many as 20 before a pesky, Nicolas Batum-led Clippers unit found their rhythm from behind the arc and trimmed the deficit to two points by the game’s closing minutes. But missed shots and untimely turnovers for the Clips ultimately left them unable to complete the comeback.

The horn sounded for the final time on the Clippers’ 2022-23 season as they walked off the floor with a 136-130 loss.

Game Notes

• The reserves shine: The aforementioned Nicolas Batum made an appearance in Game 5. He’d appeared in each of the previous games, obviously, but it was in this fifth and final game that he finally looked like the Batum that we all have come to know and love. He made 5-8 threes and scored 19 points — single-game numbers that surpassed his series totals. Mason Plumlee scored a playoff career-high 20 points and added 10 rebounds with three assists. Terance Mann scored 10 points for the for the fourth time in the series and Bones Hyland added nine. All in all, the Clippers’ bench played a fine series.
• Out-talented: Facing two All-NBA level players without two of your own is tough to overcome, which the Clippers quickly learned after Game 2 of this series. To their credit, they fought like crazy each time they took the floor, but Games 3-5 all followed a similar script — just when it seemed possible the Clippers could make a statement and pull off an unthinkable win, one of Devin Booker, Chris Paul would be there to make sure no such thing happened.

Big Picture

The Clippers will have a lot of questions to answer this off-season. Are they bringing back Russell Westbrook? Can they continue to build around Kawhi Leonard and Paul George? Will there be any changes to the coaching staff or the front office? What they do this summer will indicate what next season could look like.

Clippers vs. Suns Game 5 Recap: The End.
Cole Huff

The LA Clippers jumped out to an early 1-0 series lead over the Phoenix Suns in game 1 Sunday evening, opening their first-round series against their divisional foe with a 115-110. Read on for a full Clippers vs Suns game 1 recap:

Game Summary

The noteworthy developments began in the hours before tip-off today, with three significant updates relating to this series. The first, of course, was the bad news that Paul George is unlikely to return at any point in this series. On the Suns side, we got two surprises: backup point guard Cameron Payne was downgraded to out after suffering a back injury late in the regular season, and veteran forward Torrey Craig took over in the starting lineup for Josh Okogie, who started the final 25 games of the regular season for the Suns. Craig joined the Suns’ core 4 of Chris Paul, Devin Booker, Kevin Durant, and Deandre Ayton in the starting lineup, opposite the expected Clippers: Russell Westbrook, Eric Gordon, Kawhi Leonard, Nico Batum, and Ivica Zubac.

LA jumped out to an early lead as the Suns struggled offensively, putting up just 18 points in the opening frame. The Clippers’ defense was dynamic: they began with Kawhi Leonard on Deandre Ayton to facilitate easy switches, only to revert to playing Ivica Zubac in drop coverage as soon as Suns head coach Monty Williams took a timeout to adjust. The matchups among Westbrook, Batum, and Gordon guarding Paul, Booker, and Durant were fluid and changing possession-by-possession early, preventing Phoenix from getting into a comfortably rhythm. Eric Gordon got off to a hot start with 12 first quarter points on 5-6 shooting, including a pair of threes, while Kevin Durant started cold, with 0 points on 0-4 shooting in the opening frame. As both teams transitioned to their bench, the Clippers continued to pull ahead, outscoring the Suns by 9 points in the final 3:50 of the quarter (when the first subs were made) to build a 12-point lead.

Things started well for the Clippers in the second quarter, as they built their lead to a game-high 16 at 35-19. It took Phoenix 17 minutes to score their first 27 points, and just 7 minutes to score their next 27, as they pulled within 5 of the Clippers at halftime, 59-54. Kevin Durant had a stellar quarter, scoring 17 points on 4-6 shooting, and the Clippers saw 7 Durant points in the final 73 seconds of the half take away their 12-point lead and shift the tides of the game heading into the break.

The Clippers held serve to begin the third, keeping a precarious two-possession lead alive for several minutes, before Phoenix finally tied the game at 68, then took the lead, and then expanded it, peaking with a 9-point, 77-68 lead just as the teams began making substitutions. Mirroring the Suns’ second-quarter close, the Clippers finished the third on a 9-3 run against Phoenix’s bench, bringing the game to an 81-81 tie with 12 minutes to play.

Despite playing the whole third quarter, Kawhi Leonard stayed in the game to start the fourth, scoring 5 quick points in the opening minute of the frame. He would catch a few moments of rest, as Russell Westbrook controversially returned to the game despite shooting just 3-19 from the field overall (more on him in a second). Fortunately for the Clippers, Norman Powell gave the team a lift as Kawhi sat, scoring 4 points in the 2 minute that Leonard sat to keep pace with the Suns. Durant and Leonard traded baskets just before the 6-minute mark, leaving the Clippers with a narrow one-point advantage. Then, both teams fell into a bit of a rut, going just 3-3 over nearly 4 minutes of play until the two former NBA Finals MVPs took over: Leonard hit a three. Durant made a pull-up jumper. Leonard hit another three. Durant drew a double and assisted a mid-range shot from Ayton. Leonard kicked the ball out for a three by Eric Gordon.

Finally, the dust settled without much movement. The Clippers had the ball, up 1, with 68 seconds to play, and proceeded to accidentally kill clock with a series of misses and offensive rebounds. The Clippers possessed the ball for 51 straight seconds, gathering three offensive rebounds (one by Russell Westbrook, the other two credited as “team” rebounds–meaning the loose ball went out of bounds off of Phoenix due to LAC’s activity), before Devin Booker fouled Westbrook on the Clippers’ fourth try. Westbrook made both to push the lead to three, and then as Devin Booker drove on the other end to extend the game, Westbrook masterfully blocked the shot, controlled the loose ball as he fell out of bounds, and saved it off of Booker’s leg. A few formalities later, the Clippers emerged victorious in front of a sellout crowd in Phoenix where they were 8-point underdogs.

Game Notes

• Russ: The most polarizing player in the NBA managed to have one of the most polarizing single-game performances in NBA history. He was truly so bad on offense–not just missing shots en route to a historically bad 3-19 shooting night, but taking bad shots and continuing to take them despite the constant stream of misses. Six 3PA from a career 30.5% shooter, none of which he particularly needed to take, a number of chaotic drives, bricked 0-pass early-clock pull-up jumpers… it was ugly. Offense Russ was the worst player on the floor tonight for either team. But defense Russ? You’ll go into battle with the Russ the Clippers got on the defensive end of the floor tonight anytime. He worked his ass off, covered all 5 Suns starters in different looks, made plays on- and off-ball, and iced the game not only with his game-securing block (on a minor technicality, it wasn’t a “game-winning” or “game-saving” block since it was blocking a 2-point attempt with the Clippers up 3 and 10 seconds left) but several other key pokeaways in the waning moments.
• Monty Williams: I gotta tell you, I spend a bit of time preparing for Clippers playoff series, and Monty’s game 1 approach left me confused. He both played his main guys massive minutes (Durant 45, Booker 43, Paul 39) and found a way to get 11 guys into the game, with 5 of them playing fewer than 8 minutes. Josh Okogie had started the Suns’ last 25 games and averaged 27 minutes per game since the All-Star Break, but played just 6:37 tonight. Phoenix’s second-most-used bench player behind sixth man Landry Shamet, Jock Landale, played just 7:33, all of which came in the second half after not appearing in the first. Only two Suns lineups (their starters, and their starters with Shamet in place of Craig) played more than 3 minutes, preventing any of their rotated looks from getting into a rhythm over a full shift. And they played their core 4 together for 28 minutes of the game, leaving minimal opportunity for staggering. The Suns were +4 in 44:31 with Durant on the floor in a game that they lost by 5. If Monty Williams can’t figure out a way to do better than -9 in 3:29 without Durant, the Suns are in trouble.

• Free Throws: We talked a lot heading into this series about how the Suns are a particularly bad team at both getting to the free throw line and keeping their opponents off of it. That, coupled with Phoenix’s shallow roster construction meaning they would be left exposed if their starters were in foul trouble, meant my eye was on the foul column of the box score all night. In a game that was mutually physical and sloppy, the Suns got the better end of the whistle, taking 33 free throws to the Clippers’ 29. Devin Booker in particular was allowed to maul whoever had the ball with little acknowledgement from the officials, including a play in the second quarter where his would-be third foul was mistakenly assigned to Deandre Ayton so that he could stay in the game. Ultimately, while fouls might have affected how some Suns played (Durant in particular seemed to instinctively avoid making aggressive defensive plays as he approached foul trouble), the only player who really reached foul trouble was Torrey Craig.
• Threes: It’s not secret that the three-point shot has introduced a new level of variance to NBA basketball. While the Suns and Clippers have very similar attempt and percentage numbers on the season, Phoenix has taken fewer threes in the games that Durant has played as they lean into a heavier diet of midrange shots. The Clippers were a below-average 10-31 from three tonight while the Suns made 6 of just 19 attempts. A team only took 19 or fewer threes in a game 20 times this season. I see a 10-31 night from distance for the Clippers and think that they need to prioritize creating more quality three-point attempts (they’re 16-8 this year when taking 37 or more threes). I can only imagine that the Suns are going to make getting more threes up a point of emphasis heading into game 2. Credit to both defenses for funneling shots to the desired players/spots tonight, but both offenses will have moments in this series where they break free.

Podcasts

Check out the Clippers vs Suns game 1 recap on 213Hoops’ podcasts: The Lob, The Jam, The Podcast and Clips N’ Dip.

