You’ve probably seen the meme where Spider-Man points at himself. If I could pick one picture to encapsulate where the Clippers currently stand, that’s my choice. Following a brutal game seven loss to the Denver Nuggets, the Los Angeles Clippers are in a position where they can only blame themselves.

But, first and foremost, I want to acknowledge Michael Malone and the rest of the Denver Nuggets players and coaching staff. Coming back from a 3-1 deficit twice in the same postseason is a feat accomplished by no one in NBA history. All credit goes to Denver, but we have to remember that Denver can’t achieve this if L.A. had closed them out earlier in the series.

Game 5

After the Clippers defeated the Nuggets 96-85 in game four, both teams began the first quarter of game five pretty tight. In the second quarter, the Clippers started to pull away. Lou Williams made baskets inside the arc and Landry Shamet and JaMychal Green hit some key triples off the bench to provide the starters with critical help.

An and-1 from Marcus Morris Sr. saw the lead extend to 56-40, which would be the largest lead held by the Clippers. L.A. went into the second half with a twelve-point cushion, but the Nuggets made the necessary adjustments to make a run. Denver didn’t take over right away, but following crucial baskets from Paul Millsap, who arguably turned in his best game of the bubble, Denver set themselves up to make an all-or-nothing run in the fourth.

Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray needed to step up on the scoring end, and needless to say, they rose to the occasion. The one-two game between Jokic and Murray clicked at the right time, and Denver flipped the score to take a six-point lead with five minutes remaining. Kawhi Leonard hit some big threes and earned trips to the free-throw line to slow the game down, but the game fell in the hands of Michael Porter Jr., who drilled the biggest shot of the game. Denver outscored L.A. 38-25 in the final 12 minutes.

The Clippers sat on a 16-point lead but watched it slowly evaporate as Denver outplayed them on both ends of the game to force game six.

Game 6

This game gave the Clippers a second chance of closing the series out, and the Clippers started the first half strong yet again. A dominant 16-2 stretch to end the second quarter was exactly what the doctor ordered, but the Clippers were too stubborn to take the medication. Despite Paul George and Leonard taking over the end of the second and setting themselves up to finish Denver off, they allowed Denver to take advantage of their poor tactics on both ends of the court.

After scoring 34 points in the first quarter, the Clippers managed just 35 points in the entire second half. Sixteen of those came in the third quarter when Denver made their huge run to trail by just two to enter the fourth. George took responsibility for 10 of those points, but he didn’t receive any help and Denver hunted the Montrezl Harrell and Lou Williams mismatches to burn the Clippers on defense.

A similar theme from game five appears in this one: if you fail to keep your foot on the pedal, you’ll be passed up. You can’t offer a team like Denver the chance to see light, otherwise, they’ll climb out of the dark hole and bury you instead. Once Denver regained momentum, they grasped it with both hands and rode it to victory.

George and Leonard couldn’t carry the load themselves, whereas Jokic and Murray, though doing their jobs efficiently, were supported by Monte Morris, Gary Harris, and others who stepped up because of the momentum switch. The Clippers ended up being the team who lost by double-digits and did the one thing they couldn’t afford to do: go to game seven.

The uncertainty of a game with colossal implications is one the Clippers couldn’t afford to participate in, yet their own mishaps led them tumbling into a game where momentum didn’t favor them.

Game 7

Just like the last two games, both teams kept the score tight, except Denver didn’t allow L.A. to go on a run to end the first half. The Clippers maintained the edge, but the storyline of blowing a significant lead wouldn’t materialize on post-game headlines.

However, the Clippers’ inability to score in the second half did. L.A. only managed 33 points in the second half of a win-or-go-home game. Whichever way you put it, that’s inexcusable. Fifteen of those came in the fourth quarter, where the Clippers showed zero fight; they were ready to go home. It was a relatively low-scoring quarter, but Murray and Jokic opened the floodgates just enough to drown their desiccated opponents.

Obviously, it didn’t do the Clippers any favors that their two stars shot a combined 10-38 from the floor. That’s 26% in a semifinal closeout game; there’s no justifying that type of performance. The two notably scored zero points in the fourth quarter. It’s also why L.A. couldn’t let game seven occur. You never know if the worst-case scenario for your team would happen in the biggest game of the season, but you don’t have to ponder those thoughts if you closed out responsibly.

And if Harrell is your leading scorer after 48 minutes, something went drastically wrong. Denver didn’t completely suffocate L.A. on defense either, because L.A. had open looks. But, you saw George clanking an open corner three off the side of the backboard, which made up one of his nine missed triples from the game. Again, you need to avoid game seven if you can prevent it.

