Nuggets vs. Clippers: Everything you need to know about the 2025 NBA playoff battle

The Denver Nuggets begin their 2025 playoff journey with a matchup against the surging Los Angeles Clippers, a bout full of the league’s biggest names and one of contrasting styles.

The Nuggets are appearing in the playoffs for a seventh straight year and are riding a three-game win streak heading into the postseason. This is the third time the Nuggets have met the Clippers in the playoffs, with the last matchup coming in the second round of the bubble back in 2020. Then, Denver infamously overcame a 3-1 series deficit to beat Los Angeles in seven games, earning a trip to the Western Conference Finals. The only other meeting was in the first round of the 2006 playoffs, when the Clippers won their first-ever playoff series since moving to California in the 1970s.

A lot has changed from the bubble. Only a few players remain on both of these teams five years after that series, and both coaches are different, too. The Nuggets’ big changes came last week when they fired Michael Malone and Calvin Booth following a four-game skid. Interim coach David Adelman pushed the Nuggets to three wins in a row to end the season, deadlocking the team with the Clippers at 50 wins. But the series is hosted by Denver due to a bizarre quirk of the NBA Cup, where Denver got to host Los Angeles thrice this season, and thus, the Nuggets won that tiebreaker by winning three of the four contests.

Amir Coffey, Kawhi Leonard and Ivica Zubac are the only three Clippers remaining on the roster from the bubble. They brought Tyronn Lue in to coach the team that summer, and he immediately took them to the 2021 West Finals. But injuries to Leonard halted their run and have kept them down, they have not won a playoff series since that season. The last 18 months have brought big changes to their roster, where James Harden has taken over as the co-star for Paul George. And they added star Serbian shooter Bogdan Bogdanovic for some scoring pop.

It all sets up a duel full of stars that Las Vegas calls a pick ’em.

Summary of the Clippers

Los Angeles is led by the rarely-healthy Leonard, who has played in 20 of the team’s last 24 games, but he’s only played 36 on the season. The Clippers went 50-32 overall, just like the Nuggets, but were a hot 18-6 in this recent stretch of mostly available Leonard games. Unlike the Nuggets, the Clippers went 19-9 after the All-Star Break, while the Nuggets struggled at 14-13.

The Clippers earned the fifth seed thanks to their hot second half, where over the last 15 games, they’ve been the best team in the NBA with a +15 NET rating — meaning they’ve out-played their foes by 15 points every 100 possessions over the last 15 games. Denver’s +1 NET rating was just 18th in the league.

Los Angeles has steadily gotten better as the season has progressed, getting near All-Star level play from Norman Powell while Ivica Zubac has made a late-career jump into being one of the very best centers in the league. The two have played off Harden very well, who is more apt to play a role on this team than to be the entire system as he has been in the past.

The season-long success is built on defense, which is third-best in the league at 109.4 points allowed per 100 possessions. Lue has gotten the defensive jump thanks to legendary former head coach Jeff Van Gundy joining the staff before the year to serve as the team’s defensive coordinator. The stopping is led by bargain-bin pickup Kris Dunn, who changed the course of his career and became a starter on this Clippers group thanks to his efforts on defense. Zubac has also blossomed into one of the best seven-foot-tall defenders in the NBA. On top of that, they have the two-time Defensive Player of the Year and seven-time All-Defensive Team member Leonard back in action. The Claw might not be what he once was on defense, striking fear into prime LeBron James, but he’s started moving really well recently. Los Angeles boasts a two-time All-Defensive Team member in Ben Simmons, another cheap pickup, coming off the bench, as well as the ever-versatile Nicolas Batum, who has given the Nuggets issues in the past. So the Clippers’ defense is very real.

But look out for Leonard on the injury report every night because he hasn’t made it through a playoff series healthy since 2021.

