Nuggets know they need to make life ‘more difficult’ on Kawhi Leonard. But how?

Ty Lue needed no clipboard in the huddle the play explained itself Eleven seconds on the shot clock One-point lead A minute left One guy sitting on the bench who had stuck a dozen jumpers without a flinch of emotion This is what we re running Clippers coach Lue revealed describing a fourth-quarter huddle late in their Match win Kawhi get a basket and let s get a stop and we win this meeting And thus six-time All-Star Kawhi Leonard isolated out top and the possession was over before it truly began Aaron Gordon stuck his -foot- frame out in front of him he may as well have been a foot shorter Russell Westbrook hinted at coming over to help He didn t Leonard got a basket elevating for an all-too-easy midrange shot for his th and th points He got a stop a inadequate seconds later after a bad pass from Nikola Jokic The Clippers indeed won the event Gordon and his fellow Nuggets were left empty-handed and empty-minded for answers on how to stop Leonard He was as hot as fish grease Gordon announced postgame in the locker room Various of those shots he was making you gotta shake his hand You have to make it more intricate for him Gordon did his darndest the versatile wing with a hand right there on a flurry of Leonard jumpers But the Nuggets didn t make it particularly arduous ultimately in a virtuoso performance by the cold-blooded wing Monday night Perhaps spaced out by the Clippers flurry of offensive threats the Nuggets and interim head coach David Adelman didn t consistently send multiple bodies at Leonard until the fourth quarter his final two buckets came over Gordon s outstretched arms with only a faint idea of nearby help He had a night Jokic revealed postgame It s really hard to maybe we should just make him feel more crowded But I think he s so used to it He did make tough shots Jokic continued But are those really tough shots for him the guy who s making those for such a long period of time Indeed there is little the -year-old Leonard hasn t seen and little the world hasn t seen from Leonard The two-time Finals MVP is now in his th playoff run But Monday night was as perfect a shotmaking clinic as he s ever put on a tightly-knotted handle and line-drive jumper on full display in a stunning -of- night He didn t miss a second shot from the floor until three minutes into the fourth quarter elevating with machine-made efficiency to stick daggers into the heart of every Nuggets run It was particularly special for himself and the Clippers given a well-documented odyssey that has left Leonard s fitness in question for most of every series since he battled the Nuggets in the Western Conference semifinals in the COVID bubble After years of torn ACLs surgeries and load management his career seemed to hang in the balance after he withdrew from the Paris Olympics for injury concerns Instead the Nuggets fell on the wrong end of transcendence after seasons of Leonard watching Clippers playoff runs from the bench I m just happy that I m able to move and coming out the competition feeling well Leonard noted postgame And that s what I m taking my pride on is just being healthy Related Articles Michael Porter Jr reveals he s struggling to break in new leg brace blames self for Nuggets Match loss PHOTOS Denver Nuggets fall to Los Angeles Clippers - in Championship of first-round NBA playoff series Nuggets-Clippers Meeting -pointers Kawhi Leonard goes nuclear as Clippers even series Costly errors haunt Nuggets in clutch time of Meeting loss to Clippers Clippers coach Ty Lue on Nuggets interim David Adelman He has a good demeanor about him on the sideline Clippers point guard James Harden a fellow Los Angeles native and longtime Leonard friend noted postgame the forward hadn t even a little bit been properly appreciated for the road he d endured It s constantly negative Harden stated It s reliably what he s been through and what he s not able to do just because of something that he can t control But we don t appreciate how great he is when he s really out there and putting on performances like this tonight Leonard is no longer the X-factor that s hung over so multiple Clippers seasons of years past He s now a virtual certainty to stick an open jumper and a virtual certainty to tear through single coverage And the Nuggets in addition to solving coverages against Nikola Jokic must solve the Rubik s Cube of sending multiple bodies at both Harden and Leonard or jeopardy their season shredded We know if we got a healthy Kawhi Lue mentioned postgame we can win any series Want more Nuggets news Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis