INGLEWOOD, Calif. — The Denver Nuggets didn’t play good defense during the regular season. They were a middle-of-the-pack team for much of the year (16th in the league before the All-Star break) that got worse in the final months of the season and they were bottom 10 in the league after the break.
It’s impossible to play mediocre defense like that all season and then flip the switch in the playoffs.
Especially going against a Clippers offense that was the best in the league in the final 20 games of the season, when the Clippers went 17-3.
That’s the story of Game 3 in a nutshell. The Clippers moved the ball, found the open man, shots started falling and it snowballed into the kind of night where everything worked for Los Angeles, even when it shouldn’t have.
This game just felt different than the tightly contested first two in the series. The Clippers’ offense caught fire when they returned home for the first-ever playoff game in what was a loud and rocking Intuit Dome — Los Angeles had a 132.9 offensive rating behind 21 points and 11 rebounds from Kawhi Leonard — and the Nuggets had no answers.
The result was a 117-83 statement Clippers win, taking a 2-1 series lead. Game 4 is Saturday afternoon.
“The first two games were very competitive. This game was not,” interim Nuggets coach David Adelman said. “But you can come back Saturday and you can right a lot of wrongs and you can find yourself back 2-2 going home to Denver with two days off.”
There may be more wrongs than the Nuggets have the personnel to right.
The Clippers rained 3-pointers, hitting 18 on the night and shooting 46.2% from beyond the arc. Depth was always one of Los Angeles biggest advantages this series and it was the Clippers’ bench that did much of the damage, led by Derrick Jones Jr. and Nicolas Batum, each knocking down four 3-pointers.
It wasn’t just that end of the floor. The Nuggets’ offense also struggled, getting slowed down into the halfcourt (they had just three fast break points) and scoring less than a point per possession for the game. Nikola Jokic had an efficient triple-double of 23 points, 13 rebounds and 13 assists, but take him out of the equation and the rest of the Nuggets shot 34.9% on the night. Denver had just six points from their bench.
Usually, when the other Nuggets have struggled this season, Jokic has just done more and done it better. However, that will be difficult against a strong Clippers defense, led by Ivica Zubac, who has played well against Jokic.
They are a good defense. They are a good team,” Jokic said. “They are taking away what we are good at and they have quality players.”
On top of it all, Michael Porter Jr. admitted he is playing through a sprained shoulder and said he was at about 30%. He was 2-of-9 shooting for the day, and suggested if he can’t do more to help the team on Saturday he might not play. Except, the Nuggets don’t have the depth to replace his shooting.
It’s a lot of questions for the Nuggets to answer. Maybe too many, this was the kind of blowout playoff win that makes it feel like the Clippers solved the puzzle.
We’ll see on Saturday if the Clippers can put more pieces together and take command of this series, or if the former champions have a little more fight left in them.