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Clippers vs Suns Game 1 Recap: LA Claims 1-0 Series Lead
Lucas Hann

Two years after their elimination in the 2021 Western Conference Finals, the LA Clippers have made their way back to the NBA Playoffs. Two losses in the double-elimination Play-In Tournament in 2022, both without Kawhi Leonard and the latter without Paul George, led to a rare first round without the Clippers, who will appear in the playoffs for the 10th time in the last 12 years when their series against the Suns tips off Sunday evening. The franchise saw just six postseason appearances in its first 41 seasons, spanning time as the Buffalo Braves, San Diego Clippers, and LA Clippers (technically, with the innovation of the play-in tournament, they’ve made the postseason 11 of the last 12 years).

Even as the Clippers have entered their playoff era after decades at the bottom of the NBA standings, misfortunes have haunted them. I already noted that they didn’t get to play in the 2022 playoffs despite achieving a top-8 finish due to having their stars unavailable in the play-in tournament. Their 2021 Western Conference Finals run, the best in franchise history, saw Kawhi Leonard tear his ACL, forcing the team to play, and be eliminated, without their best player. Chris Paul and Blake Griffin were chronically hurt during the Lob City era’s playoff runs, with the team losing in the first round in back-to-back years in 2016 (without both stars) and 2017 (without Griffin). This year, despite their best caution, an unfortunate late-season knee injury to Paul George has once again left the Clippers facing an uphill playoff battle.

Series Schedule

Game 1: Sunday, 4/16 – 5:00pm PT – TNT and Bally Sports SoCal
Game 2: Tuesday, 4/18 – 7:00pm PT – TNT and Bally Sports SoCal
Game 3: Thursday, 4/20 – 7:30pm PT – NBATV and Bally Sports SoCal
Game 4: Saturday, 4/22 – 12:30pm PT – TNT and Bally Sports SoCal
Game 5: Tuesday, 4/25 – Time TBD – National TV TBD and Bally Sports SoCal
Game 6: Thursday, 4/27 – Time TBD – National TV TBD and Bally Sports SoCal
Game 7: Saturday, 4/29 – Time TBD – National TV TBD and Bally Sports SoCal

What’s that old saying about insult and injury? As if heading into the playoffs without Paul George wasn’t bad enough, the NBA’s schedulemakers went as far as they could to exacerbate the issue by making them play as many games as quickly as possible. The Suns-Clippers series is the only Western Conference first round series without an extra day off during the first four games (Grizzlies-Lakers and Kings-Warriors both have 2 extra days off during games 1-4), and their game 4 will tip off 7 hours before the Lakers’ game 3. It might not end up mattering, but the Clippers’ accelerated schedule could really cost them as they await a potential mid-series return from George.

Clippers fans will be happy to be reminded, after a year away from the playoffs, that local broadcasts continue to carry games through the first round of the NBA Playoffs, meaning that in-market viewers can still catch Brien Sieman and company a few more times this year.

The Big Picture

It’s hard to not be frustrated with how the Clippers’ 2022-23 campaign played out. It’s perhaps even more frustrating that an injured superstar might be what puts the final nail in LA’s coffin once again. After an ACL injury to Kawhi Leonard left him on the sidelines as the Clippers were eliminated each of the last two seasons, one hope balanced even the lowest moments of the last few months: get to the playoffs healthy, and a 2-time NBA Finals MVP would be on our side. As the playoffs get ready to begin, that much is true, but without his superstar sidekick, Clippers fans are faced with an all-too-familiar looming feeling.

Even if George’s absence is the elephant in the room all series, it’s worth recounting a tumultuous year that was far from on track when he went down against Oklahoma City a few weeks ago. The season was thrown in to disarray early, as a last-minute decision was made hours before opening night tip-off that Leonard was not ready to play a full game of starter’s minutes as he worked back from his ACL surgery. Remember when Kawhi was coming off the bench in the middle of the second quarter and playing second halves? It feels like a bad dream, as do the 19 games the Clippers played without him in the early weeks of the season, completely unsure if and when he’d be returning and what he’d look like when he did. It wasn’t just pessimism from fans, either: the uncertainty around their best player’s health had an effect on the morale and performance of Leonard’s teammates, too.

To Leonard’s credit, after missing 19 of the Clippers’ first 24 games, he played in 47 of the remaining 58, averaging 25 points, 7 rebounds, and 4 assists. One of the biggest subplots of the 2022-23 season: Kawhi Leonard was BACK back, playing at an All-NBA level, getting to his spots and ruthlessly punishing defenses from them, and winning basketball games. The Clippers were 33-19 with Kawhi in the lineup this season, a better winning percentage than the West’s 2 seed, Memphis (with the significant caveat that every team has to play–and lose–games while missing different combinations of their best players, so the Clippers with Kawhi vs other teams’ full seasons is not a simple or definitive comparison).

But around Leonard’s intermittent absences, the team struggled to find consistent, effective combinations. Incumbent starting point guard Reggie Jackson fell off a cliff after a hard fall in Portland in December, ultimately losing the gig during a 6-game slide before being dealt at the trade deadline. Marcus Morris, a fixture at power forward for the last four years, started 65 of the Clippers’ first 75 games before losing the job to Nico Batum and simultaneously dealing with an illness and back spasms that leave his role unclear heading into the playoffs. Terance Mann went from the fringe of the rotation to starting for a month before the All-Star Break in what was the best stretch of play the team had this year before heading back to the second unit down the stretch. Veteran forward Robert Covington signed a $22M extention just to find himself not in Ty Lue’s plans. The team played without a backup center for much of the year before acquiring Mason Plumlee at the trade deadline. Fellow deadline acquisition Eric Gordon is starting in place of the injured Paul George over longer-tenured teammates. Sophomore guard Bones Hyland is simultaneously the guard who has been most effective in George’s absence and appears most likely to not get minutes in this series. The year has been a mess of four-guard lineups, waning intensity levels, and misdiagnosed issues causing a new stumble every time it felt like the team was ready to find its stride. Even their pair of wins to close the season was troubling, as they barely found a way to survive contests against opponents who were trying to lose.

Despite it all, the Clippers are here. I don’t think we ever dreamed that avoiding the play-in tournament would be a triumph, but they managed it in the closing weeks of the season despite George’s injury. They play the games for a reason. They have talent, experience, and versatility, with a coach who is renowned for finding the right tweaks in best-of-7 playoff series. We’ve waited all year to see if the Clippers were going to find a way to put it all together and make something out of this season. This is their final, and most meaningful, chance to find the best version of themselves.

The Antagonist

In the other corner, we have a Phoenix Suns team that has hardly had a season together at all. Kevin Durant–you might have heard of him–was brought in at the trade deadline in a major blockbuster and has only played 8 games due to an ankle injury. The team’s leader in minutes played this year, Mikal Bridges, hasn’t been on the team for two months. Jae Crowder, Phoenix’s starting power forward the last two seasons, never played a game this year due to a breakdown over extension talks and his planned removal from the starting lineup in favor of Cameron Johnson, who wound up playing just 17 games in an injury-riddled half-season before being a part of the Durant trade. Devin Booker missed 29 games, including almost all of a 2-12 mid-season stretch where the team struggled to stay afloat while severely depleted. Phoenix’s 5th starter is Timberwolves reject Josh Okogie, who signed a one-year minimum contract last summer and was never expected to play this type of role (more on him later).

Phoenix has a very good top 4–Durant, Booker, Chris Paul, and DeAndre Ayton–and a lot of question marks surrounding them. Those 4 guys have only played 159 minutes together. They’ve won those minutes by a staggering 62 points (a rate of about 19 points per game), though the competition level is highly suspect and the small sample is highly unstable. The fit makes natural sense, and the high talent levels and complementary skillsets should allow for those guys to play intuitively without needing a major adjustment period. So far, it’s fair to say that they’ve aced a series of easy tests. They’re 8-0 when Durant plays, but five of those games came against lottery teams and two came against noncompetitive Denver Nuggets lineups that didn’t include Nikola Jokic. The best signature win on the Suns’ resume in the Durant era? A 7-point home win against Western Conference 8-seed Minnesota in Phoenix. When game 1 tips off on Sunday, the Clippers will immediately be the best opponent that the Suns’ new core 4 has faced.

Will that affect the Suns negatively early in the series? It’s hard to say. After all, the Clippers’ current presumed starting lineup without George or Morris has even fewer games together than the Suns’, and as mentioned above, LA’s rotation has been an inconsistent medley throughout the year. Still, no presence in the Clippers’ rotation is quite as unfamiliar or quite as imposing as Durant’s.

Here’s what you can count on from Phoenix: they’ll play at a very low pace, focusing on different combinations of on- and off-ball screens involving all 5 players on the floor to target different matchups for Booker and Durant. Even as his individual prowess has declined, Paul can still pull the strings as well as anyone, meaning efforts to double Durant or Booker are going to be punished when the ball finds his hands out of a trap and gimmicky pick-and-roll coverages will be read and exploited. The core 4 will play the bulk of the minutes, although it’s possible that head coach Monty Williams tries to protect his guys’ from wear and tear in an opening-round series where they are heavily favored, especially in the early games. None of those guys are particularly durable, and Clippers fans know all too well how hard it is to get Chris Paul through a playoff run healthy.

When they go to the bench, there are a number of different options, most of whom focus their contributions on one end of the floor. Cameron Payne is a speed demon ballhandler who has tortured LAC’s slower defenders in the past. Landry Shamet, Terrence Ross, Damion Lee, and T.J. Warren can all provide shooting on the wings. My guess is only one of those guys will be in Williams’ game 1 plans, but we could see others when Phoenix needs a spark as the series goes on. Torrey Craig will see significant minutes as a defensive option against Kawhi Leonard who has had an uncharacteristically stellar season shooting the basketball–a lot of possessions in this series might come down to the Clippers forcing him to prove that improvement is legit. Ish Wainwright provides energy and defense at multiple positions, but will likely only see spot minutes. Bismack Biyombo and Jock Landale each bring something a little different as the backup center (Biyombo is the better defender, while Landale has a more well-rounded offensive game to punish mismatches on switches), and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some centerless looks around Durant at times as well.