Other Factors

In-game decisions made by Doc Rivers played a massive role in L.A’s downfall as well. Giving Harrell numerous minutes when Ivica Zubac and Green were much better players/matchups definitely cost L.A. points. Harrell’s inability to be a defender at any decent level saw Jokic and company torch Harrell. This stat certainly supports the eye test:

Montrezl Harrell and Nikola Jokic went head-to-head for 35 minutes over the final three games of this series. The Los Angeles Clippers were outscored by 47 points in those minutes.

— Justin Russo (@FlyByKnite) September 16, 2020

Patrick Beverley fouling out early in game six played a large part, too, as L.A. lost his versatility on both ends and needed to play Williams more often. Beverley quietly turned in arguably the best performance from a Clipper in game seven, but it’s going to be swept under the rug now due to the loss.

Landry Shamet quietly disappeared and couldn’t help offensively either. Shamet’s best asset couldn’t be weaponized efficiently against Denver, as he shot 4-18 (22%) from deep in the series. He played limited minutes in game seven due to injury, but it’s hard to imagine him making a positive impact anyway.

Mike Malone, to put simply, out-coached his counterpart. When Harrell and Williams shared the floor, Denver attacked L.A. with pick-and-rolls, resulting in open looks. Because Lou Williams struggled often and Beverley dealt with foul trouble, Reggie Jackson saw minutes too, which certainly didn’t help the defense any. If Leonard and George couldn’t score, Rivers didn’t have a reliable third option, yet he kept insisting that Harrell and Williams would solve those issues. It might’ve worked in the regular season, but the bench duo was unsurprisingly exposed when it mattered most.

The Clippers are now 0-8 all-time when they’re about to clinch a conference finals berth, fittingly ranking them first in that category, per Elias Sports. Just like their blown 3-1 lead in 2015, the blame falls on the entire Los Angeles Clippers organization. With the expectations coming into the season, the lasting effects of this loss could be incalculable.

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The Los Angeles Clippers Can Only Blame Themselves
Sanjesh Singh

When it comes to big playoff games, Clippers fans are all too familiar with the worst kind of pain: a blown lead. Last night, LA were once again caught reeling in a game that would have sent them to their first-ever Western Conference Finals, blowing a big lead and losing in heartbreaking fashion to the Denver Nuggets. Their largest lead in the game was 16 points, 56-40 near the end of the 2nd, but they also led by 13, 80-67, with 1:25 left in the third quarter. By 5:48 to play, Denver had taken a 6-point lead at 94-88–a 19-point swing resulting from a 27-8 run that spanned nearly 8 minutes of game time.

Through the grief, Clippers fans are also asking: why does this always happen to us? The team, of course, infamously blew some notable playoff leads during the Lob City era: a 13-point lead with 4 minutes left in game 5 of their 2014 2nd round series vs OKC and a 19-point second half lead against the Houston Rockets in game 6 of that 2015 2nd round series. But they also seem to be particularly prone to letting double-digit advantages slip away in this postseason. Let’s take a look at each game so far:

• DAL G1: Clips take an early 16-point lead, but fall behind by as much as 14–a 30-point swing–before going on to win.
• DAL G2: Clips lose wire-to-wire.
• DAL G3: The Clippers separate by as much as 18 points in the fourth and hold off a late Mavs run that cuts the final deficit to 8.
• DAL G4: LAC leads by as much as 21 in the first half before blowing the lead and falling behind by as much as 12. They came back to force OT, losing at the buzzer.
• DAL G5: Clips separate early and the game never gets within double digits for the last three quarters.
• DAL G6: Clippers separate in the third quarter, going up by as much as 23 halfway through the third and holding on to win despite the Mavs cutting the lead to just 6 at the 9:00 mark in the fourth quarter.
• DEN G1: LAC pulls away in the 2nd and the fatigued Nuggets have no energy for a comeback.
• DEN G2: The Nuggets get their lead to 20 in 2nd quarter and again in the 3rd, and while LAC cuts the lead to 5 in the 4th they ultimately lose.
• DEN G3: Denver builds a couple smaller leads–12 points in the second quarter, 10 in the 3rd, 7 in the 4th–before LAC wins it late.
• DEN G4: The Clippers jump out to a big early lead, and despite the Nuggets tying the game in the third, LA goes on a run to build an even bigger 19-point lead and win the game.
• DEN G5: As mentioned above, LAC’s 13-point second half lead is undone by a 27-8 run in the late 3rd and early 4th quarters.

Can we learn anything from looking at it that way? The first takeaway might be that most first-half leads evaporate at some point over the course of a game. Basketball is a game of runs, and every team in the playoffs is both a good team and playing hard, so you always have to assume your opponent has a punch left to throw. This isn’t the regular season, where you play a lot of teams that are bad and/or willing to pack it in when they go down double digits.

