It’s a trilogy now.
The LA Clippers and the Dallas Mavericks will face each other in the first round of the NBA playoffs for the third time in five postseasons. The series begins with Game 1 on Sunday in Los Angeles. While both rosters are profoundly different from the ones in this matchup’s 2020 and 2021 iterations — which the Clippers won in six and seven games, respectively — many main characters remain.
It might be the league’s most highly anticipated opening-round clash, just for the sheer star power present and due to these team’s ceilings as dark-horse contenders. Tim Cato and Law Murray, who cover the Mavericks and the Clippers, respectively, for The Athletic, discuss the series.
Tim Cato: Oh, no, it’s happening again. Law. It’s going to be a matchup that happens for eternity.
Let’s start here: From your LA-based perspective, what would have been the Clippers’ preferred matchup? Where did Dallas rank among the potential foes?
Law Murray: First of all, I am pleased to be doing this with you again. Even if it comes with the Mavericks’ fan base groaning over being reminded of the first two series and the Clippers fan base doing the same for Luka Dončić’s torrid play in those matchups.
Shortly after the All-Star break, the Clippers were fourth and the Sacramento Kings fifth in the Western Conference. That was how I thought the season would end when the year started, and I believe the Clippers would have preferred the Kings due to how well their offense operates against Sacramento, as well as their superior depth. But the Kings are buried in the Play-In Tournament, and the Mavericks had a lot to do with that after beating them twice in March.
I mentioned the Mavericks were the more ideal matchup for the Clippers in comparison to the Phoenix Suns and New Orleans Pelicans, the teams that finished sixth and seventh in the West. That isn’t to declare that this series will be easy for the Clippers, quite the contrary. Even though the Clippers beat the Suns up three times when rolling out full rosters, Phoenix has three premier scorers in Devin Booker, Bradley Beal and Kevin Durant. Dallas has a better backcourt than Phoenix, but the Mavericks have P.J. Washington at power forward. Likewise, the Mavericks have stars in the backcourt the Pelicans don’t, but New Orleans has diverse scoring size at forward in Brandon Ingram and Zion Williamson, which the Clippers have struggled with for years.
There’s no focus like the motivation that comes with trying to avenge playoff losses, and Dončić has more shot creation and a different head coach this time. That’s going to be hard on the Clippers. But any matchup was going to be hard. It’s the playoffs.
Cato: Especially these playoffs, in this conference.
Several weeks ago on my podcast, I named the Clippers as the non-Denver team Dallas should least want to see. It was before the Mavericks’ furious winning to end the year and before the Clippers’ injury uncertainty. But I still think the Minnesota Timberwolves — or maybe even the Oklahoma City Thunder — would have been preferred to L.A. due to specific matchup advantages.
To me, there are two reasons why: 1) This season, the Clippers have shown the league’s highest level of sustained play outside of Denver, and 2) Kawhi Leonard is the conference’s likeliest player, outside Nikola Jokić, to outplay Dončić for a series.
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With that in mind, what’s the latest news on Leonard’s health? Is there any other notable news regarding their roster?
Murray: It’s not a Clippers postseason without the intangibles of health rearing its head. And Leonard’s health is more unstable now than at any point of this season, which is quite unnerving.
Leonard last played on March 31 at Charlotte, the first three-game win streak the Clippers had since the trade deadline. A few days later, before the team played in Sacramento, Leonard was sent back home to get treatment for soreness related to his surgically repaired right knee. At the time, Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue expressed optimism that Leonard would return soon. However, team sources told me the Clippers weren’t going to rush Leonard back and would have to win some games without him.
To the Clippers’ credit, they went on a four-game win streak that clinched a playoff spot, a division title and home-court advantage in the first round. (For what it’s worth, the Clippers will also have home-court advantage in the NBA Finals if they play any team other than the Boston Celtics. That is, if they get there.)
But Leonard’s status remains murky, which is par for the course for how the team and players have handled injury transparency. Leonard had an absence related to right knee discomfort before, when he had to leave the team in the second week of the 2022-23 NBA season to get treatment. In that instance, Leonard did not play again for 25 days. If he needs the same amount of time to get ready, it obviously puts his availability for the start of the series in jeopardy.
Kawhi Leonard controls the ball as he is defended by Grant Williams. (Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)
Elsewhere, the only other injury concern for the Clippers involves James Harden, who has missed games over the last month due to shoulder and foot maladies. But Harden started Friday’s game against the Utah Jazz, and the time off should have him ready for the postseason.
A minor roster note: the Clippers waived guard Joshua Primo after he suffered an ankle injury earlier this month. The open roster spot allowed them to sign power forward Kai Jones. He hasn’t played in the NBA all season after the Charlotte Hornets let him go, but he has athletic size that was mostly nonexistent on the Clippers roster. If nothing else, he’s another one of Washington’s former teammates. Any information helps in a chess match like this.
Cato: For Dallas, the team is fully healthy with one exception: rookie center Dereck Lively II, who hasn’t played since the last day of March. Lively’s injury has been a right knee sprain, but there’s a tragic complication to his time on the sidelines. His mother, Kathy Drysdale, passed away last Friday after battling cancer for a decade.
