Dallas Mavericks to Unleash Interesting Gameplan to Slow Down James Harden and the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 5

The Dallas Mavericks tried to combat the Los Angeles Clippers’ hot shooting by deploying a small-ball lineup with Maxi Kleber as their center instead of Daniel Gafford or Dereck Lively II. This backfired for the Dallas Mavericks, as James Harden kept attacking the paint and scored 15 of his 33 points in the final frame by going 6-of-8 from the field.

Paul George also dropped 33 points while going 7-of-10 from deep for the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 4.

“Yeah, we’re going to live with that,” Jason Kidd said about James Harden taking more twos than threes via Joey Mistretta on X (formerly known as Twitter). “Threes hurt you or can beat you. Twos in this league don’t beat you. It gives you an opportunity. We just got to make it tougher on him (Harden) with the twos.”

“We can’t just give him free layups. He’s too good. We have to do a better job on the ball with him,” he added.

Dallas Mavericks need to shoot better from three-point range

While defending the three-pointer is important for the Dallas Mavericks, they would also need to convert more on their end to be in a much better position to advance to the second round.

So far in this series, the Dallas Mavericks have only made 32.8 percent of their three-point shots, which is far from ideal.

With sharpshooter Tim Hardaway Jr. still sidelined for Game 5, the Dallas Mavericks will need more production from others since Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving cannot carry the whole them by themselves.

Luka Doncic is averaging 29.0 points, 9.8 rebounds, and 8.5 assists per game, while Kyrie Irving is averaging 28.8 points, 6.0 rebounds, 4.5 assists, and 1.8 steals per game on 51.3 percent shooting from the field this playoffs.