The Clippers wanted to avoid LeBron James. Now they’re stuck with Luka Doncic.
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LOS ANGELES — Luka Doncic clearly has no interest in easing into a series.
The Dallas Mavericks’ do-everything guard set an NBA record for scoring in a postseason debut last summer, posting 42 points in Game 1 of a first-round series against the Los Angeles Clippers. That effort captured the basketball world’s imagination, but it came in a loss to a veteran team that turned to physical play and trash talk to throw Doncic off his game as the series unfolded.
The Clippers eventually outlasted the Mavericks in the bubble playoffs, but Doncic wasted no time exerting his control over the action when the teams met again Saturday to begin a first-round rematch. The two-time all-star started in a groove, picked apart the Clippers and finished with 31 points, 10 rebounds and 11 assists in a 113-103 Game 1 win at Staples Center.
“This is his time of year,” Mavericks Coach Rick Carlisle said. “He’s one of the smartest players you’ll ever meet at any age and at any level.”
Hanging over Doncic’s splendid, dominant afternoon was the fact that the Clippers, who entered the postseason as aspiring title contenders, had maneuvered their way into this rematch. By resting key players in late-season losses to the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder, the Clippers dropped to the fourth seed and increased the likelihood that the Los Angeles Lakers would land on the other side of the Western Conference’s playoff bracket.
There was plenty of sense in trying to avoid LeBron James for as long as possible, but the Clippers were immediately reminded that a series with Doncic’s fifth-seeded Mavericks is no walk in the park, either.
“It was great,” said Doncic, who shot 11 for 24 from the field and 5 for 11 from beyond the arc. “The playoffs are fun. They’re especially more fun when you win, obviously. I hope that I’m at my best [in the playoffs]. I think that’s far away. I’m only in my third season.”
That’s a scary thought; Doncic is already capable of making life miserable for opponents. Time and again, he called for high screens so he could attack the Clippers’ Ivica Zubac, burying an array of fallaway jumpers and step-back threes over the 7-foot center. When the Clippers inevitably switched their defensive approach to trap Doncic and force the ball out of his hands in the fourth quarter, he made timely passes to find Tim Hardaway Jr. on the perimeter and Kristaps Porzingis inside. Five Dallas players scored in double figures.
“[Doncic has] seen virtually every coverage known to mankind,” Carlisle said. “He’s obviously very good against switches. He mixed up the step-backs and the drives. He’s got to keep giving them a different dose of looks. He’s a very unique player for a 22-year-old: the level of poise that he has, his ability to slow down the game and to see what’s going on, even when the [shot] clock is at six or seven seconds. He was great tonight.”
Balanced scoring was a sign of progress for the Mavericks, who were often too reliant on Doncic in last year’s postseason. Hardaway scored 21 points and hit five three-pointers, and Dorian Finney-Smith added 18 points and made a go-ahead three-pointer with less than three minutes to go. Porzingis, who started slow, finished the upset with a hammer dunk in the final minute.
When Kawhi Leonard and Paul George teamed up in 2019, the Clippers planned to construct their championship blueprint around an elite defense. But Doncic expertly manipulated matchups to pick on Los Angeles’s weakest links, including Zubac and guard Reggie Jackson. He found ways to blow by the Clippers’ big men, and his physicality presented problems for perimeter defenders.
“We wanted to get it out of his hands in the first half,” Clippers Coach Tyronn Lue said. “We just didn’t execute. We’ve got to clean those things up and we’ll be fine. We’ve all got to be on the same page.”
Doncic led the Mavericks to an early 17-6 lead and had 21 points by halftime. Even though he showed signs of fatigue and scored just one point in the fourth quarter, Doncic clearly outplayed Leonard and George, and he exited the court to chants of “M-V-P!” from a few hundred Mavericks supporters.
Leonard scored 26 points and brought the crowd to its feet with a poster dunk on Maxi Kleber, but late in the fourth quarter he missed two free throws and came up short on a midrange jumper. George missed six of his first seven shots and couldn’t dig himself out of the early hole. As a team, the Clippers shot just 11 for 40 (27.5 percent) from three-point range, well off their league-leading 41.1 percent in the regular season.
For an organization hoping to shed its reputation for postseason letdowns, this was a Game 1 to forget. Doncic made sure of it.
“Our spirits are still high, and we believe in ourselves,” Leonard said. “Nothing good comes easy.”