Clippers currently has an opportunity to finish the series at home since Luka and Kyrie are receiving a lot of assistance from the supporting cast members.
LOS Angeles With 5:39 remaining and his team up by 30, Luka Doncic walked off the court for the evening after untucking his jersey.
The Dallas Mavericks defeated the Los Angeles Clippers 123-93 on Wednesday to win Game 5, maintaining their huge lead at the finish. With the win, the visitors now have an 82.5% chance of winning this series when they return to Dallas for Game 6 on Friday (9:30 ET, ESPN).
Winners of Game 5 in a 2-2 series have historically advanced at an 82.5% rate.
Dallas gave LA the worst postseason defeat in the team’s history.
Of his 35 points, 20 were scored by Doncic in the second half.
“It doesn’t matter if you win by one or by fifty in the playoffs,” Doncic stated in his post-game interview with TNT. “Winning is still a wonderful thing. Still, the work is not finished. We still have to win one.
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The top five points to keep in mind from the game are as follows:
- Smashed Doncic is engaged in combat.
With 35 points, 7 rebounds, and 10 assists, Doncic led Dallas. However, his series numbers as a whole suggest he’s had difficulty.
But don’t write off the eye test. Because that indicates that a franchise leader is working really hard to succeed completed.
In Game 5, Doncic had a terrible 3-point shooting performance. In every series, he has done that.
But keep in mind that during the first quarter of Game 3, Doncic hurt his right knee. He received intensive therapy during the interval between Games 4 and 5, but the setback has limited his movement ever since.
Doncic said that if the Mavs were still playing in the regular season, he “probably would not” keep playing on the knee.
But these are the playoffs.
Doncic has covered both ends of the floor in response.
It’s evident that the five-time All-Star’s output has been impacted by the injury. Doncic was shooting 38.6% from the field and 27.1% from beyond the arc going into Game 5, after recording his fourth career postseason triple-double in Game 4.
Doncic failed to score his first 3 in Game 5 until there were 2:22 left in the third, having missed his first six long-range tries. Doncic battled defensively to stay in front of his guy at least three times in the first half.
In the end, he recorded 35 points and 10 assists in his fourth career postseason game versus the Clippers. The only other player in league history to record that kind of stat line in four games versus one opponent is Oscar Robinson (Boston).
- Mavericks get better after a rough start
Dallas broke their pattern of sluggish openings, winning 25–24 in the first quarter, which increased to 10 points by halftime. Remember that the Mavs had averaged 19.8 points on 35.9% from the field and 15.6% from beyond the arc in the first four games, with no team scoring more than 23 points in the first quarter.
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The Mavs were trailing the series by 36 points going into this game.
Give the push to Doncic and Maxi Kleber. Before the half, the two were responsible for almost half of Dallas’ points. Doncic scored fifteen points on fifteen field goal tries, and Kleber scored twelve points on four of his six three-point attempts.
In the first quarter, Doncic pulled down four rebounds and scored eight points while dishing out three assists. During that time, Derrick Jones Jr. scored seven points, nailing three of four shots with two rows.
In the first half of the contest, there were twelve lead changes.
Five turnovers led to 10 points given up by the Clippers.
It’s interesting that the typical LA suspects didn’t provide much in the way of points. During the first two quarters, Ivica Zubac and Terrance Mann scored 13 and 11 points, respectively, to accomplish that.
James Harden and Paul George, two superstars, teamed for a 4-for-15 effort.
After that, Dallas went on a 13–4 run to end the first half.
To begin with, LA missed 14 consecutive 3-pointers.
- Shooting mishaps cost the Clippers
With the series shifting to Crypto.com Arena, where the Clippers had a 31-23 record heading into Game 5, you would think that LA’s shooting would become better.
No, it didn’t. It actually became worse.
LA is undoubtedly annoyed by that because it owns a 30-3 over the course of the season when shooting 50% or higher. One could argue that the Clippers’ success in the postseason thus far has been largely attributed to the 3-ball.
In each of its victories in this series, LA made 18 triple-pointers.
- Maybe Kawhi Leonard isn’t a better fit for LA now?
A large part of the reason the Los Angeles Lakers won this series without Leonard was due of James Harden’s collapse in Game 5.
After the first four games, Harden had established himself as the Clippers’ most reliable player. The NBA MVP for 2017–18 vanished in Game 5, managing just seven points on 2-of–12 shooting and four turnovers.
In the knockout stages, Harden’s teams have a 4-8 all-time record when he scores smaller amounts than 10 points “His shooting was subpar,” commented Tyronn Lue, the coach of LA. ‘They made an effort to get up and apply some pressure, and we did not react appropriately.’
Harden averaged 30.5 points on 58.5% from the field and 62.5% from 3-point range in the two victories without Leonard. Without the two-time MVP of the Finals, Harden averaged 21.5 points on 48.1% from the field and 38.9% from beyond the arc in the two losses.
During the first four games, Harden led the Clippers in points (26.0), three-pointers made (17 total), assists (7.0), and blocks (1.3).
For the third time in this series, Dallas limited Los Angeles to fewer than 95 points. Only three occasions during the regular season did the Clippers score less than 95 points.
- Three-point fever struck Maxi Kleber.
No. 7 in the Mavericks’ tournament minutes entering Game 4, Kleber emerged as the clear winner in Game 5. Over the first four games of this series, the seventh-year veteran scored 15 points in total, making 4-of-8 3-pointers.
In Game 5, Kleber equaled his postseason scoring total with a game-high fifteen points on 5-for-7 three-point shooting, while the club as a whole shot 9-for-32.
In the second quarter, Kleber went 4-for-5 from long range as Dallas jumped out to a 12-point lead.
Senior writer Michael C. Wright works for NBA.com. You may follow him on X, send him an email at this link, and view his archive here.
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