The Clippers just happen to normally be the team that’s ahead this postseason, because, well, they’re better than the two teams they’ve played so far. So the 10-point first quarter leads that dissipate as a hot shooting start regresses to the mean are probably a little more likely to happen to the Clips.

But in the games they’ve gone down, they’ve benefitted from blown leads too. While they blew a 21-point first-half lead in game 4 against the Mavericks, they also came back from down 12 in the second half to force OT. In games 2 and 3 against the Nuggets, the Clippers were thoroughly outplayed, but they almost stole game 2 by cutting Denver’s 20-point lead to 5 and did steal game 3 when facing a smaller deficit.

In part, this whole saga is a bit of the famous fan complaint that “someone random from the opposing bench always kills US.” Most NBA teams play 5 bench guys on a given night, and given the nature of averages, you’re gonna have a couple guys who aren’t household names scoring above their averages most nights. It doesn’t really afflict any one team more than another, and in the situations where it does, the cause isn’t bad luck–it’s a systemic flaw with the team, like poor depth and/or weak defenders at a certain position.

I don’t have the dataset nor the data analysis skills to prove it, but I suspect that a huge part of the frustration that comes from blowing double-digit leads is universal–Clippers fans just don’t watch the other 29 teams nightly to see how normal it is. Just anecdotally, in Friday’s other game, the Boston Celtics saw a 12-point first quarter lead turn into a 7-point second quarter deficit, and then led 88-78 before a Raptors flurry made the score 89-87. Basketball is a game of runs.

But while conceding runs and blowing leads from time to time is inevitable and unavoidable, there are definitely ways that teams can find themselves more or less likely to have stretches where they struggle. The right combination of personnel decisions and rotation strategies and mitigate the risk of letting up big runs, like Doc Rivers’ choice to keep either Paul George or Kawhi Leonard on the floor with the second unit at all times during the playoffs. As much as LA’s 2nd unit has struggled through 11 playoff games, I have little doubt that Doc’s decision to stagger his stars has helped mitigate those struggles.

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Similarly, the choice (for much of the playoffs) to play 4-bench lineups around one of those stars exacerbated issues. For example, the bench quartet of Reggie Jackson, Lou Williams, JaMychal Green, and Montrezl Harrell have lost their 46 playoff minutes by 10 points despite almost always having one of George or Leonard on the floor. Even more egregious, the four-man unit of Jackson, Williams, Landry Shamet, and Harrell have lost their 10 playoff minutes together by 23 points.

But these lineups don’t play very much. Ten minutes over 11 games is essentially a meaningless sample size–even 46 minutes is hard to take a ton of stock in, though in this case it backs up common sense and the eye test.

The systemic concession of runs comes when the right combination of match-ups occur against high-usage weak lineups. Take, for example, the Lou Williams – Montrezl Harrell pairing. The league’s most iconic bench duo, Williams and Harrell carried the Clippers’ regular-season offense, allowing them to finish in the 2-seed despite extended absences and rest for both of their stars. But in the playoffs, they’re getting picked apart: the pace is slower, they get fewer minutes and touches, the opposing defenses are better and playing harder, and the opposing offenses are better and more precisely targeting them.

In 155 minutes together this post-season, the Clippers have a -11.2 net rating. That’s a substantial number of minutes: on average, nearly one-third of each playoff game has seen those two share the floor, and the Clippers have lost big in those minutes. If you like raw data, the team has lost those 155 minutes by 41 points. The numbers are consistent between LA’s two series, with the two posting a -11.5 net rating in 85 minutes together in this series alone.

So, the Clippers have a Williams/Harrell problem. It makes sense, both for the reasons I outlined above about how their roles and the playoff environment change the game, but also just based on eye test: Lou is struggling with his shot, making just 22% from deep in this playoff run, and Trez is struggling with everything, with the data showing him consistently making a significant negative impact on the team’s offense, defense, and rebounding. But even with that problem being a constant, the Nuggets can do different things to exacerbate it–or fail to take advantage.

For example, one of the reasons the Clippers haven’t been totally forced to adjust is Torrey Craig. A solid but unspectacular defender and non-factor offensively, Craig allows the Clippers to hide Williams defensively. Remember how the Clippers have a -11.5 net rating in Lou/Trez minutes this series? Their net rating is +17 when Torrey Craig is on the floor and -28.2 when he’s off. I think the Clippers need to find more minutes for Lou Williams than Mike Malone will play Craig, but if I were Doc Rivers, I’d make sure that Lou was in the game every second that Torrey is, in addition to other time.

