Another game in the Nuggets’ first-round clash with the Clippers went down to the wire, a final heave from Nikola Jokic falling off as Los Angeles evened the series 1-1 with a 105-102 win Monday night. Let’s break it down.
Kawhi Leonard punishes single coverage: After the Nuggets successfully stymied Clippers stud wing Kawhi Leonard to seven uncharacteristic turnovers in Game 1, Denver threw the kitchen sink at him in Game 2: Aaron Gordon battling, Peyton Watson grappling, shadowing with help when Leonard got Jamal Murray on an island.
Nothing, really, mattered. Outcomes seemed predetermined from the very second the ball touched Leonard’s fingertips on the wing in the first half Monday, a tween-tween sequence leading to a rhythmically robotic pull-up from the elbow or midrange turnaround, hands in his face invisible. He ended the frame 21 points on 9-of-10 shooting, an unreal display of shotmaking capped off by a halftime buzzer-beater through a thicket of defenders.
Curiously, through a tidal wave, the Nuggets didn’t elect to send consistent extra bodies at him. He buried a massive stepback transition trey to put the Clippers up 87-81 with 10 minutes left, and Leonard didn’t miss another shot from the floor until just over three minutes into the fourth quarter. With 54 seconds left and Gordon isolated, Leonard elevated again and stuck a jumper in his eye — his 39th point in a ridiculously efficient 15-of-19 performance.
Michael Porter Jr. earns his redemption: Through days of discourse around his complete evaporation in Game 1, through pointed comments from David Adelman on his role and an apparent lack of on-court engagement, Porter seemed to be clinging white-knuckled to his future in a Nuggets jersey.
On Saturday, though, Porter looked every bit the player the Nuggets gave a max extension to in 2021, a matured version of the same self that helped win Denver a title with spacing and sheer 6-foot-10 hustle in 2022-23. Quietly, as the Clippers continued to cut off his airspace in limiting him to four three-point attempts, Porter grabbed a playoff-career-high 15 rebounds — including six monumental offensive boards.
Adelman turned to him down the stretch after turning away from him in Game One, and for a moment, it looked as if Porter might play hero. He nailed a game-tying three with 4:14 left to even the score at 96-96, and gave the Nuggets the lead on a subsequent possession after being fouled off another offensive board. But he didn’t score the rest of the way, and Denver fell 105-102 to the Clippers.
The Joker-Harden chess match continues: After a Game 1 loss, maestro James Harden pointed out there were only a “handful of things” the Nuggets could do defensively to contain the Clippers’ offense.
“Either the Joker, either he’ll be up in pick-and-roll, try to blitz, or he’s going to be in deep coverage,” Harden said then.
Quietly, this is the key to the entire series: an all-time genius pick-and-roll guard trying to read and attack an all-time genius center. And in the first half Saturday, Jokic’s defense — a topic of discourse with a near-impossible consensus — often buoyed the Nuggets, capably retreating in drop coverage and nabbing a couple of steals.
Harden came alive with a pair of 3s late in the second quarter and nailed two more in the third, Denver’s strategy to drop rather than blitz biting them with every lefty moonbeam. He went scoreless in the fourth quarter, as Leonard took over, and the back-and-forth battle persists.
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