It’s hard to doubt the employees and potential of LA Clippers. Yet coming into this Western Conference semifinal series against the Denver Nuggets, we do not play champion championship-quality basketball play for more than 10 days after a full intact, healthy clippers all-star break and before the March suspension. .
Of course, this does not mean that the Clippers will not win a title – the talent is undoubtedly there – but it is considered to be more empirical evidence of dominance before a team is anointed as a contender for the elite championship.
If Game 4 of the first round series against the Dallas Mavericks marks the start of the Clippers’ case for the title favorite, then their 120-97 Game 1 Nuggets settlement continues that drive. A team that was advertised as a two-tiered monster dominating both ends of the floor, generally holding high-octane nuggets at 511.1.
A quick scan of the Clippers roster is eye popping. They have defensive stoppers all over the floor and a pair of two-way superstar poets Leonard and Paul George who can draw blood from a stone in the semi-court. While perfectly healthy, this is a team that considers Patrick Patterson and Rodney McGrader as its 11th and 12th players on the roster.
Yet during the regular season, the Clippers used the third-most starting lineups in the NBA. The season started inactive while JJ was recovering from shoulder surgery. Put in Leonard’s careful load management program and some midseason acquisitions and the clippers were never perfect.
Banking in a team with such a thin record of success can be an irrational stimulus. But seven games in the Clippers ’playoffs, Leonard has shown he has enough reason to have blind faith in the team.
After the Clippers shut down Mavericks, George called Leonard a “business man.” This connects to “Board Man” and “Chloe” who handles a guy who usually missed any opportunity to talk about his game after the win. Fellow players, however, are bound.
“About one thing [Kawhi] “You know it’s going to be ready,” Marcus Morris Seiner said. “The way he gets closer to the game … he’s a great player. He’s there. Especially around this time, he’s a good guy to be on your team. What will you get? “
In Game 1, the two-time finals were captured by MVPA. He finished the night with 29 points on 12-for-16 shooting from the field. Although the Nuggets struggled defensively against the Utah Jazz in their first-round series, they do deploy some individual defenders in Jeremy Grant and Gary Harris.
But Leonard has a way of effectively presenting formidable opponents; None of that was a match for him. He outscored and stabilized the Nuggets defenders as he wished.
Leonard made the most impressive postseason in NBA history with the Toronto Raptors last season, and there’s little reason to believe he won’t copy that product. In seven games, he averaged .37..3 points and 7.7 rebounds, with a 65..7 true shooting percentage.
He is not alone. During the Dallas series, 9 out of 10 rotating players in the Clippers have true shooting points of more than 58%, with George being the only exception. George appeared frustrated during the first round, and he revealed that isolating the bubble presented a mental health challenge for him.
George was not the deadliest scorer on Thursday, but he was a strong contributor to both ends of the floor. Before halftime, George was wrestling Nicola Jokic at the Post, denying him an entry pass. After halftime, he placed the jockey on roller skates with a step-back 3-pointer. Along with Leonard and Morris, George helped include the fiery Jamal Murray, who was coming out of a historical series. Seeing the unit around him, George doesn’t have to be a superhero to win with the Clippers. He just needs to be himself.
The NBA’s pay-cap structure forces most superteams to print on supporting casts. That is not the case for Clippers, who skillfully managed to compile a roster full of complementary parts, each bringing its own product. The confusion of wealth included Morris, who was taken from the New York Knicks in a medieval trade.
Morris provided stretch and physicality in Game 1, knocking down four of his five three-point attempts and working on the perimeter with Leonard and George to accommodate Denver’s perimeter attack. He and Patrick Beverly, in the language of Coach Doc Reverse, are Clippers’ instigators.
Beverly was at the disposal of the Clippers for the first time since Game 1 of the Dallas series. Although he only played 12 minutes due to a one-minute ban, he was Beverly: a pair of early corner 3-pointers as ball pressure and ball-spacer at the top of the floor: all things were vintage (if abbreviated).
After all, the Montreal Herald looked like his old self in another unit. He is playing a way to get back in shape by staying away from the team due to death in the family.
“It’s great to have everyone together,” George said. “We say that all year round. It’s good for us to continue making this chemistry.”
Being perfect has been a gradual process for the Clippers, but with the return of Beverly, they are again, for the first time in the era, at 100% availability. For a few minutes in Game 1, as Beverly shoots the ball, Leonard finds his places, Morris is raining bombs, Harrell is wreaking havoc, and George is himself, the sketch begins to come to mind.
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