It’s also a matter of who is going to exploit the glaring weakness that is Montrezl Harrell’s defense. When Denver’s backup center, Mason Plumlee, is in the game, the Clippers are fine–in fact, even against lineups featuring both Williams and Harrell, Denver lineups featuring Plumlee have mustered an offensive rating of just 89.6 (to be fair to Mason, most of those minutes include Craig’s presence for the Nuggets).

Nikola Jokic is Denver’s best player and best passer, the focal point of their offense and their best creator. He’s the guy who makes everything happen, and it shows: the Nuggets have a 107.7 ORTG with Jokic on the floor in this series and a 87.7 ORTG with him off of it. To put it bluntly, the Clippers don’t need to worry a lot about their defensive lineups for the 8 or so non-Jokic minutes, because the Nuggets aren’t going to score a lot of points in those minutes.

But when Jokic is on, he’ll shred a lineup that throws a poor (and often lazy) defender at him in Harrell, especially if that lineup features another poor defender for Nikola to pick on with his passing. In 28 minutes this series where Lou and Trez have both been on the floor vs Jokic, the Clippers have had a dreadful DRTG of 114.9, conceding 77 points in those 28 minutes and losing them by 18 points.

That’s an absolutely brutal combination of data, reasoning, and eye test that seems sure to produce runs for the Nuggets. Sure enough, when Harrell entered the game for Zubac with 1:24 to play in the third quarter, the Clippers held the aforementioned 13-point lead, 80-67. Jokic was in the game, and more than that, Mike Malone immediately subbed Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. on as well–he saw an opportunity to exploit a poor defensive lineup and cut into LA’s lead. A 13-point lead became 7 in 84 seconds.

Before this series began, NBA analyst Matt Moore said on the Locked on Nuggets podcast that if Denver was down 8-10 points at the start of the fourth quarter against the Clippers, they’d always have a chance to get back into the game because those minutes are where Montrezl Harrell plays, and the team is poor defensively. But Nikola Jokic has to rest eventually, so the Clippers were fine to start the fourth quarter, and despite a flurry of Denver points the 7-point lead at the end of the 3rd had shrunk to just 6 when Jokic returned to close the game with 8:44 to play.

From there, Jokic got to face 2:11 of Lou/Trez, and the Nuggets scored 9 points in that span to take the lead. Even after Williams exited, Harrell continued to sink the Clippers-on both ends.

Jokic hit an easy jumper over Trez, and then Harrell responded with a truly astounding play where he drove 1-on-4, got blocked instead of kicking out to Paul George and Kawhi Leonard, who were open in each corner, and then didn’t get back on defense, leaving his team playing 4-on-5 and conceding a Murray three.

When Doc Rivers took a timeout and took Harrell out of the game, the Clippers’ 13-point lead had turned into a 6-point deficit in just 7:36, with 18 points of that 19-point swing coming in just 4 minutes and 20 seconds where Harrell and Jokic shared the floor in the second half.

A massive run takes a lot of things. It never falls on the shoulders of one guy–basketball is a 5-on-5 game, and everything is interconnected. Part of a run is mentality: the Nuggets had to have a moment where they decided to dig deep and fight back to avoid being eliminated, and the Clippers had to have a moment where they not only let up slightly but became rattled at the prospect of losing the game. Part of a run is luck, too! The Nuggets are a good offensive team, and they played well in the fourth quarter and generated good looks, but they also shot 7/9 from three in the fourth. That’s pretty lucky–and hard to argue against when you see Jamal Murray banking in a contested three.

We can never know when a run is going to happen because of the variance of shot-making in the NBA, but there are moments where we can predict when runs are more likely to happen, and Harrell/Jokic minutes–especially if Lou Williams is also on the court and Torrey Craig isn’t–are about as likely as it gets in this series. Malone recognized the combination for a potential Denver run and brought in an offensive lineup against Lou and Trez. Sometimes runs are unavoidable, but Doc Rivers can mitigate their likelihood by recognizing the same trends Malone is and only playing Williams and Harrell together against lineups that feature Plumlee (especially if Craig is also on the floor).

On Friday, the Clippers blew a 13-point lead by conceding an 18-point swing in just 4 minutes and 20 seconds of flawed personnel against the wrong Denver lineup. For as maligned and tortured as LAC’s fanbase is, the Clippers didn’t blow last night’s lead because they are chronically unlucky, or because they aren’t mentally tough, or because the franchise is cursed. They blew the lead, and lost out on clinching a spot in the Western Conference Finals for the first time in franchise history, because of a systemic, predictable, and obvious flaw in Doc Rivers’ rotations.

Playoff Clippers: The Anatomy of a Blown Lead
Lucas Hann

After a hard-fought game 7 against the Utah Jazz, the 3-seed Denver Nuggets have earned their rightful place in the second round against the 2-seed LA Clippers. Read on for a full second round series preview.

The Big Picture

After the Clippers blew game 4 in their first round series and fell to 2-2 against the Dallas Mavericks, things had potential to go badly. But narratives are fickle, and the Clippers’ bounce back to dominate game 5 by a historic 43-point margin and emphatically close out the series in game 6 left their two first-round losses as just footnotes, learning experiences for what was clearly proven to be the better team.

They’ll hope to need to learn less in the second round, though. I’ve said it a lot: nobody is crowned champion in the first round. For teams that make it all the way to the Finals, the playoffs last for two months and something like 25 games (the champion Toronto Raptors played 24 last year, the runners-up Golden State played 22). No team can reach their peak in game 1 of the playoffs and maintain it for 20+ games. It’s about growth, it’s about fighting through adversity, about coming together to become comfortable in a shortened playoff rotation and finding ways to win games where you aren’t playing well and have to scrap to come away with a victory you didn’t deserve.

The Clippers’ six-game victory against the Mavericks wasn’t as strong as it could have been, so I’m not going to gush with praise, but I will say that putting their foot down in game 5 required a mental toughness that wouldn’t have been required in an easier series. It’s the antithesis of what happened to the Milwaukee Bucks, who were able to sleepwalk to a 5-game series victory against the awful Orlando Magic and then got punched in the mouth in game 1 of the second round by the Miami Heat. At no point since arriving in the Orlando bubble did the Bucks have a “we need to find a way to be better” moment, and as a result, they came into the second round far from their best.

For all the headaches the Mavericks gave the Clippers in the first round, we can thank Dallas for this: the massive comeback in game 4 that culminated in Doncic’s overtime buzzer-beater made the Clippers say “we need to find a way to be better.”

The playoffs are full of those moments. When you beat an opponent, they step up their game and try to respond. When your opponent beats you, you’ve gotta find a way to step up your game and respond. Eventually, you either fall short of shifting yet one gear higher, or you find the answer enough times that you’re the last team standing. The Mavs made the Clippers better, but there’s more growth ahead if the road they’re on ends with a title.

The Schedule:

Game 1: Thursday, September 3rd at 6:00pm PT, TNT
Game 2: Saturday, September 5th at 6:00pm PT, TNT
Game 3: Monday, September 7th at 6:00pm PT, TNT
Game 4: Wednesday, September 9th at 6:00pm PT, ESPN
Game 5 (if necessary): Friday, September 11th, Time TBA, TNT
Game 6 (if necessary): Sunday, September 13th, Time TBA, ESPN
Game 7 (if necessary): Tuesday, September 15th, Time TBA, ESPN

The Antagonist

Perhaps no bubble team has had to make as demanding a journey in the last month as the Denver Nuggets. Starting small forward Will Barton never made it on the court, ultimately leaving the bubble to work on a mysterious knee ailment. Starting point guard Jamal Murray missed the first four bubble games. He’s the guy who had two 50-point games in the first round–safe to say he’s important. Starting shooting guard Gary Harris, who happens to be the Nuggets’ best defender, missed every seeding game and the first five games of the first round, returning to play a crucial role off the bench in games 6 and 7 after not playing in a game for six months.

After a successful pre-COVID regular season left Denver looking pretty clearly like the third-best team in the Western Conference, they came into the bubble and had to learn how to play with what amounted to major roster turnover (with a team that was severely positionally unbalanced, with too many forwards and centers available without options at guard). Case in point: rookie forward Michael Porter, Jr. played 48 of the team’s 65 pre-COVID games, averaging 14 minutes per game and starting just once. In the bubble? He started all seven of the team’s first seeding games before resting in their final contest, playing 33 minutes per game. He also started the first three games of the first round and played 30+ minutes in each of the first two before coach Mike Malone pulled him early in Denver’s embarrassing game 3 blowout loss.

The Nuggets had to figure it out. They played new, weird, oversized lineups without some of their best players and with some rarely-used and deeply-flawed depth pieces entering the rotation. They found a way to win three seeding games (and would have won more if they hadn’t prioritized rest for their short-handed lineup). They won in overtime in game 1 without two starters despite Donovan Mitchell exploding for fifty-seven points. After dropping the next three games while playing abysmal defense to fall behind 3-1 in the series, they adjusted their starting lineup and clawed back to win the series in 7 games.