Sub-Plots

• Paul George: Look, if it feels like I’m mentioning this a lot, it’s because it’s pretty important. I have a really hard time imagining a scenario where the Clippers win 4 out of 7 games against this Suns team without Paul George. But do I think they can win 1 out of 2 or 2 out of 4 without him, and then close things out when he returns? Yeah, I can buy that. We’re going to be anxiously awaiting updates every day until either he’s back in the lineup or the Clippers are eliminated. It should be obvious that the sooner he returns, the more likely the Clippers are to advance–and that every win they can get without him helps extend the series and keep that hope alive.
• The Grift Zone: One way that the Clippers can win a game without Paul George? His natural replacement (even if he’s coming off the bench instead of starting in Paul’s spot), Norman Powell. Norm has hit the 20-point threshold in 20 of the 60 games he’s played in this season, and the Clippers are going to need his volume and efficiency to make up for the void left by George. But most importantly, they need his most unique skill on this roster: the grift. Norm creates more frivolous fouls against defenders than every other Clipper put together, and leads the Clippers’ rotation in free throws attempted per 36 minutes. The Suns allow the 3rd-most FTA/game in the NBA and themselves attempt the 4th-fewest. The Clippers will almost certainly shoot a lower FG% than the Suns in this series. Bombing threes can help offset that. Games that they win might also need double-digit advantages from the stripe. One more bonus: if the grift can impact Phoenix’s core 4 with foul trouble, it will level the talent disparity between the two teams. Keep an eye on Russell Westbrook’s offensive aggression here too, along with Terance Mann’s mix of downhill drives and ability to solicit illegal contact while defending.
• The 5th Guy: I said that I’d come back to Josh Okogie, and here we are: the 5th guy on the floor for Phoenix. The other 4 Suns starters make over $130 million–Okogie makes $1.8. Yet he’s earned this spot, first by being a fantastic defender this season, but also by mitigating some of the offensive damage by improving his shot from earlier in his career. Okogie shoots 33.5% from deep on the year, and that mark isn’t better in the corner (31.9%, with nearly half of his attempts coming from there). The Clippers will help liberally off of him in their attempt to contain Phoenix’s other guys. The ball will come out to Okogie. He won’t be shy about shooting when open, and he’s had multiple games this year where the shot has fallen, which will send the Clippers’ defense into a scramble. There have also been some really rough games, in which case we could see Monty Williams forced to pull his best defensive option against Kawhi Leonard. But Okogie’s impact isn’t going to be a one-dimensional, make-or-miss thing. The Clippers absolutely have to balance helping off of him with keeping track of him, because he will cut opportunistically and Chris Paul will find him for free dunks when he does. He’s also a fantastic offensive rebounding wing who will impact the series on the glass if the Clippers can’t locate and get a body on him when shots go up. Williams does have better shooting options for this role, but all of them would result in life being easier for Kawhi Leonard on the other end.

• The Finale: I don’t really know how to properly contextualize the Clippers’ rather embarrassing barely-win against Phoenix’s mostly-third-string lineup on the last day of the regular season, in what was a must-win game for LA and a throwaway game for the Suns. It feels worth addressing, but it doesn’t feel like the most meaningful data point. It was a day with weird energy, weird scenarios, weird delays, scoreboard-watching, and mixed motivations. I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen, but I also don’t think it tells us anything about this series.
• Possessions: The Suns were a top-10 offensive rebounding team this season, but a bottom-10 defensive rebounding team. The Clippers were the opposite–top-10 on the defensive glass, bottom-10 on the offensive glass. How meaningful are those season-long stats when we consider that the Suns sample barely includes their new giant, good rebounding wing in Durant and the Clippers’ sample only includes half of a season of Kawhi Leonard and 20 games of one of the best rebounding guards in history in Russell Westbrook? Hard to say. But as I mentioned above, it seems obvious to me that the Suns will have a more efficient halfcourt offense in this series than the Clippers. LAC has to mitigate that damage, but they also have to win on the margins. Scoring in transition, getting more free throws, and making more threes obviously all help. But winning the possession volume battle via rebounding and turnovers will go a long way in leveling the halfcourt battle. The Clippers lost games early in the year where they outshot their opponents but took 20 fewer attempts because of turnovers and offensive rebounds. Winning games in this series is going to require flipping that script and exploiting those margins to take more shots than their opponents.
• Rotations: Playoff depth is somewhere between overrated and essential. On the one hand, a much higher share of playing time and touches goes to a shorter rotation comprised of teams’ best players, meaning quality role players on the bench have a smaller impact than in the regular season. On the other hand, lots of teams meet their demise because in-series adjustments call for them to need another ball-handler, or perimeter defender, or wing shooter, or rim protector, and they simply don’t have a competent guy in that mold on their bench. Playoff rotations are traditionally 8 or 9 men, but both of these teams have guys in spots 10, 11, and 12 who could be trusted by their coaches for situational use. We could see a bit of role player chess as this series goes on.

• KD and Russ: I gotta be honest, this isn’t a subplot that I care a ton about, but it’s going to be everywhere in the coverage of this series. Both players were gracious in their comments about each other as former teammates playing against each other for the first time in the playoffs. I think it’s fair to say that despite that positivity, Russell Westbrook will approach this matchup with a bit of an edge. Channeling that appropriately could mean we see the best version of him on defense, which the Clippers really need in this matchup, as well as bringing a tone-setting energy for the rest of the team to match. Getting caught up in it could end up being a distraction if he lets wanting to prove a point hurt his decision-making on offense. Either way, I don’t think this dynamic will be series-defining or as important as the national media will make it out to be.
• Matchups: Okogie guarding Kawhi is a no-brainer. Expect everything else to get weird. Do the Clippers put Batum on Ayton and Zu on Okogie so that they can comfortably switch screens and let Zu play free safety? How do they balance Kawhi’s defensive duties early in games with his offensive workload? Will he guard Booker or Durant down the stretch of games? Will Durant guard Kawhi down the stretch so that Monty can put another shooter on the floor? Can Chris Paul handle guarding Russell Westbrook’s athleticism and phsyicality at this stage in their careers? (And since that one is probably no, how will Monty hide CP3 on Gordon/Batum, and how aggressively will the Clippers pursue Chris on switches?) The Clippers will need large doses of Norman Powell on offense in this series, but he’s been a severe liability on defense this season, and they’ll need to find opportunities to hide him. Bones Hyland has been fantastic in recent weeks and even competed on defense, but how many units can you realistically get away with Bones and Norm playing together against this Suns attack? Marcus Morris typically does well against slower, stronger players, meaning that if he’s healthy and moving well he could be a switchable smallball 5 option off the bench instead of Plumlee, who has been a disaster on defense lately. Robert Covington can help a lot on the backline but struggles on-ball and could be miscast in a role where he’s asked to handle KD for a shift. Again, I imagine we’ll see a lot of different iterations of role player chess.
• Game 1: For some reason, I can’t shake the feeling that game 1 could decide this series. Obviously, every game is important in a best-of-7. But it will be 10 days since Phoenix’s starters’ last game, which was an exhibition against a Denver team with no starters playing. Their last game against a competitive opponent was April 2nd against Oklahoma City. As mentioned above, they haven’t been tested. They’ll be rusty. And they’ll probably only get better as the series goes on. If the Clippers steal game 1 on the road, they give themselves a desperately-needed margin for error as they await Paul George’s return. A little hope might also go a long way for a team that is overmatched on paper and aware of their underdog status. I think a game 1 win for the Clippers makes this series a coin flip, pending George’s health. A game 1 loss doesn’t end the series, but it makes the path forward very hard.

Clippers vs Suns Series Prediction: Suns in 6

Ultimately, I think there is a talent gulf in this series that would require the Clippers to be at their best and firing on all cylinders to overcome. But in addition to missing their second best player for an unknown portion of the series, this just doesn’t feel like a team that ended the season firing on all cylinders and knowing who they are and how to make each other better. As a group, they really aren’t that much more experienced and developed together than the Durant Suns. I do think that the Clippers will challenge Phoenix. Ty Lue will adjust–maybe even overadjust, at times–to take away what is working and make them win in different ways. I can see a team, even one as talented as Phoenix, stumbling as they figure out how to respond to that in real time considering how few meaningful, competitive reps they have together. And I think that the Clippers have potential avenues to winning this series, involving a mix of opportunism and luck early coupled with a timely return to the court for George. But overall, talent is king in the NBA, and the Suns have the kind of advantage in available star power that is rarely overcome over the course of a 7-game series.

Coverage

Check out the 213Hoops series prediction staff roundtable!
Hate read Robert Flom’s Q&A with a homertastic Suns blogger friend!
Subscribe to The Lob, The Jam, The Podcast on all platforms for:
1) A special episode of The Lob, The Jam, The Pod with Suns reporter Gerald Bourguet of PHNX Sports and Clippers reporter Tomer Azarly of ClutchPoints.
2) A series preview with 213Hoops’ Shapan Debnath, Robert Flom, and Cole Huff.
3) A game 1 preview with 213Hoops’ Shapan Debnath, Justin Wilson, and Jamal Christopher.
4) Postgame pods for every Clippers playoff game, and special off-day analysis podcasts with guests.
Subscribe to the Clips N’ Dip Podcast on all platforms for pre-series analysis and ongoing updates from Adam Auslund, Charles Mockler, and Will Updyke.
Listen in to my appearance on the PHNX Suns podcast previewing this series (I’m the second guest, Forbes NBA columnist Shane Young is the first half of the episode).
Take a look at Suns blogger Dave King’s series preview, including a Q&A with me on the Clippers’ strengths and weaknesses.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

2023 NBA Playoffs Series Preview: LA Clippers Face Phoenix Suns in First Round
Lucas Hann

As we enter the last week of the NBA’s regular season, the Clippers’ fate is still up in the air–we know that they’ll at least make some kind of postseason appearance after clinching a top-10 finish in the West with Dallas’ loss Sunday. Currently, the Clippers are 3 losses behind the 4th-place Suns, 2 losses ahead of the 9th-place Minnesota Timberwolves, and 3 losses ahead of the 10th-place Oklahoma City Thunder. Technically, every spot from 4th to 10th is still in play for the Clippers, though 4, 9, and 10 are all extremely unlikely. Passing the Suns is impossible unless the Clippers win all 3 of their remaining games and the Suns lose all 4 of theirs. Similarly, the Thunder passing the Clippers would require the Clippers losing all 3 of their remaining games while the Thunder win all 3 of theirs (this would pull the teams into a tie, with OKC winning the regular season H2H series 3-1). Minnesota’s buffer is only slightly wider, as they could weather one Clipper win or Wolves loss and still pass LAC. But for now, I’m going to set them aside and revisit them later in the week if needed.

