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 Saturday night when Denver hosts Los Angeles for Game 7 of their Western Conference quarterfinal. The winner advances to take on No. 1 seed Oklahoma City.
The Nuggets are playing in their fourth Game 7 since the 2019 postseason but they haven’t 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 learned,” Denver interim coach David Adelman said Thursday. “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 Thursday’s 111-105 Game 6 win. Harden shook off mediocre performances in the previous two games with 28 points, and Leonard had 27.
Prior to Thursday, Harden had not won an elimination game since the NBA Bubble in Orlando in 2020 when he was with Houston, and he has been criticized for his play in elimination games since. That didn’t 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 35-year-old Harden sat for just one minute in Thursday’s win and is willing to do it again.
“Whatever the team needs, 47, 48, overtime, whatever — I’ll be willing to do it,” he said.
The Clippers are 4-1 in first-round Game 7s, but the franchise has won just one of those on the road since 1978. Los Angeles last played a Game 7 in 2021 when it beat visiting Dallas in the first round on the way to its first conference finals appearance.
Clippers coach Tyronn Lue made a key adjustment in the second half on Thursday that will likely carry over to Saturday. Lue started the bigger, more versatile Nicolas Batum in the third quarter. The 6-foot-8 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.
“Batum is a much better shooter than Kris Dunn,” Jokic said, referencing the 6-3 guard. “Batum is a great defensive player. He can guard one through five. I don’t think they lack (anything) defensively with Batum. They’re probably going to start him next game.”
This is the second time the teams are playing a Game 7. 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.