Denver got dealt a raw hand in the bubble. Injuries forced them into “we need to find a way to be better” moments before seeding play even began. Donovan Mitchell forced them into a “we need to find a way to be better” moment during game 1. The Jazz forced them into a “we need to find a way to get better moment” after game 3’s blowout–and reinforced it with a game 4 victory after Denver didn’t respond initially. But they did find a way.

Unfortunately for the Nuggets, the test is only going to get harder, and they aren’t going to get a lot of time to recover. The Jazz had the 10th-best offense in the NBA this year and the 13th-best defense, and they played the first round without their second-leading scorer in Bojan Bogdanovic. The Clippers had the 2nd-best offense and 5th-best defense in the league this year. If anyone deserves a reprieve, it’s the Nuggets, but their reward for winning Tuesday night’s game 7 is 48 hours to find a way to get better. That’s not a lot of time, and Jamal Murray showed it in his live reaction to finding out how short the turnaround would be before game 1:

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Sub-plots:

• Exploiting Denver’s defense: The Denver Nuggets were only an average defensive team this season, and they’ve been miles worse in the bubble. Through six games of their first-round series against the Jazz, Denver was allowing 119 points per game. Utah’s offense is only ok, and significantly limited by Bogdanovic’s absence. We can debate endlessly about how much of Utah’s hotter-than-normal shooting was randomness vs Denver’s poor defense, and the fact that the Nuggets have played without their starting wings since arriving in Orlando. Still, even if Denver’s abysmal defense in the bubble won’t be as abysmal in this series, it certainly isn’t going to be elite, and there are weak points.
  
  Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic, the Nuggets’ two best players, are both only average defensively (there’s plenty of discourse about each being horrible, but it’s a tad exaggerated–still, you want to target them and make them work on that end). It is hard to be a good defensive team in the modern, pace-and-space, four-out, pick-and-roll NBA if you can’t guard the point guard and center spots. Here’s the thing, though: nothing about the Clippers’ offense is designed to pick on those weaknesses. LA gets their points from wing isolations, and while there’s no reason to believe that the Nuggets are going to be better at defending that than anyone else in the league, it also means the Clippers might not pick on Denver’s defense as much as you might expect at first glance.
  
  Some offensive wrinkles for LAC could include various ways of hunting Murray and Jokic in various ball-screen actions. If Lou Williams is at point guard next to the team’s star wings, Murray will have to be guarding him, and he’s the team’s best pick-and-roll ball-handler. Doc Rivers may look to go small for stretches to force Jokic to defend a mobile player like Marcus Morris. Murray and Jokic defending a Williams/Morris pick-and-pop is just what Denver’s defense wants to avoid. Assuming Murray normally guards Williams, Patrick Beverley, or Landry Shamet, the Clippers can look to use their lead guard as a screener and either get Murray switched on to George or Leonard or get good looks for one of those three lead guard options, all of whom are lethal shooters.

• Lou Williams: The perennial sixth man of the year is one of the Clippers’ most important players, and probably their best offensive creator: he’s a more natural pick-and-roll ball-handler than either George or Leonard, and he led the team in assists this year while playing off the bench. The problem with Lou, of course, is his defense. He’s never been a good defender, and LA’s shocking eagerness to concede switches has made him easy for other teams to pick on. But we saw how great Lou can be in the Clippers’ narrow game 4 loss, where he had 36 points and 5 assists on 13-20 shooting to keep LA in the game. Denver should provide Lou with a bit of a feast-or-famine series: with Rivers’ bench-heavy lineups, Williams won’t be covered for defensively and smothering him will be the focal point of Denver’s defense, while in minutes with the starters, Lou will face much more favorable match-ups. He can hide far more effectively on defense against players like Monte Morris, Gary Harris, and Torrey Craig, and won’t be asked to do much if the Clippers’ All-NBA defenders are covering Murray and Jokic. Then, offensively, he’ll be able to attack Murray while Denver’s primary defenders focus on the Clippers’ star wings.

• Sustainable Shooting: Much of Denver’s early struggles against the Jazz were tied to some unsustainable hot shooting from Utah early in the series–they shot a blistering 47% from deep across their three wins in games 2, 3, and 4. Much of Denver’s success in their comeback was tied to some unsustainable shooting of their own: in their three wins before game 7’s slugfest, they made over half of their threes.
  
  Without taking anything away from Jamal Murray, who had a legendary first round series, we have to expect him to come back down to earth in the second round. For his career, Murray’s a 44% field goal shooter and a 36% three-point shooter. Each of his four NBA seasons has been within a tick or two of those marks after some growth from slightly worse numbers as a rookie. He scored 20.6 points per 36 minutes this season. Against Utah: 29.9 points per 36 minutes, 55% from the field, 53% from three. He’s not going to average that over the next seven games.
  