While those options aren’t mathematically eliminated, they’re obviously extremely unlikely to happen. The range of outcomes that are much more likely to be in play for the Clippers are spots 5-8 in the Western Conference, where they are currently in a dead heat with the Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers, and New Orleans Pelicans. All 4 teams currently have 38 losses, with the Warriors and Clippers both holding 41 wins and having 3 games remaining, while the Lakers and Pelicans each have 40 wins and 4 games remaining. The Clippers finish the season with games against the Lakers, Blazers, and Suns. The Warriors still have to play the Thunder, Kings, and Blazers. The Lakers have games left against the Jazz, Clippers, Suns, and Jazz again. And the Pelicans close out their campaign against the Kings, Grizzlies, Knicks, and Timberwolves. At this stage, any combination of these teams could end up tied–in fact, it would be surprising if there wasn’t a tie somewhere in this 5-8 range. So, let’s look at the lay of the land with the possible tie combinations involving the Clippers:

Clippers & Warriors tie

Status: Clippers lead
Win Condition: Clippers clinch with 1 of the following 3 results: Clippers beat Lakers, Kings beat Warriors, Clippers beat Suns
Loss Condition: Warriors clinch with all 3 of the following results: Lakers beat Clippers, Warriors beat Kings, Suns beat Clippers
Explantion: The Clippers and Warriors tied their regular season series 2-2. Since they’re in the same division, if they finish in a 2-team tie, the next tiebreaker is division record. The Clippers are currently 7-7 vs Pacific Division foes, while the Warriors are 6-9. If any of the above 3 games goes LAC’s way, the Clippers will win this two-team tiebreaker on division record. If all 3 games listed above go the Warriors’ way, we would move to the third tiebreaker, which is conference record. The Warriors are currently ahead in conference record and, by nature of the Warrior wins and Clipper losses required to tie the division record criteria, would win the two-team tiebreaker with the Clippers if it came to that.

Clippers and Pelicans tie

Status: Pelicans won
Explanation: The Pelicans clinched the 2-team tiebreaker vs the Clippers by winning the regular season series 3-0.

Clippers and Lakers tie

Status: Clippers won
Explanation: The Clippers clinched the 2-team tiebreaker vs the Lakers by taking a 3-0 lead in the regular season series, with 1 game remaining.

Clippers, Warriors, and Pelicans tie

Status: Pelicans 1st, Warriors 2nd, Clippers 3rd (clinched)
Explanation: In a 3-team tie, the first tiebreaker is combined head-to-head record. The Clippers and Warriors are 2-2. The Pelicans and Warriors are 2-2. The Pelicans beat the Clippers 3-0. Therefore, whether this tie was 5/6/7 or 6/7/8, the Clippers would be going to the Play-In-Tournament, likely either for a “home” game vs the Lakers (who would presumably finish 8th if this was a 5/6/7 tie) or a road game to the Warriors (who would finish 7th if this was a 6/7/8 tie).

Clippers, Warriors, and Lakers tie

Status: Clippers 1st, Lakers 2nd, Warriors 3rd (clinched)
Explanation: So, even though all of these teams are in the same division, we still start with their combined head-to-head records as the first tiebreaker. The Clippers are a combined 5-2 vs the Warriors and Lakers, while the Lakers are 3-4 and the Warriors are 3-5. If the Lakers beat the Clippers in the final game among this group, they’d have the 2nd-best combined H2H record. But even if they lose that game, they’d beat the Warriors for 2nd in this 3-team tie. Once a multi-team tie is broken by a criteria removing at least one team, the tiebreak process resets among the teams who are still tied. So, if on the first 3-team tie criteria the Clippers win and the Warriors and Laker are still tied, they don’t move to the 2nd 3-team tie criteria, they set the Clippers aside and run Warriors/Lakers as a 2-team tie. The Lakers won the regular season series 3-1 and have therefore already clinched 2nd in this hypothetical 3-way tie regardless of the outcome of Wednesday’s game vs the Clippers. If this was a 5/6/7 tie, the Clippers would go on the road against the Suns in the first round while the Warriors hosted (presumably) the Pelicans in the Play-In Tournament. If this was a 6/7/8 tie, the Clippers would secure the 6 seed and the Warriors would have a road game against the Lakers in the Play-In Tournament.

Clippers, Pelicans, and Lakers tie

Status: Pelicans 1st (clinched), Clippers 2nd (currently lead), Lakers 3rd (currently trail)
Win Condition: Clippers clinch 2nd in this 3-team tiebreaker with a win over the Lakers
Loss Condition: Clippers clinch 3rd in this 3-team tiebreaker with a loss to the Lakers
Explanation: Again, we look at combined head-to-head. The Pelicans are currently 4-3, Clippers 3-3, and Lakers 3-4, with one Clippers-Lakers game remaining. If the Clippers win that game, they’ll tie the Pelicans at 4-3 and the Lakers will be alone in last at 3-5. The Lakers would then be removed from the tie, and the Pelicans would win the 2-team tie with the Clippers based on the 3-0 season series win. In that case, a 5/6/7 tie would give the Clippers the 6-seed, while in a 6/7/8 tie their only reward would be hosting the 7-8 Play-In game vs the Lakers.

But if the Lakers win Wednesday’s head-to-head with the Clippers, the Lakers would improve to 4-4 in the combined head-to-head while the Clippers would drop to 3-4. Once again, in a 5/6/7 tie, this would be massively important as the Lakers would be protected from the Play-In Tournament while the Clippers would (most likely) have to host the Warriors in the 7-8 game. If this was a 6/7/8 tie, the 7-8 game would be Lakers-Clippers regardless, and the Lakers getting 2nd in this tiebreaker would just change the designated home team for the game.

Clippers, Warriors, Pelicans, and Lakers tie

Status: Pelicans currently lead, Lakers currently 2nd, Clippers currently 3rd, Warriors clinched last
Win Condition: The Clippers will finish 2nd in this 4-team tiebreaker if they beat the Lakers on Wednesday
Loss Condition: The Clippers will finish 3rd in this 4-team tiebreaker if they lose to the Lakers on Wednesday
Explanation: So, even in the big one, we just add up the combined head-to-head records. The Pelicans and Lakers are each 6-5, while the Clippers are 5-5 and the Warriors are 5-7. Clippers-Lakers is the only remaining head-to-head among this group.

If the Clippers win that game, they’ll join the Pelicans at 6-5 while bumping the Lakers to 6-6. Assuming this is a 5/6/7/8 tie, the Lakers would finish 7th and the Warriors would finish 8th, setting up Warriors @ Lakers in the Play-In Tournament. The Clippers and Pelicans would reset as a 2-team tie, which New Orleans would win, placing the Pelicans 5th and the Clippers 6th.

If the Lakers win that game, they’ll pass the Pelicans, finishing 7-5 to New Orleans’ 6-5, the Clippers’ 5-6, and the Warriors’ 5-7. No further tiebreakers would be needed; the Lakers would be the 5-seed, the Pelicans would be the 6-seed, and we’d have Warriors @ Clippers in the 7-8 Play-In game.

The Timberwolves

I mentioned at the beginning that I would be setting aside the Wolves for now, and I hope that this post illustrates why–adding a 5th team to the mix creates a ton of additional 2-, 3-, and 4-team tie possibilities, in addition to the massive potential 5-team tiebreaker. Since they currently sit 2 losses back of the pack, it’s very likely that a lot of those scenarios will be closed off in the coming days. But if any Clippers-Wolves scenarios are still play heading into the final weekend of the regular season, I’ll be sure to break down the possibilities either in an article here or on my Twitter, where I am doing daily live tweeting of standings watching. For now, it might just be useful to know that the Wolves are 2-2 vs the Warriors, 2-1 vs the Clippers, 2-1 vs the Lakers, and 1-1 vs the Pelicans with a potentially massive final game vs New Orleans on the last day of the regular season.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

Western Conference Playoffs: a look at the Clippers tiebreaker situation
Lucas Hann

The Clippers knew they were going to be fighting uphill today.

After winning their second-round series late Friday night, they were rewarded by the NBA’s scheduling office with a game 1 36 hours later, in Phoenix, against a team that had 6 days of rest. That advantage is what the Suns earned by sweeping the Denver Nuggets in the second round, and Clipper coach Ty Lue noted in both Saturday’s off-day media session and his pre-game presser that he would have to carefully monitor minutes for his main players and reach deeper than usual into his bench.

The Clippers opened their game with their typical small unit and had success defensively, holding a 16-13 lead when Ivica Zubac replaced Nicolas Batum 7 minutes into the game. Ultimately, the teams ended the opening frame locked at 21 points apiece, as Paul George got off to a strong start with 12 of his own.

