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The Los Angeles Clippers beat the Denver Nuggets 111-105 at the Intuit Dome to level their series 3-3 and force a decisive game seven in Denver on Saturday. A nip-and-tuck contest hinged on a huge third quarter by the Clippers, who outscored Denver 32-22 to open up a double-digit lead, which stretched to 15 points with just under six minutes remaining.
Denver rallied to cut the gap to just five points with less than a minute remaining, but the Clippers held firm to set up Saturday's decider. "It was win or go home - and we didn't want to go home," Clippers star Harden said. "We've got one more game in a couple of days. We've got to be better. Still a lot of mental mistakes, still a lot of execution that we can get better at. But we've got to go out there and take it."
Denver interim head coach David Adelman pinpointed the third quarter as the moment the game swung away from his team. "We got sped up, we didn't handle it - we played defense but we never could come up with the 50-50 ball. That quarter absolutely killed us," Adelman said. "We played a really good fourth quarter, but we've got to be better throughout the whole game." Nikola Jokic led Denver with 25 points while Jamal Murray finished with 21 points, eight rebounds and eight assists.