That loss transcends basketball, of course, but Lively has rejoined the team in the past week. Mavericks coach Jason Kidd previously said the team hoped Lively would be ready to return to the court by the postseason’s start. He declined to provide an update after Sunday’s season finale, but to my understanding, that’s still the plan. Whenever Lively returns, I hope the basketball court provides solace for a 20-year old who has already dealt with so much. There’s no appropriate transition to put here, so I’m just going to return to the basketball series ahead of us.
Dallas has those two prior series against the Clippers, yes, but they also played them three times in the regular season. Here’s a grand, sweeping statement: None of those games offer much use in terms of previewing what’s to come this weekend. How have the Clippers changed, both from 2021 and during the course of this year?
Murray: The Mavericks saw the Clippers at their worst this season, then saw them at the start of their turnaround and then again at the apex of their best basketball. Dallas is seeing the same Clippers roster, more or less. Perhaps that’s not what you’d necessarily call an advantage; after all, if the Mavericks get the December Clippers, it doesn’t matter who is on Dallas’ team. Leonard didn’t lose a single game in December.
But Harden’s addition is the biggest difference between the Clippers, both over the course of this season as well as from the 2021 postseason. The Clippers struggled to integrate Harden after the trade with Philadelphia in the second week of the season, losing six straight games. The worst of those losses was in Dallas, after a 12-point Clippers lead was ruined by messy rotation decisions and Dončić’s absolute avalanche of a second quarter.
When Harden was playing his best ball this season, the Clippers looked like the best team in the NBA, putting together a 26-5 stretch. Harden plateaued after February’s Grammy trip, with a noticeable drop in shotmaking and defensive activity. But he’s the third star that the Clippers did not have in 2021, unless you count Marcus Morris Sr. and Reggie Jackson in that role.
The Clippers are smaller at forward and not as deep in general as they were in 2021. In particular, P.J. Tucker is a considerable downgrade from the impact Nicolas Batum made in 2021. But Harden’s offense, along with that of Norman Powell, is an upgrade on what LA had three years ago. And having players such as Terance Mann and Russell Westbrook gives them more size and activity at the guard positions compared to 2021 as well.
Cato: Dallas, too, has been completely reformed. While it needs to pass the postseason test, this seems like the most talented roster of the Dončić era.
The easiest way to quantify Dallas’ change is that it no longer lives or dies by the 3. In 2021, the Mavericks won three of the four games in which they hit more 3s than LA and lost two of the three in which they hit fewer. It had been a long-running trend where role players making or missing the shots created for them often dictated the results.
Dallas won 23 of its final 30 games before shutting down its starters in two meaningless final matchups. Eight of those wins came when the team hit 12 or fewer 3s, compared to the team’s 2-10 record in such games prior to the trade deadline. Washington and Daniel Gafford, two deadline acquisitions, have brought defensive physicality ideal for the team’s schemes. Dallas also has won games by battering teams on the offensive glass, most notably against Denver.
That’s what’s changed. While the Dončić and Kyrie Irving-led offense puts terror into opponents, it’s nothing new compared to this team’s past iterations, even if Dončić had different co-stars. But never before has a Dončić-led team possessed this newfound physicality.
GO DEEPER
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Do you have one main question or plot line you’ll be watching from the opening minutes of Game 1?
Murray: In 2021, Tyronn Lue coined a mantra that was specific to the Mavericks: “Get to the paint or die trying.” This was despite the fact the Mavericks rolled out lineups with Kristaps Porziņģis flanked by any of Maxi Kleber, Dwight Powell, Willie Cauley-Stein and even Boban Marjanović. The Clippers had a directive to get to the paint and to the rim, and then play from there.
If this series was played with the departed Grant Williams and Richaun Holmes on the Mavericks’ roster, it would be clear what the Clippers would be doing with success. But since March 10, Dallas has been the NBA’s top defense, ranking first in rim protection and tied for sixth in fewest paint points allowed. They’re not the same pushovers inside that they were as recently as Christmas. But the Mavericks also haven’t had to defend the kind of offensive talent that the Clippers have. So we’ll find out early if the Clippers will still get to the paint or die trying.
Cato: Marjanović, bless him, was a white flag disguised in the largest possible frame. But you’re right: What this new-look Mavericks roster has, at least, is an identity to stick with now.
Dončić seems to have a personal vendetta against Ivica Zubac, the big man he ran off the court in that 2021 series. Since the start of the 2020-21 season, Dončić has converted 22 of 46 from 3 (48 percent) when matched against Zubac, per the NBA’s matchup data. But Lue’s Clippers, this year, don’t resort to that small ball like they once did — nor do Lue or Harden, who prefers working with a pick-and-roll big man, want that.
That push-pull strategic wrinkle of size is my main question. We think about the possessions where Dončić switches onto Zubac, sure. The Clippers will surely have plans to avoid that and keep Zubac on the floor to combat Dallas’ big men duo. If those fail, though, I wonder if the Clippers might go small as a strategic advantage of their own, taking away non-shooting threats so there are fewer comfortable players for those Dallas big men to guard. It’s a game within a game, a delicate dance of both teams deciding which identity is best to assert.
We’ll see soon enough. Sunday isn’t far away.
(Top photo: Tim Heitman / Getty Images)
