Clippers vs Nuggets Game 5 Recap

The Clippers somehow blew another good chance to advance to their first Conference Finals ever.

Transcript

00:00Nuggets will live to see another day as Denver came away with a 1-11, 1-05 win over the Clippers

00:06in Game 5. And hey, closeout games are tough. And I'm joined now by our Clippers reporter

00:12Farabod Esnashari. And Farabod, we've seen this story before. I know this Clippers team

00:18had some struggles, but they were up until midway through the fourth quarter. What happened there?

00:23You know, they got really comfortable. They let Paul Millsap just kind of go off in the

00:27third quarter. And when the Nuggets were dead in the water and they were completely done,

00:31Paul Millsap kept them in the game, kind of like Josh Smith kept the Rockets in the game in 2015.

00:36It was pretty similar to have a veteran who's been cold averaging eight points a game suddenly

00:41decide, you know, to keep the team alive. Once you give the Nuggets a little bit of confidence,

00:46that's all they really need because they've already come back from 3-1 before. And by that

00:50point, the Clippers just kept shooting too many jumpers. It took too long to get Kawhi in. They

00:54took too long to get Zubats back in, and the snowball had started. And outside of Millsap,

00:59too, it wasn't really helping that Jokic and Murray both got going from deep late.

01:03But talking about Kawhi, we saw the passion. We saw him banging his chest. We saw kind of a little

01:08bit more fiery side than I think we've ever seen from him on the basketball court. Can he take that

01:14energy and propel the Clippers in game six in just two days? I mean, I have no doubts about Kawhi.

01:21To be honest, a lot of this loss is shouldered on the bench. You know,

01:26Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell, they're supposed to average 36 points a game in the

01:30regular season off the bench. They're supposed to be the most prolific bench duo in NBA history.

01:34But tonight, you know, they put up five for 17, 10 points. You're not going to win any games if

01:42you're the Clippers when your sixth man of the year and your previous sixth man of the year

01:45only put up 10 points. Absolutely. Well, the Clippers and the Nuggets will face one another

01:50once again Sunday night. Farbaugh, Desnachari, thank you so much for the insight.