  On the Clippers’ side, 40% from three over the course of the first round is still above-average, but still reasonable considering the outlier of game 5’s blowout. What’s going to improve, though, is Paul George’s play. LA’s second star shot just 35.8% from the field and 27.5% from deep in the first round–even with his somewhat-undeserved reputation as a poor playoff performer, those numbers are far below PG’s normal playoff efficiency. George had a refreshingly candid moment after game 5 where he discussed how bubble isolation and poor performances had affected his mental health, and seemed much more like himself in the final two games of the series (even though he didn’t shoot well in game 6, it was a normal bad PG game, not three shockingly horrible PG games in a row).

• The MPJ Factor: Outside of Jokic and Murray, the Nuggets’ roster is full of guys who, simply put, shouldn’t beat you offensively. That’s not a knock on Denver’s role players: I actually like all of Monte Morris, Gary Harris, Jerami Grant, Torrey Craig, and Mason Plumlee (Paul Millsap, sadly, seems to be past a productive point of his basketball career). Those six guys, the six guys who are going to play for the Nuggets in this series besides Murray, Jokic, and Michael Porter Jr., combined for 18 20-point performances in a combined 370 appearances this season. None of them are bad players, and they all have important roles to play in Denver’s hopes in this series, but you probably won’t see explosive scoring from anyone in this group unless Grant, who has stepped up his shooting in a big way the last two seasons, gets a lot of open looks from beyond the arc.
  
  That means that beyond Denver’s two stars, if there’s one guy who is likely to have a really explosive offensive night in this series, it’s youngster Michael Porter Jr., who went 14th in the 2019 NBA Draft, immediately after the Clippers traded the 12th pick to move up to 11th and select Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and then picked up Jerome Robinson with the 13th pick. Porter is far from a reliable or consistent player at this point in his career, and his missed coverages defensively have cost him Mike Malone’s trust, but he broke 20 points four times in the seven seeding game appearances he had, and hit 30 in two of those. None of the Denver’s other role players had a 30-point game this season. Porter is the only Nugget who can punish the “make everyone else beat us” strategy.

• Monte Morris: One of the most painful sub-plots of the Clippers’ first-round series against the Mavericks was LA’s second unit being absolutely torched by Trey Burke and Seth Curry. A bit of it had to do with those guys being good scorers who are capable of hot streaks and happened to hit one concurrently. A lot of it had to do with the Clippers’ terrible second-unit backcourt defense. Reggie Jackson and Lou Willams are both well-below-average defenders, Landry Shamet is mediocre at best, and Montrezl Harrell is more of a buoy than an anchor protecting the rim behind that crew. The Nuggets don’t have an army of potent scoring guards who can punish the Clippers in the same way, but if there’s one guy to keep an eye on, it’s Monte Morris.
  
  Morris is the antithesis of Reggie Jackson: a small guard who doesn’t have the physical tools or raw talent to be a starter in the league, but has supreme poise and decision-making to be an incredibly reliable backup point guard. Monte played 22 minutes a night in 73 games this year and turned the ball over just 53 times. Fifty-three turnovers in 1,636 minutes. Jackson had 28 turnovers in 362 regular-season minutes for the Clippers.
  
  Monte Morris won’t have an obvious stretch where he lights you up like Curry, but he is exactly the kind of guy who can quietly have 15 points on 6-8 shooting, 5 assists, and 0 turnovers in 20 minutes to keep the Nuggets afloat when Jamal Murray is off the floor. That kind of performance can do something like cut into a Clippers lead while the stars rest early the fourth quarter and turn an LAC advantage into a coin flip down the stretch.

• Defending Stars: Both teams are going to have interesting choices to make in this series as they match up with the others’ stars. The Clippers actually have a number of weapons to throw at Jamal Murray: Patrick Beverley will pester him for stretches, alternated with Paul George and Kawhi Leonard smothering him with length. Without other threats on the wing, the Clippers can focus their elite one-on-one defenders on Murray. They’ll even be happy to switch Marcus Morris onto him to play him physically if he attempts to get to the rim. Keep an eye on how aggressive Murray is getting to the rim depending on who LA has in at center, as the Mavericks had significantly less success when Zubac was guarding the rim instead of Harrell.
  