Clippers Projected Starting Five

G: James Harden
G: Kris Dunn
G: Norman Powell
F: Kawhi Leonard
C: Ivica Zubac

Stars of the Clippers

Kawhi Leonard, forward, 6-7, 37 GP, 21.5 PPG, 5.9 RPG, 3.1 APG, 49.8% FG/41.1% 3FG/81% FT
James Harden, guard, 6-5, 79 GP, 22.1 PPG, 5.8 RPG, 8.7 APG, 41% FG/35.2% 3FG/87.4% FT

A slam dunk future Hall of Famer, the last time Leonard was healthy for his team’s final postseason game of the year, his bubble was burst by the Nuggets. The 2014 and 2019 Finals MVP will likely be out for a bit of revenge on his New Balance teammate, Jamal Murray and his Nuggets.

Leonard missed April last season and tried to come back for the playoffs, but his efforts were limited to two games before getting hurt. That injury cost the Clippers a playoff run and then Leonard his spot on Team USA. The issues bled into the start of this season with an unknown if The Claw was ever coming back; he finally did in early January, joining a Clippers group that was playing above their lowered expectations. The infusion of the six-time All-NBA player boosted Los Angeles up the West standings. Leonard is as lethal as they come in the midrange, and his three-point shooting has improved since the teams’ last meeting in the playoffs. He doesn’t get to the rim or draw fouls at the rate he did when he was playing for the Spurs about 10 years ago, but the fact that he shoots just a hair under 50% from 10-16 feet makes his jump shot about as close to a guarantee as possible. Leonard’s offense is more of a promise, even if Aaron Gordon has historically been good at slowing him down a bit. Where the unknown is for the Clippers is Leonard’s defense. Once the best stopper in the league, who will he match up with? How spry is he? How much effort can he put in on that end? If the 33-year-old fun guy turns back the clock on both sides of the ball, the Nuggets are in trouble.

Oh, and where Jokic is No. 1 in NBA history in win shares per 48 minutes, Leonard is 14th best, and Harden is 16th.

The last time Harden played the Nuggets in the playoffs was in 2011 when he was just 21 years old. Denver’s leading scorer in that five-game loss was Ty Lawson. Harden has been around for a while, and his next postseason game will be his 167th, but he’s famous for his failures this time of year. His teams haven’t made a run since his Rockets crashed out of the 2018 playoffs, losing a Game 7 to the top-dog Warriors by missing 27-straight threes. Yet this isn’t the Harden folks will get their hahas off on if Leonard is healthy. He’s more of a sidekick for this group — a key cog — rather than the heliocentric entity that he was when he won an MVP. He’ll be dishing it out to Leonard, Zubac and Powell while at times creating for himself mostly from behind the arc as his rate of getting to the rim and line has dropped quite a bit in the last few years. And yet Harden is still getting off nearly nine threes, seven free throws a night while shooting 10% of his shots at the rim. Harden is a bit more likely to pull up for a midrange shot or floater than he was in the past, and he’s far less likely to dunk it. Those numbers are still all very good, displaying the monster he was at his peak. And for any talk of him being lesser — well, he was still 20th in the league in points per game, fifth in assists per game, while being eighth in total steals this season among qualified players.

Series X-factor for the Clippers: Ivica Zubac

Going from the team’s fifth starter to possibly the team’s best and most consistent player year over year, few players made a bigger improvement this season than the 28-year-old. The seven-footer played 79 games, scoring 16.8 points and snagging 12.6 rebounds a contest. Zubac was a double-double machine, tying Jokic for second-best in the NBA this season with 59. Since the All-Star Break, Zubac has collected a double-double in every Clippers game but two.

Not only did Zubac play almost every game this season he also stayed on the court for 33 minutes a night. For being one of the better defenders in the league in the paint, he rarely fouls. He was only disqualified from games twice, never having another contest this season where he even picked up a fifth foul.

