LOS ANGELES — There’s blood in the water, and Luka Doncic and his gang of sharks can smell it.
That isn’t to say that the fourth-seeded Clippers – who drowned in a big moment on Wednesday night, falling behind 3-2 in their first-round playoff series against the fifth-seeded Dallas Mavericks after no-showing in a 123-93 Game 5 loss – can’t snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
They could. They’re capable of extending the series to a seventh game, of giving themselves at least one more game at Crypto.com Arena before the big move to the Intuit Dome in Inglewood.
And, who knows, maybe the dangerous proposition of it being one and done will get the Clippers swimming with some actual urgency?
But also, maybe not.
In this series, there’s one team you can count on to be up for a fight, and there’s one you can’t count on for anything.
The Mavericks are the former, having twice rallied from substantial deficits to make games they ultimately lost real interesting.
They were down by 29 points in Game 1 in L.A., but they were game to keep whittling, getting the deficit down to 10. And on Sunday in Dallas, they fell behind by 31 points and came all the way back, taking the lead in the fourth quarter before James Harden and Paul George were able to out-duel Kyrie Irving down the stretch to win the game, 116-111, and square the series, 2-2.
The Clippers, meanwhile, when they’ve fallen behind, have fallen off, unable or unwilling to muster similar effort against a snarling, jawing Mavericks team that’s very much on the hunt. A team that’s on the verge now of beating the Clippers for the first time in three first-round meetings in Doncic’s otherwise decorated Dallas tenure.
The Clippers’ 11-point loss in Game 3 wasn’t as close as the score indicated and, from the second quarter on, never in question. And then there was Wednesday’s forgettable 30-point loss, the largest final deficit in Clippers’ postseason history.
The Mavericks also handed the…
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