The Los Angeles Clippers sealed their playoff berth with a 124-119 overtime win over the Golden State Warriors on the final day of the regular season; they will be entering the playoffs as the fifth-seed, going up against a Denver Nuggets team that’s looking to salvage its season after shaking up the team with the firings of Michael Malone and Calvin Booth.
Since the start of March, the Clippers have been on fire, winning 18 of their past 23 games and setting themselves up nicely for what the team hopes will be a deep playoff run. And for the first time in years, the Clippers might be in as good of a position to do so; Kawhi Leonard looks very healthy, even playing 47 minutes in their win over the Warriors, while James Harden showed on Sunday that he can still turn it on when needed similarly to how he performed for LA in last year’s playoffs.
Nonetheless, a series against Nikola Jokic is never going to be easy to navigate. This will be a tough matchup for the Clippers.
With that said, here are a few bold predictions for how the Clippers will fare in their looming series against the Nuggets in the first round of the 2025 NBA playoffs.
Kawhi Leonard plays in every game of the series
The issue with Kawhi Leonard has never been his talent. Leonard is one of the greatest basketball players ever in the history of planet Earth, and yet injury woes have plagued him over the past few years, limiting his overall impact and dashing the Clippers’ championship hopes completely.
Since tearing his ACL in the second round of the 2021 NBA playoffs, Leonard has only suited up in four playoff games two each in 2023 and 2024. In 2023, Leonard seemed to be on track to power the Clippers past the Phoenix Suns with an efficient showing in the first two games of the series before tearing his meniscus. And then in 2024, a knee injury kept him out for the final few games of the regular season and proved to be too much for him to overcome as he was rushed back from injury in a two-game cameo against the Dallas Mavericks.
But it looks like the Clippers have stumbled upon the perfect formula for how to get the best out of Leonard at exactly the right time. Leonard peaked early last year, and this was a mistake that LA seems to have learned from.
With the Nuggets’ defense not being as good as it was in recent years, the Clippers definitely have a good chance of advancing to the second round of the playoffs. Leonard can overpower Christian Braun on the post, while the Clippers will try to get Aaron Gordon off Leonard as much as possible by forcing switches, leading to favorable matchups all over the court.
But in the playoffs, availability is the best ability for a superstar player. And for someone who averaged 30.4 points on 67.9 percent true shooting during his last healthy playoff run for the Clippers (2021), all the team will be asking for is for him to suit up in every game of the series which he will.
Clippers completely match Ivica Zubac‘s minutes with that of Nikola Jokic’s
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