Speaking of Jokic and defense, over the last two years, Jokic has averaged 29 points, 13 rebounds and eight assists against the Clippers, but has posted lower shooting marks (45.7%) against them than any other team in the league. Jokic has particularly taken a step back against the Clippers inside the arc, and it’s Zubac specifically that has held him to 38.3% shooting on 73 attempts. That’s Jokic’s lowest shooting percentage against any player in the league he’s taken at least 30 shots against.

Zubac will be right on the edge of making an All-NBA team this season, and the best thing he does is clear the glass, leading the league in total offensive and total defensive rebounds this season.

The Clippers went from being a +2.1 last season when Zubac was on the floor to 13.9 in 2024-25. Maybe it’s a new year, so it’s a new Zu, but he’s not had a strong 45-game playoff career thus far.

The Nuggets will have to run him around, draw him away from the rim with Jokic’s improved shooting, and then get action moving behind the Clippers’ big man.

Nuggets Projected Starting Five

G: Jamal Murray
G: Christian Braun
F: Michael Porter Jr.
F: Aaron Gordon
C: Nikola Jokic

Series X-factor for the Nuggets: Christian Braun

While the Clippers are a sound defense, they will likely have to put either Powell or Harden on Braun, which will lead to all sorts of cuts. Harden is actually decent at guarding post-ups since he’s pretty hefty, but he can lose the plot on defense and isn’t as fleet as Braun is, which should lead to all sorts of cuts. And if it’s not Harden, Braun can feast backdoor on Powell, too. Braun scored 2.4 points a game this season on cuts, which is really good for a guard. Then there’s Braun’s 6.2 a game in transition, which is top five in the league. The Clippers do not play fast, and that was true of the Nuggets until this season, where Braun has added more of that uptempo option. At the very least, Braun’s speed and ability to get to the rim off the ball will make himself enough of a threat to force cross-matches as Denver comes up the floor. At best, Braun could score upwards of 16 points a night, a mark he’s averaged since the All-Star Break.

Braun will also be the Nuggets’ most important defender as he’ll have to put out either Powell or Harden. Powell did incredible against the Nuggets in the team’s four games, scoring 27.8 points a night on a wild 70% true shooting. The Clippers’ 135 offensive rating with him out there against Denver was his best mark against anyone he played more than one game against. But Denver did hand the Clippers his worst defensive rating of 123, indicating Braun’s work on offense. He’ll need to be a two-way player in this series with a focus on getting over screens, especially against Harden, whom he is more likely to mainly guard. Braun will need to not foul. Harden drew the third-most shooting fouls in the NBA this past season, and Braun is the Nuggets’ only real option at the point of attack. Braun only committed 92 shooting fouls this season, which isn’t too bad given his nightly matchups, but MPJ also committed 92 against less good weapons. Even worse was Julian Strawther’s 87 shooting fouls committed because he played about half the minutes as Braun and Porter. It’s one of the many stats that show the world of hurt Denver could be in when Braun is off the floor. The good news for Nuggets fans is that Braun has gotten much better on defense, specifically at screen navigating, as the year went along, and he took on much more leadership on that end. Conversely, Powell has gotten a lot worse as the season went along, the Nuggets just haven’t faced him in months, so the stats show when this matchup was different.

What to expect from Nikola Jokic

Jokic became the third player ever to average a triple-double for a season, finishing with marks of 29.6 points, 12.7 rebounds and 10.3 assists per game. Somehow, the three-time MVP got even better in 2024-25, responsible for 56 points per game, the highest mark in the NBA, meaning 46% of Denver’s points this season, the fourth-best offense, was because of Jokic. If you count just when the big man was on the floor, the Nuggets had the best offense in NBA history this year.

Jokic is the only player to ever place in the top 10 in all of points, rebounds and assists, finishing in the top three with all marks while leading the NBA in steals a night.

Jokic is gonna cook, that’s what he does. He’s the best in the NBA at scoring and diming from both the post and elbows. But he hasn’t really gone to the post this year against the Clippers, indicating that he may be saving something or still has not yet solved Zubac. But Jokic eventually figures it out against anyone, especially a fellow Balkan boy whom he’s seen a lot of in his career.

Jokic will draw Zu out, he had the best three-point season of his career at 41.7% — only brought down by the fact that he took 22 shots from beyond half court and still somehow made two of them. When at a distance, Jokic was the fifth-best spot-up shooter in the league this season and was second-best at all three-point shots from above the break, which will make some switches of Denver’s pick-and-pop game a must. And that opens up some screening angles and cuts, where Jokic led the league in screen assists and threw the second-most assists to rim shots while diming out a league-best mark in hockey assists. If they guard all of that, Jokic can then just take a smaller defender into the post where, again, he led the league in scoring.

How Jokic defends will be interesting because he hasn’t always had the energy to effort at that end during the regular season. That normally changes in the playoffs, where he gets active at the level of the screen, using his amazing hands to deflect and steal passes. This covers up some of his rim protection issues, as the Nuggets use MPJ and Gordon to rotate down. It wouldn’t be a shock to see the Clippers try to get Jokic isolated on Harden, though this will be hard to do when Zu is in the game since he’s not a shooter.

Jokic against Zubac on the glass will be fascinating as it matches up two of the league’s best rebounders. Zubac was second in the league with 5.9 contested rebounds snagged a game to Jokic’s 5.4 in fourth place. Windexing will be huge for both teams’ defenses since Zubac and Jokic were also fourth and fifth in the league in second-chance points per game this season.

How the Nuggets can beat the Clippers

The Nuggets got back to working the Murray-Jokic two-man game in one of Adelman’s first nights on the job. Spacing and shooting around this will be key against the disciplined Clippers’ defense. Jokic’s supercomputer brain will have to force Los Angeles into taking risks on defense that they normally do not undertake. Kawhi is not likely to be guarding either of these players, which means he may have to help off Porter or Gordon. Whoever isn’t being defended by Kawhi or is getting helped off of will have to make themselves a threat. Porter shot 40% from three this season while Gordon boosted his mark all the way up to 43.6%. AG’s shooting improvements have been so drastic that he’s actually the first player in league history to shoot at least 10% better from both deep and the line in the same season. AG will need to keep making shots and pressure the rim more like he did a season ago, when 11% more of his attempts were dunks. Gordon won’t be the only rim attacker needed as CB will need to join the fun, and so too will sixth-man Russell Westbrook, who added a 43% corner three shot to his already downhill game.

On defense, the Nuggets will face the team that runs the most isolation in the league. This is a dream for Denver, who mostly plays decent 1-on-1 defense but struggles when the ball starts moving, as the team has to rotate around. This style of play may lead to some more minutes for Peyton Watson, who was basically a non-factor for the Nuggets in Round 2 against the Wolves last season—one of the many arguments Malone and Booth had before getting fired. Their iso-heavy offense generates the fewest catch-and-shoot threes per game and results in a ton of midrange attempts. It’s something the Nuggets faced before in 2023 against the Suns when Malone adapted the strategy of ‘tough twos will not beat us throughout a series.’ Will Adelman be able to stick to similar guns? In one of the three games he coached, the Nuggets faced off with the midrange reliant Kings, where the coach outlined his thoughts about scorers DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine, “the guys stuck with it, there wasn’t second guessing about staying in single coverage when Zach got — you hope that over the 48 minutes it will work out for you in the end.” It’ll be the Nuggets’ goal to keep those shots from more in that 10-foot range than in the paint, where the Clippers took the third-most shots this season, if you exclude the restricted area, indicating their floater-heavy and short-shot seeking tendency. Another break for the Nuggets defense is that the Clippers shoot the fifth fewest threes from the corner a game. That’s something the Nuggets allow at the sixth-worst rate in the league, as that’s where Denver’s defense seems to collapse.

The Clippers are the best defensive rebounding team by percentage in the league; they snagged the most rebounds in the NBA this season, and this series may come down to winning the war of the glass.