As part of his aforementioned more aggressive lineup tinkering to buy rest for his core players, Lue opened the second quarter with a really sketchy lineup featuring Rajon Rondo, Patrick Beverley, Luke Kennard, Nicolas Batum, and DeMarcus Cousins. With multiple defensive liabilities or shot creators, the crew immediately sputtered defensively but managed to hold steady early in the quarter as Cousins overmatched Suns backup center Dario Saric with his physicality. Suns coach Monty Williams kept Devin Booker and DeAndre Ayton tethered to each other in this game so that they could work together offensively–with both off the floor for shifts and no Chris Paul available to run the second unit, the Clippers were able to exploit Saric’s presence.

Ultimately, the experiment worked, as the Clippers had pulled ahead by two before Ayton returned to the game at the 7-minute mark to counter Cousins’ physicality. But Lue was caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and instead of proactively countering Monty Williams’ move to negate Cousins, he kept Rondo and DeMarcus on the floor through the middle of the second period. In just under 3 minutes of overlap, the Suns outscored the Clippers by 8 points and forced the Clippers’ starting unit to face a defecit in the closing minutes of the half. When the buzzer sounded, LAC had shrunk the deficit to 3 and went into the locker room feeling like they had survived a tricky first half that had forced them to make high-risk gambles.

But these Clippers just can’t catch a break. Marcus Morris, who has been essential to the team’s defensive success in small ball lineups throughout the playoffs (whether his extremely streaky three-point shot is falling or not), was unable to start the second half with knee soreness. He did ultimately play a few second unit minutes to bridge the third and fourth quarters, but asking LA to endure both one of Morris’ bad shooting games and find consistently viable defensive lineups without him or Kawhi Leonard was simply too much. Zubac took Morris’ place and had a solid-yet-unspectacular second half, playing 13 minutes (which the Clippers won by 3 points) and scoring 9 points in not-very-pretty fashion against the bigger, more athletic Ayton. Ultimately, between Zubac and Cousins, the Clippers played a traditional center for almost 19 of the second half’s 24 minutes, a sharp deviation from their gameplan so far in the playoffs forced by injuries to Leonard and Morris.

The real story of the third quarter, though, was not the Clippers’ unusual lineups but an epic duel between Paul George and Devin Booker. The best player on the day, Booker finished with a triple double while playing the entire half and shooting a monstrous 11-18 on two-point jumpshots. No matter what the Clippers did defensively, Booker navigated ball screens, used his body to create space, worked his way to comfortable spots in the mid-range, and elevated for clean looks. In the third quarter alone, he had 18 points on 7-11 field goal shooting while Paul George put up 15 points of his own, including some really high-difficulty moving threes that kept the Clippers in the game even as they were losing the execution battle.

George, Booker, and Ayton all played the entirety of the third quarter, and despite Booker’s unstoppable scoring burst, the Clippers ultimately won the frame and entered the fourth quarter tied, 93-93. As the Clippers transitioned to bench minutes again to begin the fourth, the game slipped away from them. Rajon Rondo and DeMarcus Cousins again entered the game, but Booker (who played the entire second half) and Ayton stayed in to start the fourth. While Ayton would check out soon after, a quick bad spell for the Clippers left them down 8 when Paul George checked back into the game with 9 minutes to play.

Chasing the lead, Lue made the call to go back to a small lineup without a center–but without Leonard or Morris, sliding Batum to center and George to power forward meant playing a small interior group alongside three guards as well, with Mann, Jackson, and Rondo joining the closing lineup. While he has received major warranted criticism for his performances throughout the playoffs, Rondo was not a negative during this stretch, contributing 8 fourth quarter points–and yet, with Patrick Beverley playing substantially better on both ends of the court throughout the playoffs, it felt as though the lineup could have been improved with his presence. Pat played just 15 minutes tonight to Rondo’s 22, but was his usual pesky self and helped the Clippers force turnovers, something that’s sorely needed when you are trying to close a gap late in a game. Additionally, Rondo’s biggest contributions down the stretch were making a pair of threes. While it’s great that he made them (and maybe this can give him some confidence to find something resembling good form going forward), generally Beverley is the substantially superior shooter and would be a preferred outlet in those spots.

The cockroach Clippers did ultimately make a game of it, cutting a deficit that was as large as 10 in the final frame down to 2 in the waning possessions before ultimately coming up short. But it was clear as the fourth quarter wore on that LA felt in their legs the weight of the three games they’ve played since Phoenix last had a game–George and Jackson both struggled to force defensive collapses with dribble drives, and they settled for a lot of bailout threes in the closing possessions instead of working to create good shots. For much of the second half, Phoenix consistently out-executed the Clippers and certainly left the game deserving the win, having created higher quality shots on the night.

But if you’re looking for reasons to be optimistic in the Clippers’ chances moving forward, they’re surely there. LA lost the 31 minutes where they played with a center by 11 points (Zubac 18 minutes, 0, and Cousins 13 minutes, -11) and won the remaining 17 non-center minutes by 5. If Morris is able to get some treatment on his knee and feel good to play normal minutes in game 2, LA will be able to stick to their preferred defensive look for a longer portion of the second half. When countering Ayton, the Clippers actually won the 15 Zubac vs Ayton minutes by 3 points, giving them a secondary look with additional size that seems viable, and they lost 5 Ayton vs Cousins minutes by 5 points–an unforced error by Ty Lue that is easily correctable going forward.

This game had 39 minutes of Paul George and Devin Booker sharing the court, 5 minutes of Booker on his own, and 4 minutes without either. The Clippers won the shared minutes by 1 point, lost the Booker-only minutes by 4, and played Phoenix even in the non-star minutes. With fresher legs for game 2 on Tuesday evening (LA gets a bonus extra half-day of rest because game 1 was early in the afternoon, and they get a true off day tomorrow without needing to travel), we can hopefully see George and Booker match minutes going forward. That difference likely would have maintained this game’s status as a coin flip instead of giving Phoenix a narrow but discernable upper hand.

But ultimately, two players who didn’t suit up tonight will define the trajectory of this series. There are no set return dates for either Chris Paul, who missed this game in accordance with the NBA’s health and safety protocols, or Kawhi Leonard, who suffered a knee sprain in the second round following an intentional foul by Jazz guard Joe Ingles late in a Clippers blowout win. Neither has been ruled out for Tuesday’s game 2 (Leonard did not travel with the team to Phoenix on Saturday, but could still theoretically join the team tomorrow), though we could very well watch a rematch of this game Tuesday night as both sides wait for their reinforcements. I expect Paul will be available earlier than Leonard, though nothing is certain with either case, so missing this chance to steal a coin flip win before being overmatched in potential future games when Paul is playing but Leonard is sidelined is particularly agonizing.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

Suns outlast Clippers to take game 1, 120-114
Lucas Hann

The LA Clippers, for the first time in franchise history, are playing in the Western Conference Finals (get used to hearing about how this is their first one, it’s going to be said somewhere between 10 and 11 billion times on TV in the next week). We can only be thankful that the team is healthy and rested and ready to put their best foot forward in such a big and historic opportunity.

Except star forward Kawhi Leonard is out indefinitely with a knee sprain (he may return at some point in this series but the outlook is uncertain at best), and championship big man Serge Ibaka has been shut down for the year following back surgery. And the Clippers have to pack up their celebration from Friday’s late-night series-clinching win over the Utah Jazz and head to Phoenix for a Sunday afternoon tip-off. And the Clippers have played every other day in June, 9 games without a 2-day break, while the Suns will have had 6 days off leading into game 1.

Ok. So maybe this isn’t gonna be so easy after all.

Series Schedule:

The Big Picture

No matter what happens, the Clippers are here. It’s both not particularly meaningful in the grand scheme of things (most teams have made a conference finals in recent memory and this has both been a bare minimum expectation for LAC the last two years and is a spot they expect to be back in for the next few seasons) and extremely historically significant. Most importantly, the team’s ability to both be on track for the Western Conference Finals earlier this week and ultimately win two straight games against the Utah Jazz to clinch their first ever WCF appearance without Kawhi Leonard has cemented the good vibes around this core and supporting cast. The biggest question surrounding this group this season was not whether or not they’d win the 2021 title–it was whether or not reinvesting in this group for 3-5 more years was a worthwhile endeavor in the pursuit of a title. The answer, in my mind, is a clear year.

The Antagonist

The Phoenix Suns have taken a bit of a different path to the 2021 Western Conference Finals than the Clippers. Last a playoff team in 2010, the Suns have had a mostly dismal decade. But the NBA’s Orlando bubble provided their young core with a unique opportunity to build momentum as they vied for the inaugural play-in tournament. Despite falling short of that goal, the Suns still accomplished the momentum-building–they went 8-0, including a Devin Booker gamewinner over these Clippers, and walked away from Orlando feeling like they were legitimately a win-now move away from contention despite falling just short of a spot in the play-in.

That feeling was right. The Suns made that big win-now move, acquiring Chris Paul in the off-season, and never looked back. Behind Paul and Booker, accented by existing Phoenix youngsters like Mikal Bridges, DeAndre Ayton, and Cameron Johnson, the Suns were able to fill out their rotation with veteran role players and earn the 2nd best record in the Western Conference this season. Phoenix’s biggest trial came in the first round against the LA Lakers, where they undeniably benefited from the Lakers’ poor health but also endured a severely limiting shoulder injury to Chris Paul and played exceptionally gritty basketball on both ends of the court to send the defending champs packing. Then, in the second round, the Suns were again a bit fortunate to draw a Denver Nuggets squad without Jamal Murray–but were again not just triumphant but resoundingly so, sweeping the NBA’s Most Valuable Player in order to reach the Western Conference Finals a week ahead of the Clippers.

