Denver Nuggets host LA Clippers with everything on the line in Game 7
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LA Clippers guard James Harden shoots the ball against Denver Nuggets centre DeAndre Jordan and guard Christian Braun in the first half during Game 6.
PHOTO: REUTERS
DENVER – The Denver Nuggets have been here before and want to avoid the same result. So do the Los Angeles Clippers.
A battle that started two weeks ago comes to an end on May 3 (May 4, Singapore time) when Denver host Los Angeles for Game 7 of their NBA Western Conference first-round series.
The winners advance to take on No. 1 seed Oklahoma City.
The Nuggets are playing in their fourth Game 7 since the 2019 post-season but they have not all been pleasant memories. They are 2-1 in Game 7s in that stretch, and the most recent experience was last season when they blew a 20-point second-half lead and suffered a gut-wrenching home loss to Minnesota in the second round.
“We’re going to look back at that, use it as a lesson learnt,” Denver interim coach David Adelman. “But this is now. This is a different team that we’re competing against.”
That different team has future Hall of Famers in James Harden and Kawhi Leonard, who both came up big for the Clippers in their 111-105 Game 6 win. Harden shook off mediocre performances in the previous two games with 28 points, and Leonard had 27.
Prior to that, Harden had not won an elimination game since the NBA Bubble in Orlando in 2020 when he was with Houston, and he has been criticised for his play in elimination games since. That did not bother his teammates.
“He’s been here before,” Leonard said of Harden.
“Guys have games where they don’t play well during the season. It’s just another game, so I knew he was going to be able to come back, or he was going to be aggressive and try to get to his spots.”
The Clippers are 4-1 in first-round Game 7s, but the franchise have won just one of those on the road since 1978.
Los Angeles last played a Game 7 in 2021 when they beat visiting Dallas in the first round on the way to their first Conference Finals appearance.
Clippers coach Tyronn Lue made a key adjustment in the second half in Game 6 that will likely carry over to Game 7.
He started the bigger, more versatile Nicolas Batum in the third quarter. The veteran had only six points, but he was able to defend Nuggets stars Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray while posing as a perimeter threat that allowed Harden and Leonard to attack the paint.
This is the second time the teams are playing a Game 7 against each other.
Denver won the first one, which occurred in the 2020 NBA Bubble, to complete a comeback from down 3-1 in the series. Leonard and Ivica Zubac were on that Los Angeles team; Jokic, Murray and Michael Porter Jr. are the only Nuggets still on the roster.
Meanwhile in play-off action on May 2, the Houston Rockets rode a crushing fourth quarter to a 115-107 victory over the Golden State Warriors to set up a Game 7 showdown in their Western Conference series.
Fred VanVleet scored 29 points for the Rockets, who led most of the game and silenced the crowd at the Warriors’ Chase Centre with an explosive fourth quarter – putting together a 12-0 scoring run in the final frame to push their lead to as many as 17. REUTERS
