The Clippers finished fourth in the Western Conference and will face Dallas in the first round of the playoffs after their 117-112 road loss against Oklahoma City on Sunday, the final day of the NBA’s regular season.
That result, combined with Denver’s loss in Portland and the Lakers’ win over New Orleans, kept the Nuggets in third place in the Western Conference standings, locked in the Clippers at fourth to create a seven-game series with the fifth-seeded Mavericks. The teams also met in the first round last season in what was a six-game Clippers victory.
Neither the Thunder nor Clippers (47-25) appeared vested in winning Sunday. The loss increased the likelihood that the Clippers’ path to a potential NBA Finals appearance will not overlap with the Lakers until the Western Conference Finals, if both teams indeed advance that far. For that to happen, however, the Lakers must win their play-in game against Golden State to finish with the seventh seed.
Oklahoma City had its own incentives not to win. A loss would have ensured the Thunder no worse than third in the NBA’s draft lottery standings.
Dallas won the season series with the Clippers, 2-1, beginning with a 51-point victory in the season’s third game. They last played in mid-March, with the Clippers winning by 10 before losing by 16. The Clippers did not have center Serge Ibaka for the final two games because of an injury suffered only days before. After missing 30 games with a pinched nerve in his back, Ibaka played the last two games of the season.
Mavericks All-Star Luka Doncic averaged 30.3 points, 11.0 assists and 8.3 rebounds this season against the Clippers while shooting 47.8% overall and 37.0% — slightly higher than his season average — on three-pointers.
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The Clippers will host the first two games of the series. In an email to fans Sunday, the team announced that home games at Staples Center will include 14 sections reserved for fully vaccinated fans, along with other, socially distanced sections. The vaccinated sections, which the team said were approved by the NBA and Los Angeles County’s Department of Public Health, “enable us to significantly increase our capacity” in the arena.
In Oklahoma City, Yogi Ferrell and Jay Scrubb each scored 14 points to lead the Clippers, who sat All-Stars Paul George and Kawhi Leonard, starting forward Marcus Morris and reserves Nicolas Batum, Rajon Rondo and DeMarcus Cousins. Starting center Ivica Zubac played six seconds to keep alive his streak of 158 consecutive games played before fouling and exiting for rest, and starting guard Reggie Jackson played only seven minutes.
Despite the playoff jockeying, the game could have been a rare opportunity to play the entire top eight of their playoff rotation together, a consideration Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said was discussed. Perhaps only briefly.
“I’ll take health over rust any day,” Lue said before tipoff of the decisions to rest. “That was our main thought. And with the season being so different now, like, when I played, playoffs started in two or three days, with everybody getting about a week off anyway, one game’s not gonna change or you’re not gonna get better chemistry in one game and being off seven days anyway.”
