It is typically unadvisable to go after the same rebound that Boban Marjanovic wants.
At 7-foot-4, with a reach as wide as a Texas live oak and hands like baseball mitts, Dallas’ center owns much of the airspace near the rim. When a Mavericks shot caromed off the rim early in the third quarter Wednesday, he grabbed hold of the ball, appearing to extend the Mavericks’ possession. But he never saw Kawhi Leonard run in to meet him.
Leonard clamped his 11 ¼-inch wide hands onto the pebbled leather and, with a twist of his hips, cleanly ripped it out of Marjanovic’s grip.
If there was ever a night for the Clippers’ taking, this was it. Returning home after two consecutive road wins to even this first-round playoff series entering Game 5 at Staples Center, the Clippers had the healthy superstars, the momentum and the welcoming crowd aching to witness the team’s first postseason win at home since 2017.
Yet the moments when they flexed their muscles were too infrequent, their hold never strong enough. Because of it, after a 105-100 loss, their championship ambitions are again hanging on for dear life trailing 3-2 in the series, with Game 6 coming Friday in Dallas.
Entering the game with a strained neck, Dallas guard Luka Doncic finished it with 42 points and 14 assists.
Trailing by 14 after three quarters and 10 with 2:13 to play in the fourth quarter, the Clippers stormed back on a 9-1 run, only to see Terance Mann’s pass in the paint to a cutting Nicolas Batum yield a miss when they trailed by one with just 8.8 seconds remaining. Dallas’ Tim Hardaway Jr. made two free throws to push his team’s lead to 103-100.
On the Clippers’ ensuing possession, Leonard missed an off-balance three-pointer from the corner that could have tied the score.
Paul George led the Clippers with 23 points and 10 rebounds, while Leonard and Reggie Jackson each contributed 20 points.
Just as Tyronn Lue had kept his lineup changes under wraps before Games 3 and 4, his Mavericks counterpart, Rick Carlisle, played cat-and-mouse with his answer 90 minutes before tipoff Wednesday. But what Lue predicted became true: Carlisle countered the 6-foot-8-or-smaller lineup used by the Clippers to win two straight in Dallas by pairing 7-3 Kristaps Porzingis with Marjanovic.
It was a bet not so much on cohesion — all season, the twin-tower-plus-Doncic trio had played together only four minutes — but disruption. One game after scoring 20 points in the paint in the first quarter, the Clippers rarely ventured deep into the zone near Dallas’ size during Marjanovic’s and Porzingis’ first eight minutes, with three-pointers accounting for five of their first six baskets.
Yet 10 minutes into the game, Doncic had made five three-pointers — matching the Mavericks’ combined Game 4 total — and opened what was as large as a 10-point Dallas lead by scoring 19 points, only nine fewer than all the Clippers combined. That neck and left arm wrapped in trainer’s tape looked just fine. The red-hot Leonard, meanwhile, didn’t score his first basket for 12 minutes.
But Dallas’ height advantage disappeared only two minutes into the second quarter when Porzingis earned his third foul and Marjanovic was pulled immediately after. In a sign of how discombobulated Dallas became without their Slovenian guard, it was outscored by 8-2 during Doncic’s three minutes of rest.
When Doncic returned, a hard fall on his left wrist couldn’t keep him from continuing to add points — 27 by the half —– but they came more on midrange shots than threes after the Clippers ran him into the paint.
And so the same question that had dominated the first four games was relevant to the fifth: Content to allow Doncic to go off, could the Clippers keep his teammates from doing the same?
Leonard’s rip-away rebound was typical of a third quarter where the Clippers played fast and physical, punishing Marjanovic and any Mavericks that reached the rim with contact officials rarely called for fouls. A jumper by Leonard pushed the Clippers’ lead to five, its largest margin, with 5:07 left in the third quarter.
It was not enough to eliminate the kind of nightmare stretch the Clippers thought they were past after their impressive late-game resolve in Games 3 and 4. When Dallas inserted little used center Dwight Powell, it began a 24-5 run — helped by three Clippers turnovers — over five, groan-inducing minutes.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.