Stat of the series

The Nuggets went 25-9 this season when outrebounding their opponent by at least five. The Clippers went 5-11 in games they lost the board-count by five or more.

Another few things you should know about Nuggets vs Clippers

The tipping point over Carmelo Anthony leaving the Nuggets is when Dahntay Jones left for the Pacers because ownership didn’t want to outspend Indy. He’s been a Clippers assistant coach since 2020, far longer than his one-year run in Denver.

A more memorable member of the Nuggets is Brian Shaw, the team’s last head coach before Malone. Shaw led the Nuggets to a 56-85 record in his less than two years at the helm. He’s bounced between Los Angeles teams as an assistant coach since his 2015 sacking.

The Clippers’ connections with the Nuggets are a bit more noteworthy with DeAndre Jordan being one of the best players in franchise history, holding several big club records, like for games played and rebounds. DJ left the Clips back in 2018, and he’s been on the Nuggets bench the last three seasons, where he’s played an ever-increasing amount recently as he got another look as the backup center. He should get some minutes in this series.

Getting way more minutes with a big Clippers connection is Russell Westbrook, who played for the team last year. The former MVP guard was noted for having a very positive impact on the 2023 team when he joined. But he wasn’t able to make it work in 2023-24 despite being one of four sure-fire Hall of Famers on the roster. His success kept waning, ending with a brutal playoff series against Dallas, where he was taken off the court at the end. He’ll be looking for revenge on the team that got rid of him after his 26% shooting in the postseason last spring.

Jokic was just a youngster in the Olympics for Serbia the first time Nicolas Batum first faced him. The two have had some good battles, with Batum being the prototype power forward to put on Jokic with a center helping behind. This allows teams to run “The Jokic Rules.” But Batum comes into the series with a groin injury. The 36-year-old is playing in the fewest minutes per game of his career and his numbers besides three-point shooting are all down. He’s a killer from deep, but he may no longer have any real impact on slowing Jokic like he has in the past.

Another backup Clipper is Drew Eubanks, who is their only real size on the roster behind Zu. Eu is a noteworthy flopper that Jokic has mocked in the past.

Going back to the Serbian national team, Jokic just won a bronze in Paris this summer with the help of Bogdan Bogdanovic. He was the second-leading scorer for the Serbian team at 18.3 a game during the Olympics, but Bogi has not had a great year, which is one of the reasons why he was dealt from Atlanta midseason. He gives the Clippers one of Joker’s best friends and a scoring punch off the bench, getting 11.4 points a game in 25 minutes a night on 43% shooting from deep.

The Nuggets’ 31 assists per game is the third-highest assist average in NBA history. They also averaged 58.5 points in the painted area. That’s the most paint points a team has averaged since the NBA began publicly tracking this data in 1996-97. While Denver pounded the paint to success, look for the Clippers to snatch some of those passes as they led the league in steals.

Where the Nuggets have had the best core in every series they’ve played in the past few seasons, the Clippers’ four-man lineup with their two stars, big and Derrick Jones Jr., has a NET rating of +15.3, which is better than Denver’s best four-man look.

Jalen Pickett led the entire league in defensive field goal percentage at 38.6% — opponents shot 7% worse than expected against Pickett. Look for him to get some minutes over Strawther in this series.

Murray shot a horrid 51% true shooting against Dunn, but that was early in the season when the Blue Arrow was struggling.

The first playoff game in the history of the Intuit Dome will be played on April 24 in Game 3 of this series.

Schedule of the series

April 19: Game 1, 1:30 p.m. (ESPN), Denver
April 21: Game 2, 8 p.m. (TNT), Denver
April 24: Game 3, 8 p.m. (NBATV), Inglewood
April 26: Game 4, 4 p.m. (TNT), Inglewood
April 29: Game 5, TBD (TBD), Denver *
May 1: Game 6, TBD (TBD), Inglewood*
May 3: Game 7, TBD (TBD), Denver *

Series odds

-118 Los Angeles, +100 Denver