Should The Clippers Be Worried; Defense Is Good?

After Day 1 of the NBA Playoffs concluded, I’m giving some specific insight into something that happened yesterday. Today we will be talking about the LA Clippers and how the defense in the playoffs looks much better.

LA Clippers

The LA Clippers won their first playoff game against the Dallas Mavericks. But should there be any concern for the title favorites?

The Clippers were at full strength as Kawhi Leonard, PG-13, Lou Williams, and Montrezl Harrell were all playing for the first time during the restart. Sure Montrezl Harrell only played 15 minutes in Game 1, but he was still back. But the Clippers won 118-110. While this is a decent sized margin, it should have been much larger.

The Clippers led by 16 early in the first quarter. They were forcing lots of turnovers and they were hitting all of their shots. It looked like a blowout straight from the tip-off. Instead the Mavs came back immediately and they actually led after the end of the 1st quarter. And the Clippers never established that lead for the rest of the game. So that 16 point lead evaporated into nothing.

Next Kristaps Porzingis got ejected in the 3rd quarter in one of the weakest technical fouls I’ve ever seen. He did literally nothing, and he was thrown out as it was his 2nd technical. Nonetheless this is when you expected the Clippers to lock in on Luka Doncic and pull away. And we waited. And waited. And waited some more. That did not happen. The game was still close throughout the 2nd half despite that the Mavs didn’t have their 2nd best player.

And the Clippers should have had a much easier time controlling Luka Doncic as he was the only star on the court. Pair this with the fact that Kawhi Leonard and Paul George were rolling, the Clippers should have won this game by a lot. Instead the game was close, and they finally pulled away in the final minutes.

You have to wonder if this will be a problem for the Clippers. Chemistry is sort of it, but I mean that have so many guys that it’s tough to stop them. And when a team is vulnerable like the Mavs were without Kristaps Porzingis, the Clippers should pounce on them. But they didn’t. So keep an eye out for the Clippers blowing leads and having close games that really shouldn’t be close.

Defense

The defense in the seeding games was horrendous. Teams were scoring 120+ points regularly and the defenses that we consider to be top tier have fallen off a bit. You can contribute a lot of stuff to that including rust and environment, but you can’t deny that the defense was bad. But now through 4 games of the playoffs, the offenses seemed to have been slowing down.

The Nuggets and Jazz were tied at 115 at the end of regulation, so it was decently high-scoring but it was nothing crazy. The final score was 135-125 Denver, but through 48 minutes it wasn’t anything crazy.

The Raptors won 134-110 but the Nets defense was poor and the Raptors played pretty ok defense themselves.

The Celtics and the 76ers game was very close and defensive minded as the Celtics won 109-101.

The Clippers and the Mavs are some of the best offenses in the league with the Mavs being one of the greatest offenses of all-time. And the Mavs are now known for defense. And yet the game was only 118-110. So the defense seems to be tightening down.

So I think that people were overreacting to the defense during the seeding games. I get that some teams don’t have the best defenders, but stuff was ought to get better during the playoffs. Like the Mavs did not have a good defense and they held the Clippers relatively in check. So I think that the better defenses in the playoffs will be better, but the teams that we consider to be bad, likely won’t be as bad as we think.

What Are Your Thoughts For These Topics? Leave A Comment Down Below!

My Thoughts/Opinions For Each Team Will Be Posted Later Today, So Stay Tuned!

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