Projected Starting Lineups:

LA Clippers: Reggie Jackson – Terance Mann – Paul George – Marcus Morris – Nicolas Batum
Phoenix Suns: Cameron Payne – Devin Booker – Mikal Bridges – Jae Crowder – DeAndre Ayton

• The Stars: Arguable the most important player for each of these teams, Chris Paul and Kawhi Leonard have each been confirmed to be out for game 1 of this series as Paul works to clear the NBA’s health and safety protocolas and Leonard recovers from a knee injury suffered as a result of a foul by Joe Ingles late in the Clippers’ game 4 blowout win over the Utah Jazz. Both teams are undeniably altered by these absences, and the difficulty in predicting this series lies not just in anticipating how each team will account for these absences, but in the impossibility of guessing if and when each player will return to their team’s lineup.
  
• Rest vs Rust: This debate is a bit overplayed in mainstream NBA media circles, but it’s an undeniable element of the opening game of this series: the Clippers have played 13 playoff games, including a closeout game in Los Angeles Friday night before flying to Phoenix for this Sunday afternoon Western Conference Finals opener. The Suns last played last Sunday, when they closed out their second-round sweep against the Denver Nuggets. Will the Clippers’ weary legs, following long, high-intensity minutes against the Utah Jazz, betray them today? Or will their momentum carry them past a Suns team that may have seen their edge dulled by inaction over the last week?

• Content: For a thorough preview of the Clippers’ first-ever Western Conference Finals against the Phoenix Suns, check out a new extra-length episode of The Lob, The Jam, The Podcast featuring myself, Dr. Shap, and Robert Flom as we discuss each team’s mindset entering the series, break down a basic Suns scouting report, comment on the important match-ups we’ll see in this series, and give our predictions for who will advance to the NBA Finals.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

Western Conference Finals Game 1 Preview: Attrition
Lucas Hann

The Clippers put together one of the greatest wins in the history of the franchise, upsetting the Utah Jazz in Salt Lake City, 119-111. With the victory, the Clippers bring a 3-2 series lead home to Los Angeles. That they did it just hours after former coach Doc Rivers’ 76ers blew a 26-point lead only adds flourish to the poetry. Paul George struck back at his critics; the Clippers survived a withering barrage; Marcus Morris Sr. and Reggie Jackson played like stars; and more coming up in this Game 5 recap:

Summary

The Clippers’ surprise morning announcement that Kawhi Leonard would miss Game 5 with a knee sprain put a challenge to Paul George that was both immense and clear: play like a transformational star.

Paul George was up for the challenge.

The Clippers’ embattled wing submitted a signature night, scoring 37 points and adding 16 rebounds and five assists to give the franchise perhaps its most notable victory so far.

George was asked to lead and he did so all the way. He led his team in field goals and attempts, free throws and attempts, three-point attempts, offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds, assists, and blocks. (In a minor upset, Nicolas Batum edged him out in minutes played.) His three makes from deep tied three teammates for the team-high.

George’s five turnovers are a blemish, but given his monumental playmaking load and place in Utah’s defensive attention, it’s a forgivable one. It was his proficiency in navigating Utah’s increasing defensive pressure that helped turn the game in the third quarter and seal it in the fourth. Paul George carried the Clippers to the mountaintop and then he took them home.

And it was quite the mountain to climb. The Utah Jazz made it so. Bojan Bogdanovic made it so.

According to the national broadcast, no team this season had attempted nor converted as many three pointers in a single half as the Jazz did before halftime tonight. Quin Snyder’s mad bombers jacked 30 threes and made 17 of them. It still feels like a typo. “Hot” doesn’t do them justice, and I exhausted the thesaurus in a search for something that could.

Bogdanovic was the ace among aces. He scored 23 of his team-high 32 points in the first half. 18 of those, on six treys, came in the first quarter. The Clippers contested him, but he didn’t care.

The Jazz were so productive from deep that they didn’t need anything else. They attempted just seven two-point field goals in the first half. (They made six, because they made everything.) The splashes came so frequently that the crowd never had time to settle into a lull. Utah’s 65-60 halftime lead was built through a relentless roar.

That the Clippers weathered such a torrential storm was testament both to their tenacity and their own shotmaking. They rode their aggressive defense, turning turnovers into scoring opportunities. Utah handed over 11 of its 13 turnovers in the first half. Both teams cooked, and the commentators weren’t wrong to compare the pace and scoring production to the All-Star Game’s.

The tempo changed in the third quarter, as did the lead, and not coincidentally. The Clippers demonstrated their comfort level within a deliberate half-court game, leveraging their strategic advantages over the Jazz to win the frame 32-18.

Marcus Morris Sr. was one such advantage. The Clippers needed role players to step up in Kawhi’s absence, and Morris was one of many to deliver. He showed off tremendous shotmaking, backing down the smaller Jazz in the post for postseason-sized midrange buckets. He scored 25 points, a career playoff high, and trailed only Paul George in makes.

The fourth quarter brought more intensity and more noise. With the crowd returning to its lather, the Jazz swarmed the Clippers. George and company, so adept at handling double teams a quarter earlier, grew imprecise in the face of increasing pressure and mounting fatigue. After invoking Lawler’s Law with 6:45 remaining, a 7-0 Utah run off Clippers turnovers cut the good guys’ lead to three.

With George finally laboring, Reggie Jackson stepped into the playmaking void and squelched Utah’s counterattack with the kind of timely and heroic shots that will earn him an eye-watering raise over the summer. With Morris ably filling the second banana role, Jackson took his now characteristic turn in the team’s third-star rotation, scoring 12 of his 22 points in the final frame.

With the Clippers settled at arms’ length from the Jazz, Donovan Mitchell took his swings at chopping down the lead, but connected on too few to capture the glory for himself. Mitchell scuffled to 21 points, converting just six of 19 field goal attempts and four of 14 three-point attempts. He was conspicuously bothered by both his knee and Patrick Beverley.

Through the fourth-quarter slog, Paul George’s aggressiveness never wavered. His paint forays were critical to opening the shots that carried the endgame, and it was his clutch and-one jumper and free throws that iced it.

Game 6 comes Friday night, and so does the opportunity for Paul George and franchise to mint an even greater achievement.

Notables

• Terance Mann started in Kawhi’s vacated spot. He scored 13 points in 26 minutes and atoned for (and then some) his first-round rim gaffe with an absolutely seismic dunk on Rudy Gobert.
• Each of the Clipper starters finished with a positive plus-minus, none lower than Paul George’s plus-nine. Rajon Rondo recorded a minus-12 in just nine minutes, effectively playing his way out of the rotation for the second half. Luke Kennard and Patrick Beverley were Tyronn Lue’s top choices to augment the starters, as the Clippers almost completely eschewed Ivica Zubac (eight minutes) for small lineups. Lue got the good Beverley tonight — he was an absolute defensive menace.
• Mann’s yam notwithstanding, Rudy Gobert was his usual towering presence at the rim. He tallied 17 points and 10 rebounds, five offensively. He punished the center-less Clippers in the third quarter with a run on offensive boards.
• Royce O’Neale is quickly establishing himself within the rogues’ gallery of Clipper villains. He drew a flagrant 1 foul, Utah’s third of the series, after pulling down Paul George by the neck.
• Nic Batum continues to shine in the Clippers’ aggressive defensive scheme. He swiped a game high four steals and pulled down seven defensive boards while battling the man-tree, Gobert.

That does it for this recap of the Clippers’ Game 5 win over the Jazz. Stay on the lookout for more analysis of this series and an episode of TLTJTP soon.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

Clippers vs Jazz Game 5 Recap: One to Remember
Thomas Wood

Clippers All-NBA forward Kawhi Leonard will miss tonight’s game 5 against the Utah Jazz in Salt Lake City. According to a brief announcement from the team, Leonard suffered a right knee sprain and there is no timetable for his return. The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported that the team fears that Leonard may have suffered an ACL injury. The injury seemingly came when Leonard was intentionally fouled by Jazz guard Joe Ingles on a fastbreak late in the Clippers’ game 4 win.

Shams’ phrasing here is a bit interesting, to say the least. First of all, I’m not sure what to make of a report that they “fear” anything 36 hours after the fact. Then there’s the wording of “ACL injury,” which is incredibly vague. Naturally, the fear at the front of every reader’s mind is a torn ACL, which is one of the most major injuries a basketball player can suffer (perhaps second to a ruptured Achilles tendon) and can require a lengthy 9-month recovery time after surgery. But for that exact reason, the word “tear” is a crucial one, and we don’t see it in this tweet. An “ACL injury” includes a wide range of outcomes, with the aforementioned nightmare scenario on one end of the spectrum and relatively mild sprains on the other. An ACL sprain would still likely cost Leonard at least the remainder of this series against the Utah Jazz, but a potential return would be possible during the Western Conference Finals or NBA Finals if the Clippers somehow advance without him. A tear, on the other hand, would cost him at least a large portion of the 2021-22 NBA season. I don’t know when we can expect to know the exact details–Ramona Shelburne of ESPN reports that the Clippers are indeed waiting on additional imaging to confirm the severity of the injury:

Leonard has a player option for $36 million next season, but even with an injury, it makes little sense for him to opt in to that year. A player of his caliber will get a maximum salary contract in free agency, even in the worst-case scenario of a torn ACL that would cost him most or all of next season. The Brooklyn Nets similarly gave Kevin Durant a four-year maximum contract (with a player option in the final season) during the 2019 off-season despite knowing that Durant would miss the entire 2019-20 NBA season with a ruptured Achilles. One would imagine that with the Clippers seemingly having the momentum in this series before Leonard’s injury, there would be a willingness from all parties to more or less keep this roster together for next season.

For now, the Clippers still have at least 2 games left in their season, and while Leonard is their best player, Ty Lue and the rest of the roster will have a chance to make the franchise’s first Western Conference Finals… and perhaps buy time for Kawhi to make his return. The team was 8-7 without Leonard last year under Doc Rivers, and 11-9 without him this season–including 2 intentionally thrown games to end the regular season.

