DALLAS —
For 39 minutes, everything teetered.
This first-round playoff series. The Clippers’ window of championship opportunity. When the 18,324 inside American Airlines Center were at their loudest Friday night, whacking together team-provided noisemakers and swinging white towels, it felt like even the red-brick building itself shook.
The Clippers had led Game 6 by five points, only to trail Dallas by nine. Los Angeles made inexplicable mistakes. Its stars had struggled to create shots against Dallas’ 2-3 zone. Then Kawhi Leonard scored 15 consecutive points to end the third quarter.
This game, a close-out opportunity for the Mavericks, became the series itself, with neither team capable of grabbing hold of its opportunities to wrest away control.