Dallas played on fire down the stretch in the regular season with the Duo of Doncic and Irving. Their offense started to gel and become dangerous versus opponents and they tightened up on their defense and made the right trades to shore up their defense at the trade deadline. Dallas are also much better down low and it will be harder for the Clippers to score down low on them. They have improved in all aspects of the game making them a very competitive team in this series. Dallas should also get back Lively and Hardaway Jr in this game, while Kawhi is downgraded with a knee injury and it doesn’t sound like he will play, which will affect their offensive output in this game. That leaves the team with a big hole because Kawhi’s history in the playoffs has been legendary. Harden will play, but he won’t be 100% due to his injury. The Clippers won two of their three games this season, with the Mavericks winning the in-season play-in game. Those games don’t, however, reflect the new and improved Maverick’s team that finished the regular season winning 16 out of their last 19 games, and went 16-4 against the spread versus opponents in their last 20 games. The Clippers started to fade towards the end of the season, only covering two of eleven games at home and covering one game out of their last five games of the season. Without key players for the Clippers, this game might be a tall task for them at home where they haven’t done well. Dallas has played well enough to be in a position to steal a road game here in this spot, thus evening out the home advantage in the series.

Best bet: lay the points with Dallas.