NBA playoffs: 3 storylines from the Dallas Mavericks and LA Clippers in Game 1
By Drew Ivery
One game is in the books between the Dallas Mavericks and LA Clippers in the NBA playoffs. Let’s take a look at the most important storylines.
Game one of this Dallas Mavericks and LA Clippers series was intense, chippy and everything we could’ve hoped for. Well, almost everything.
Before this series, Dallas was counted out from the get-go in regards to upsetting the Clippers in this series and advancing, but you couldn’t tell the Mavs that. They fought throughout the entire game, even when it began slow and looked like it would be a very long night. At times this season, like their WNBA counterpart, the Dallas Wings, they’ve had some rough starts.
It even featured an altercation between the two teams involving Luka Doncic, Marcus Morris Sr. and Kristaps Porzingis. This altercation led to Porzingis receiving his second technical foul of the game and ejecting him. The first came earlier in the first half when he punched the air in frustration with a foul that was called on him.
Doncic knew why Porzingis got involved but didn’t necessarily agree with the call.
"“I knew that [Porzingis] had my back,” Doncic said in the postgame. “He did it for me, he did it for his teammate. He had my back. It wasn’t just me, I think the whole team appreciated that. I don’t think it was fair to kick him out of the game — especially in the playoffs. But they decide, so we had to play without him, which was tough.”"
Prior to this altercation, Dallas struggled, but they turned the tide fairly quickly. After the 18-2 Clippers start, Dallas followed it up with a 48-18 run to turn things around and managed to garnish a 14 point lead after being down 16 points to start. This came in part from getting the Clippers better defenders, Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and Patrick Beverley, in foul trouble with three first-half fouls.
Regardless of the great comeback, Dallas still has some things to work on for Game 2. A few takeaways: