Luka Dončić had 28 points and 13 assists, Kyrie Irving scored 28 of his 30 points in a second-half surge and the Dallas Mavericks advanced to the second round of the playoffs with a 114-101 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers on Friday night.
Dončić pushed through another rough shooting night with his ailing right knee to do what the Slovenian superstar couldn’t three years earlier – close out the Clippers in Dallas in Game 6 of a first-round series.
The fifth-seeded Mavericks beat the Clippers for the the first time in three first-round tries over the past five seasons and will open the Western Conference semi-finals at the top seed, Oklahoma City, on Tuesday night.
Paul George had 18 points and 11 rebounds for the Clippers, who won the first two times they played without Kawhi Leonard in the series but didn’t have enough scoring punch in the last two he was sidelined by right knee inflammation.
James Harden had 16 points and 13 assists but was just 5 of 16 from the field and missed all six of his three-pointers as LA was eliminated in the first round for the second consecutive season.
Irving, Dončić’s co-star added at the trade deadline last year for the kind of playoff run the Mavs hope they just started, gave Dallas its biggest lead with a flashy four-point play when he hit a leaning 3-pointer as he was bumped by PJ Tucker and made the free throw for a 106-82 lead.
The Clippers answered with an 11-2 run to get within 13 but never seriously threatened a big comeback in the final minutes.
The Mavs broke a 52-52 halftime tie by outscoring the Clippers 35-20 in the third quarter – the same quarter that fueled the Game 5 win in Los Angeles for a chance to clinch – and pushed the lead to 20 early in the fourth.
Dončić, who also has dealt with illness in addition to a sore knee, started 0 of 7 from three-point range to drop below 25% for the series but made his first try of the second half to start the third-quarter surge.
The NBA scoring champion was 9 of 26 from the field and just 1 of 10 from 3 while going 9 of 11 on free throws. Irving was 10 of 13 from the field after halftime.
Norman Powell scored 20 for the Clippers, and Ivica Zubac had 17 points and 11 rebounds.
PJ Washington scored 14 points with some big three-pointers for the Mavs, going 4 of 8 from deep, and Daniel Gafford had 13 points with several emphatic buckets down low.
Dallas’ Maxi Kleber didn’t return after spraining his right shoulder when he took a hard fall on a blocking foul against Amir Coffey on a drive in the first minute of the second quarter.
Kleber, whose three-point shooting was a boost for Dallas in the series, returned to shoot free throws, making one of two before leaving at the next dead ball.