  Nikola Jokic presents a different challenge. Ivica Zubac was a huge part of LAC’s first-round success, and is an excellent rim protector, but he’s going to have a much harder time defending pick-and-pops and he typically isn’t great at sticking to shooting big men. It wouldn’t shock me if the Clippers work in some of the creative rotations they used against Dallas, where Zubac was matched up with Dorian Finney-Smith to allow him to sag into the lane more defensively. Rivers may abandon players like Paul Millsap and Torrey Craig so that Zubac can stay down low to protect the rim and defend Jokic in the post, while Morris can follow Jokic on possessions where he floats to the perimeter and contest shots, contain drives, and hedge/switch on ball screens. Montrezl Harrell doesn’t have much hope of defending Jokic, but the Clippers can deploy him selectively as a wrecking ball who can counter-act Jokic’s offensive production by attacking him in pick-and-rolls on the other end and attempting to get him into foul trouble.
  
  For the Nuggets, Paul George and Kawhi Leonard present the same problem they do to every team in the league. Harris is Denver’s best defender, but he’s undersized on the wing at 6’4″, so it’s hard to imagine him effectively contesting Leonard. It makes far more sense to deploy Harris against George, where he may actually frustrate PG at times, and turn the Clippers into a one-star team offensively. Jerami Grant will likely get the call against Leonard due to his length and mobility, but I’m not sure that anyone is really going to do much to bother Kawhi. Look for Torrey Craig to be used in a pretty big role as well, perhaps drawing minutes against both guys and/or using his length to try and contain Lou Williams on the second unit.

• Denver’s lineup: Mike Malone adjusted to evolving availabilities throughout the bubble, finally settling on Monte Morris, Jerami Grant, and Paul Millsap as his three starters alongside Murray and Jokic.
  
  I can’t imagine that those will be his starters in game 1 against LAC. The Clippers start all three of George, Leonard, and Marcus Morris. Denver keeping that lineup the same would require either Murray or Monte Morris to guard one of those three Clippers wings. No way.
  
  Gary Harris, who came off the bench in games 6 and 7 after returning from injury, should move into Morris’ place in the starting lineup. You also have to wonder if Malone will finally make the painful choice to move trusted veteran Paul Millsap to the bench–despite starting all seven first-round games, he played fewer than 20 minutes in five of them as Malone clearly trusts Porter more offensively and Craig more defensively. With Craig, the Clippers can leave him alone to play a more compact defense focused on Murray and Jokic. With Porter, the Clippers have to stay home and defend him but can hunt him relentlessly on the other end of the floor. Millsap is a bit in-between on both counts.

• Rest Advantage: It’s no secret that the Clippers have a rest advantage over Denver heading into the series after completing their first-round series on Sunday. But, without getting too far ahead of ourselves, we can also track a potential rest advantage in the Western Conference Finals depending on how these second-round series play out. I only mention this because the Clippers will start their series one day before the Lakers, meaning that even if both series end in the same number of games, LAC will likely have 2 days off heading into WCF game 1 compared to LAL’s one-day break. But if the Clippers’ series runs longer than the Lakers’ the situation will be reversed, and that extra day off between series can make a big difference. It’s worth keeping track of as both second-round series progress.

• Pace: In addition to the Clippers having more depth and more rest than Denver, LA plays at a much faster pace: the 8th-fasted in the league this year compared to the Nuggets at just 29th. Jokic in particular is a slow (but methodical and surgical) player who likes to play at his own pace. The more the Clippers can speed him up and pressure Jamal Murray on the ball to stop Denver from being comfortable offensively, and make the already-tired Nuggets run back on transition defense, the more that Denver’s fatigue and low pace could create a huge crisis for LAC to exploit.

• Prediction: I’m taking Clippers in 6. The Nuggets didn’t look great in the first round, and even their wins felt more like Jamal Murray bailouts than legitimately good team play. But it’s important to remember that they’re still figuring out how to play with some new, weird rotations and lineups, and still working their best defender back into the team after an extended injury. At their best, the Nuggets were my clear third-best team in the West this season, and I don’t think they’re a great match-up for the Clippers. But fatigue is clearly an unpredictable factor, with the Nuggets gassed during Tuesday’s game 7–will they get run off the floor in Thursday’s game one, or ride the high from a huge first-round comeback and catch a slightly rusty Clippers team by surprise? Denver also has a bit of quit potential, despite coming back from 3-1 down against the Jazz. Jokic’s energy levels are inconsistent, and the Nuggets clearly and embarrassingly quit in game 3 against the Jazz when things got tough.
  
  My guess is that the Nuggets don’t have the legs to put up much of a fight in game 1, and then game 2 is incredibly competitive. If the Nuggets make the series 1-1, it’ll be a long series. If the Clippers can come out on top and take a 2-0 series lead, I can see an exhausted Denver squad rolling over a bit and LAC getting out of the round more quickly.

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2020 NBA Playoffs Second Round Series Preview: Clippers – Nuggets
Lucas Hann