LOS ANGELES — Midway through the fourth quarter of this Tuesday night's slugfest at Crypto.com Arena, Kawhi Leonard posted up Luka Doncic on the right baseline. Normally it would be an automatic basket regardless of who is guarding Leonard.
But Doncic swarmed Leonard and forced him into a tough mistake.
“What about Luka's defense?” the teenage Clippers fan squealed in disappointment and disbelief.
Trust me, kid. Doncic did score 32 points and almost ensured a 96-93 Game 2 victory for the Mavericks, but he also contributed with his passionate, tone-setting defense.
What tone setting? Dallas held the Clippers to 36.8 percent shooting and held the star troika of Leonard, James Harden and Paul George to 59 points on 20-of-45 shooting.
The pivotal win, which tied the series 1-1 in Games 3 and 4 in Dallas, was a style of game the Mavericks would not have won last season. Heck, he probably wouldn't have won a game like this before acquiring P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford at the trade deadline.
“Obviously, they punched us in the mouth in Game 1,” said Washington, who scored a team-high 10 of his 18 points in the fourth quarter. “We just wanted to respond tonight, and I felt like we set the tone with our defense and offense.”
Gafford missed his second straight game, but Washington, Maxi Kleber, Derrick Jones Jr., Derek Lively II and, of course, Doncic spearheaded the defense.
“It's the playoffs. It's different,” Doncic said in a postgame interview on TNT. “They were trying to double me, but I said no doubles. I also take pride in my defense.”
It's probably a good thing that general manager Nico Harrison has retooled these Mavericks as a bigger, more athletic, physical team. Look at the scores so far in the first round of these playoffs.
In 14 games, the losing team scored in the 90s, with two of those games scoring in the 80s. Unlike Game 1, when the Clippers scored 109 points and were a more physical team, Dallas was more aggressive in almost every way, including a 7-4 advantage in blocked shots.
“We’ve seen a change in referees since March,” coach Jason Kidd said. “There were fewer whistles and more physicality, so we accepted that. That’s who we are.
“We're not afraid to be physical. I think the one thing that was a little disappointing in the first game was that we weren't physical enough. Maybe it was rust, maybe it was the rest, but tonight we played 48 minutes of physical basketball and found a way to win.”
It helps when your best player, an NBA MVP candidate, accepts a defensive role, as Doncic has increasingly done since Kidd arrived three seasons ago. That season, Kidd privately and publicly encouraged Doncic to be more “involved” on defense.
Doncic did all that and more on Tuesday. He only had one steal and one block, but it was his occasional bursts of effort on defense that helped dictate the flow of the game.
The Clippers continued to go after Doncic in pick-and-rolls, but more often than not, he held his ground. My teammates noticed.
“When he's playing at that level, they have to step up, too,” Kidd said. “They understand the responsibility of a leader, and when he goes out there playing defense, they have to be able to do the same.
“He leads not only offensively but defensively as well.”