In these playoffs, Paul George-led lineups have had success: while the Clippers have won 363 minutes where George and Leonard shared the court by 6 points, they’ve won 81 minutes of George by himself by 31. Obviously, those minutes tend to coincide with opposing stars also resting, but George has overall thrived when taking charge of games while Kawhi rests. Look how Paul George’s playoff marks per 100 possessions increase when he embraces the burden of being aggressive offensively as a solo star:

George told reporters after Monday’s game 4 win, when asked about his high minutes in these playoffs, that he’d be willing to play all 48. After Durant played all 48 minutes in Brooklyn’s game 5 win over Milwaukee last night (in an all-time 49 point, 17 rebound, 10 assist performance with Kyrie Irving sidelined and James Harden playing hurt), the Clippers might need George for all 48 tonight. If not, he’ll definitely be in the 40s, and nothing short of a brilliant individual performance will be enough for a win.

In addition to George, the Clippers won’t be able to afford poor performances from their other core offensive players–that means simultaneous efficient outings for Reggie Jackson and Marcus Morris. Nicolas Batum will have to be brilliant on the defensive end of the court, and some threes won’t hurt either. And there will need to be a couple of “step-up” performances across the supporting cast–Patrick Beverley could add some shot-making to his wonderful defensive performances this series, Terance Mann and Luke Kennard have a chance for a playoff break-out game as supporting scorers, Ivica Zubac’s physicality around the rim could give the Clippers a boost on both ends, Rajon Rondo may return to the series as a high-IQ defender and extra ballhandler, and even DeMarcus Cousins may have a part to play as an instigator to frustrate Rudy Gobert.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

Kawhi Leonard out indefinitely, Clippers fear ACL injury
Lucas Hann

The Clippers, still, have not accomplished anything.

In a first-round series where they were heavily favored, LA was pushed to the brink of elimination multiple times. They needed a 7th game to overcome a significantly less talented Dallas Mavericks group after intentionally losing their final two games of the season to set up a preferential playoff bracket for themselves. Considered a championship contender and still carrying the baggage from their embarrassing elimination in the second round last year, all that the Clippers did today is get back to the same spot. This time, instead of being a 2-seed favored against a 3, they’ll be a 4-seed going on the road to play the Utah Jazz, who were the NBA’s best regular-season team. They’ll be doing so at a major rest disadvantage, and they need a positive result from that series if they want today’s win to mean anything. A second round loss wouldn’t be quite as bad as a first round loss would have been, but nonetheless, it would mark a second straight year of undeniable failure.

So why does this feel so different?

For all of the on-court elements that were decisive in this series, and for all the others that will be relevant in analyzing the next, the single biggest difference between the 2020 Clippers and 2021 Clippers is their resiliency. There’s no doubt that last year’s team was very good, but they crumpled under pressure and disappeared in big moments, thrice failing to hold on to double-digit leads and eliminate the Denver Nuggets. Initial success didn’t come as easy for this iteration of the Clippers, who struggled with cold shooting early in the series and were figuring out their defensive cohesion on the fly after important players missed huge swaths of time in the second half of the regular season. But their resiliency–that extra fight with their backs against the wall, their ability to be dangerous when cornered–is what won them this series. Down 0-2 heading into Dallas. Down 30-11 in the first quarter of game 3. Losing game 5 at home, only to win twice in a row. Giving up a big third quarter run in game 7 to go down 5, only to rally and build a 19-point lead in the fourth that would allow them to weather Dallas’ last frantic attempts at saving their season.

It doesn’t particularly matter that last year’s Clipper beat the Mavericks in just 6 games–the Dallas LAC saw for the last two weeks was a much more dangerous, aggressive, confident bunch, led by the NBA’s most dominant young star in Luka Doncic. Last year’s Mavs didn’t come in and throw haymakers the way that this year’s team did, and last year’s Clippers would have stayed on the mat after taking those punches. This year’s Clippers would not stay down.

A big part of the credit for that belongs to head coach Ty Lue, in his first year with the team after Doc Rivers (whose Sixers dropped a disappointing game 1 to the Atlanta Hawks today) was relieved of his duties. Rick Carlisle is one of the NBA’s best coaches, and Luka Doncic is one of the NBA’s best players. After (in my view) overreacting to some tough made threes by Luka early in the series, Lue inadvertently created the conditions for the Mavericks’ success from deep to snowball, instituting new and complex coverages that his players weren’t prepared to execute. The resulting breakdowns contributed (in part, variance is always a factor) to several of Dallas’ best three-point shooting games of the year.

But Lue didn’t double down on that early mistake. He flipped the script from the team’s over-aggressive scheme against Doncic in game 2, pledging that the objective moving forward was to simplify their coverages and force Luka to beat them as a scorer. He made risky, yet calculated, changes to the lineup that were heavily criticized… and they yielded great results. Patrick Beverley, the presumptive top guard on the Clippers’ roster, was removed from the starting lineup and rotation favor of Reggie Jackson, a minimum-salary veteran who had a standout season playing in place of Beverley and developing cohesion with the first unit. The decision to bench Ivica Zubac heading into game 4 was particularly agonizing, as it left the Clippers thin on second-unit forwards and small on the defensive glass–but Nicolas Batum was arguably the team’s third-best player in this series, and having him on the court for longer stabilized the defense. Rajon Rondo, acquired to be “Playoff Rondo” with his championship pedigree and wealth of NBA Playoff experience, was not only passed over by Jackson for the starting job but also saw his minutes siphoned to Terance Mann (and Luke Kennard!) over the course of the series, ultimately not playing in the second half of game 7. And the surprise inclusion of Kennard himself was the cherry on top of Lue’s tactical sundae–the most unlikely counter imaginable to Dallas’ increased usage of Boban Marjanovic. With Boban deployed to deter the Clippers from continuing to destroy the Mavs’ defense by attacking the rim, LA consistently found open corner threes against Dallas’ oversized zone, and Kennard was the perfect marksman to make an impact in limited minutes.

There’s room for everyone to get a little appreciation following a game 7 win, of course, so we can extend past crediting Lue for putting guys in a position to succeed and also credit guys for succeeding. Reggie fuckin Jackson played 210 minutes in a playoff series and was a positive, executing hedge-and-recovers against Doncic to avoid switches and bringing a much-needed additional scoring punch to the lineup (20 points per game over the final 3 games of the series). Nicolas Batum didn’t often jump off the box score, but he was consistently strong in his role and composed under pressure, including a big game 7 performance. Marcus Morris was inconsistent throughout the series but delivered two of the best performances of his life in game 6 and 7–one an absolute masterclass in defensive versatility, and the other a red-hot shooting display with 23 points on 7-9 shooting. Terance Mann burst onto the scene in game 3 and proved that all of the good stuff he brings in the regular season still impacts games in a playoff setting. And Luke Kennard–Luke Kennard–stepped into the rotation in games 6 and 7 and delivered a crucial 11 points and +14 in his 15 game 7 minutes.

But nothing that the role players provided in this series, or this game, can overshadow the leadership the Clippers got from their two stars. Paul George won’t get the headlines coming out of this series, but he did a lot of the dirty work in key moments over the course of games, from timely scoring while Kawhi Leonard was on the bench to determined drives to the rim to stop Dallas runs to massive rebounding, defensive, and distribution contributions to keep the trains running on time for Kawhi. Yet there’s no question that Kawhi Leonard deserves the major recognition, not just for leading the Clippers through this series but for doing so in truly historic fashion. For the series, Kawhi averaged 32.1 points, 7.9 rebounds, 4.2 assists, and 2.3 steals while shooting a lethal 61.2% from the field and 42.5% from deep. He stepped up in the biggest moments and in spaces where the team’s overall improved mentality wouldn’t have sufficed to save their season, he bailed them out and carried them–never more than with his 45-point game 6 performance where he simply destroyed Dallas down the stretch to extend the series to today’s contest.

And yet the rightful feeling of triumph around today’s series victory still also feels appropriately muted, at least from where I sit. If the Clippers are going to reach their preferred destination, this series was the first (and likely easiest) step in their journey. The next leg begins Tuesday night in Salt Lake City.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

Clippers Survive Game 7 vs. Mavericks, Advance to Second Round
Lucas Hann

Last year, when the LA Clippers and Dallas Mavericks faced off in the first round of the NBA playoffs, the series was exciting but not exactly up for grabs. There might have been some worry after Luka Doncic’s overtime gamewinner in game 4 tied the series at 2-2, but the Clippers had been the better team overall and crushed Dallas by 43 points before closing out the series in a more-competitive-but-still-decisive 14-point game 6 victory. Not unlike the current iteration of the matchup, some outrageous role player shooting helped lift the Mavs last time around (Seth Curry shooting 59% from the field and 48% from three comes to mind), but it was also very clear that Doncic was a postseason force to be reckoned with, averaging an efficient 31 points, 10 rebounds, and 9 assists. It wasn’t surprising that the former Euroleague Final Four MVP would thrive on the NBA Playoff stage, but that series nonetheless marked his official arrival as an NBA superstar.

This time around, anyone who called the series anything but up for grabs would be lying through their teeth. It’s been an unprecedentedly tumultuous series, with the Clippers at multiple times seeming dead in the water–like when they were down 0-2 after two home losses and began game 3 in Dallas down 30-11, or Wednesday night when LA’s third home loss gave the Mavericks a 3-2 series lead. Granted, some pretty random stuff (like the percentage of wide-open threes each team is hitting) has swung unexpectedly and wildly in Dallas’ favor, but as the saying goes, that’s why they play the games. The Mavericks have had some of their best collective performances of the year in the last two weeks, and they’ve put themselves in a position to pull off a fairly surprising upset in the NBA playoffs. Despite many of the names and faces being the same, this Dallas team is a scarier, hungrier, sharper beast than they were last year.

Still, the Clippers have just felt… better. Of course, whenever someone asks whether one team is “better” than another, I ask them what they mean by “better,” so I guess I should explain: the Clippers have felt to me like they have a wider margin for error in this match-up than the Mavericks have. It’s just that the Clippers are committing, well, lots of errors and Dallas, particularly in games 1 and 2 in LA, is playing fantastic basketball. That margin for error factor, as it’s felt like the Clippers have generally improved as the series has gone on and Dallas has generally slowed down a bit, has made it feel throughout this series that if LA could just extend the series and get back on level footing, they’d have the upper hand. It certainly felt that way after game 4, when a lot of folks seemed to think that the series was essentially over. And I think the Clippers will revert to being a strong favorite to win the series again now that they’ve pulled it back to 3-3.

But Game 7s are different. In these one-off, single-elimination outings, weirdness reigns supreme. Unpredictable is expected, unique is normal. Last year, four series went to a seventh game. Five of the eight teams involved had their lowest-scoring game of the series. In Denver-Utah, the Jazz scored 78 points after averaging 119.3 for first six games, while the Nuggets scored 80 after averaging 115. Individual box scores are weird. In game 7 between Oklahoma City and Houston, Lu Dort scored 30 points on 6-12 shooting from deep despite the Rockets abandoning him on the perimeter as a non-shooter all series. In the Clippers’ game 7 vs Denver, Kawhi Leonard had one of his worst playoff games ever, scoring 14 points on 6-22 shooting. Yeah, the same guy we just saw get 45 on 18-25 in an elimination game last night. And teams generally do not shoot well, whether due to fatigue from the long series or the pressure of the big moment. Just one of the eight game 7 team shooting performances last year was better than 35% from deep, while five of the eight were below 30%. In the smallest of sample sizes, concerns about sustainability and process go out the window and results are king.

The Big Picture

Someone, at some point leading up to this game 7, is going to call it the biggest game in Clippers franchise history. I will roll my eyes at them again, just as I did when it was thrown around contantly before game 3 (I feel like I heard it before games 5 and 6 as well, though not as widespread). Let’s get it straight: the Clippers losing this game would be catastrophic, not because they should be guaranteed victory in a one-off elimination game, but because losing in the first round would be a severely disappointing outcome for a team that by any metric should be on the of the league’s premier championship contenders. Losing in 7 is more respectable than getting swept, but both outcomes are similarly positioned squarely as “unacceptable.” And even if the Clippers win, they won’t really have accomplished anything concrete. A win Sunday gets them out of the first round. So what? Nobody ever really doubted that this team could and would achieve that. Frankly, they’ll need to win Sunday and four times against the Utah Jazz in the second round before it will feel like they’ve really accomplished anything noteworthy at all.

But whether the Clippers win on Sunday and are looking for meaning in this series as the first step in their 2021 playoff journey, or they lose and are left searching for solace following a devastating and unequivocal failure, there’s one pretty significant subplot here: this team was mentally tough. The Clippers have not put forth their best performances in the last two weeks of games against Dallas, but they have been undeniably resilient. To go into Dallas down 0-2 and face a barrage of early threes but insist that your season will not end tonight, or to head back to Dallas down 2-3 and grit out your best team defensive performance of the season to survive another day–that’s just not something that was in last year’s team’s identity. If the Clippers are eliminated in the first round, growth in that category probably isn’t enough to save this core from wholesale changes over the off-season. But particularly if they do survive and advance, overcoming adversity and proving to themselves that they can rally under pressure and stage the comebacks, instead of wilting under pressure and conceding them, would be a particularly huge step mentally for a team that is very much still carrying the baggage of last year’s collapse.

The Antagonist

All of a sudden, people are asking: “wait, just exactly how good are the Mavericks?” There’s no denying that the vast majority of that reckoning are with the individual talent of Luka, who has been one of the league’s most electric players this postseason, but I would say that several of Dallas’ role players have also earned a bit of respect around the league in this series–even as the resounding consensus is that Kristaps Porzingis lacks the consistency or shot creation ability to really be a reliable second star. In particular, Tim Hardaway Jr. has been electric in this series, averaging 18 points per game and posting unbelievable shooting splits. NBA.com’s tracking data charts shots as facing defense that is “very tight,” “tight,” “open,” or “wide open.” Players rarely take “very tight” threes, but in the other categories Hardaway posted regular season splits of 35.7/40.6/38.8, and in this series those marks are up to 45.5/46.7/44.4 (yes, if your take is “of course he’s shooting well, he’s getting open shots, that’s completely disproven by the data). Overall, the Mavericks are hitting 40.7% of their threes after shooting 36.2% in the regular season–and they’ve hit a truly staggering 46.2% of their threes at Staples Center, up from 36.5% in regular season road games. (Just for fun, the team-wide tracking data: 30.4/41.7/45.5 through 6 games of this series, 29.7/36.9/37.0 in the regular season.)

But of course, the centerpiece is Dallas’ star, already one of the league’s most unstoppable offensive geniuses at 22 years old and truly in a class of dominance as a young star that he shares only with LeBron James in this century. While Luka’s stardom is undeniable, some of what he has done in this series has been shocking, even by his already-lofty standards. Normally shooting 38.5% on three pointers after taking 7 or more dribbles (those back-breaking, shot-clock draining stepback threes we know all too well), he’s hit 53.3% of them in this series. When he does drive the ball and gets walled off by a defender, he’s fully capable of hitting unguardable turnaround fadeaway shots–it’s just that normally he makes 47.9% of his tightly guarded twos from 10 or more feet away, and in this series he’s making 61.5% of them. Has Luka taken another leap under the bright lights of his second postseason? Is he simply the type of generational talent that is even better and more locked in during the playoffs? Or are these statistical anomalies simply a hot shooting stretch? If he leads the Mavs over the Clippers with an individual game 7 masterpiece, it will be an amazing accomplishment regardless of how sustainable his shooting is in that game or was over the course of the series.

The Details

Where: Staples Center, Los Angeles, CA
When: 12:30 PM PT
How to Watch: ABC

Projected Starting Lineups:
Clippers: Reggie Jackson – Paul George – Kawhi Leonard – Marcus Morris – Nicolas Batum
Mavericks: Luka Doncic – Tim Hardaway, Jr. – Dorian Finney-Smith – Kristaps Porzingis – Boban Marjanovic

Game Notes

• Boban: Rick Carlisle made an adjustment in game 5, inserting 7’4″ backup center and former Clipper Boban Marjanovic into the starting lineup in an attempt to dissuade the Clippers from continuing attacking the rim relentlessly on offense while also punishing the team’s extremely small, switchable defensive lineup. I won’t say that it was a failure–Boban’s presence slowed down LA’s rim attack in games 5 and 6 and the Clippers had some trouble adjusting to the zone defense Carlisle built around his slow-footed, giant center. But despite losing game 5, the Clippers did win Boban’s minutes, and while they lost Boban’s minutes in game 6, I think they really figured out how to consistently create great shots against the zone… they just didn’t hit them.

• Shooting: Speaking of, it’s time for the Clippers to hit some threes. The best regular-season three-point shooting team in NBA history, LA has seen their average drop from 41.1% on the year to 35.4% in this series, with some brutal cold streaks at inopportune times. The team is making 39.2% of their “wide open” threes, down from 44.4% in the regular season, which is really impacting their ability to consistently punish Dallas for defensive errors. In game 6, the Clippers were just 1-8 on corner three point attempts. A lot of times, the later you get in a series, the more games become rock fights as teams become exhausted and start to figure out how to stop each other. It sure would be cathartic if the Clippers could finally have a breakout three-point shooting game on Sunday.

• Scoring Support: Paul George’s 20 points on 6-15 shooting in game 6 was good enough, in part because he was brilliant defensively and added 13 rebound and 6 assists, but mostly because it was simply enough–the Clippers won the game. But in addition to the obvious team-carrying by Kawhi Leonard (45 points on 25 shot attempts), Reggie Jackson chipping in with some high-efficiency volume (25 points on 15 shot attempts) helped ease the gurden on Paul. If the Clippers had lost game 6, Paul’s relatively muted offensive impact would have been a major site of criticism. Kawhi’s great, but he might not go “historically” dominant again after 36 hours. Paul will need to provide more punch offensively, as will 64-million-dollar-man Marcus Morris, who had 4 points on 1-10 shooting, and, probably some random Clipper–the bench put up a total of 4 points in game 6.

• Rotations: Ty Lue made two rotational adjustments in game 6: he played his starters a shit ton of minutes, and he threw a curveball with Luke Kennard’s inclusion. I expect we’ll see a similar dose of the former on Sunday, with each of the starters reaching at least the mid-30s and multiple extending into the 40s if they have the stamina for it and can stay out of foul trouble. George, Leonard, Morris, and Batum all essentially have to play as much as possible because of how important their switchability is to defending Doncic. Jackson is currently Lue’s preferred guard to accompany them, which makes sense because he’s improved from “catastrophic” to “competent” defensively as the series has gone on and he’s provided a much-needed scoring punch. But if things go off the rails with Reggie, I wouldn’t be shocked to see proven veteran Rajon Rondo play a much bigger role than his 10 game 6 minutes. Kennard, for what it’s worth, was plagued by the same issues as in the regular season: he was passive offensively, indecisive on the ball, and looked like a scared puppy when asked to make any decision… but, he executed his defensive hedge-and-recover actions well and he won’t miss 3 open corner threes again if he’s given the opportunity.

• Clipper Birthday: David Michineau, who the Clippers took with the 39th pick in the 2016 NBA Draft, turns 27 today. Happy Birthday, David! Let’s get a win on his behalf.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

Clippers vs. Mavericks Game 7 Preview: One Last Time
Lucas Hann