DALLAS — The Dallas Mavericks climbed the mountain, and then the ropes failed at the most anticlimactic moment. Their comeback from a 31-point deficit to a one-point lead with 2:15 remaining in the game meant nothing. They summited, but didn’t finish.

Dallas’ first-round series against the LA Clippers is now tied 2-2 after Sunday’s 116-111 defeat. The climb begins anew in Los Angeles in Wednesday’s Game 5.

“We knew from that point (the 31-point deficit) we had to play almost perfect, (that) we dug ourselves in a hole,” Kyrie Irving said. “I guess we needed to go through it a second time as a team.”

Irving was referencing the way Game 4 mirrored Game 1. In both games, with Clippers star Kawhi Leonard sitting out due to right knee inflammation, the Mavericks’ offense broke down early and buried them with an enormous debt the team couldn’t overcome. In Game 1, Dallas’ more respectable second half still never brought the game close enough to create panic.

This game, though, was within reach. It was there. Dallas led. And then it didn’t. It was another defeat despite expending so much energy.

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There’s an idea that the outcome would have been different had the team not closed with Maxi Kleber as the center. It was Kleber who became the team’s lone big at the 10:09 mark of the fourth quarter with Dallas trailing by seven. He was still on the floor when Dallas went ahead with 2:15 minutes remaining, an eight-point swing in Dallas’ favor that finally erased the Clippers’ lead for the first and only time all night.

The 32-year-old Kleber has closed every competitive game between these two teams, and he finished many of the team’s tightest contests down the stretch of the regular season. He’s a floor-spacing big who sometimes sits out beyond the 3-point line despite errant shot making and clearly doesn’t offer the same interior physicality as rookie center Dereck Lively II or trade-deadline acquisition Daniel Gafford.

That said, Dallas has had success with Kleber playing the five next to P.J. Washington. Lineups with Kleber and Washington but without traditional centers were plus-24.3 points per 100 possessions in the regular season across 428 possessions, per Cleaning the Glass. In 72 possessions this series, those same groups are plus-43.6 per 100 possessions.

James Harden ended Dallas’ comeback, hitting six floaters in the fourth quarter against coverages meant to allow those shots. It’s debatable how contested those shots were, but watching those six makes makes it clear they were not all easy.

“When Harden is taking 2s, that’s better than his stepback 3,” Mavericks coach Jason Kidd said. “You have to give up something, they’re talented. We gave up the 2s, contested 2s, and they made them.”

Paul George and James Harden stepped up in a big way for the @LAClippers in Game 4 to even the series at 2-2!

Paul George: 33 PTS | 8 AST | 6 REB | 4 STL | 7 3PM
James Harden: 33 PTS | 7 AST | 6 REB | 4 3PM#NBAPlayoffs presented by Google Pixel pic.twitter.com/QQJKc9jqWW

— NBA (@NBA) April 28, 2024

Harden has a wretched postseason reputation, and even his overlooked performances hardly make up for the games in which he’s shrunk. Historically, one valid criticism of his game has been his unwillingness to operate in the midrange, something far more necessary in the space-contested playoffs than the more analytics-driven regular season. To that point, Harden shot just 43 floaters this season while making 28 percent, according to Second Spectrum.

As the fourth quarter progressed, Dallas tempted him into that shot. The first, which came just under 10 minutes into the frame, was on a fast break after Irving had tumbled into the baseline after a missed layup. Harden’s next one came at the 4:39 mark, when Luka Dončić did an admirable job defending him despite five fouls and forced him into a weaving shot 10 feet from the rim that he splashed home.

Here’s the third such shot from Harden, which is more exemplary of the team’s issues defending it:

The play-by-play clocked this one at 7 feet, and it came from a straight-line drive where Harden banked the shot it over Kleber. Dončić and his foul trouble offered little resistance. Kleber, though he made the rotation to contest Harden directly at the rim, waited to jump until the last minute. Kleber said that was a choice the team had made.

“In that moment, obviously, it’s an advantage for the offense, a disadvantage for the defense, (us playing) percentages,” he said. “Stepping up earlier, that (would result in) a lob dunk, which is obviously easier than a floater.”

Harden made three more shots that stalled Dallas’ climb up the mountain. The next one came against a Kleber switch, the following two against Washington. Each time, the Mavericks gave driving lanes to Harden to prevent 3s. Each time, he punished them anyway.

“There were different ideas of what to do, but we decided to go one-on-one, no 3s,” Kleber said.

It just didn’t work.

That idea that Kleber cost Dallas this game, which is much more about Kidd’s lineup decisions than Kleber himself, might be right. It’s impossible to know what Gafford or Lively might have done in this situation. Those centers, with their size, might have committed earlier or bothered Harden more. They might have forced kick passes to the corners, making Terance Mann the player tasked with hitting pivotal 3s. He might’ve made those just like Harden made his, or he might’ve missed. All we know is Harden didn’t miss, and Dallas lost.

A more pertinent coaching decision to examine is Kidd’s choice to have the team overplay Harden’s 3s. On each of the final three floaters he hit, it was clear Kleber and Washington provided Harden driving lanes to tempt him into challenging help defenders. The Mavericks clearly hadn’t been bothered by Clippers’ practice footage from Saturday that showed Harden working on the exact floater he eventually used to defeat Dallas. Even though Dallas limited LA to a paltry 9-of-18 at the rim, it was still extinguished by the Clippers’ 15-of-27 mark from the short midrange.

James Harden in Float School. A rim protector deterrent for paint scorers pic.twitter.com/lPj0ExmDuv

— Law Murray 🐦‍🔥 (@LawMurrayTheNU) April 27, 2024

Dallas lost this game far before the fourth quarter. The team’s 31-point deficit bled into every subsequent decision, even ones that can be debated rigorously, if not with certainty. Gafford or Lively certainly would have changed the game’s dynamics and, possibly, its result in the final minutes, but it was still the lineup with Kleber at the five that gave Dallas the lead in the first place. The 31-point hole made it necessary to play Dončić 45 minutes despite knee soreness, which clearly affected him throughout Sunday’s game.

The Mavericks’ trade-deadline acquisitions of Washington and Gafford represented a doubling down on defense and physicality. In Friday’s Game 3 win, those traits stood out. But those emphases have conceded shooting and spacing, making the offense fully reliant on Dončić’s and Irving’s ability to score and create advantages. Irving did his part Sunday, scoring 40 points on 14-of-25 shooting. Dončić did not.

“I feel like I’m letting him down,” Dončić said afterward. “I’ve got to be there, I’ve got to help him more.”

While Dončić has labored through obvious knee discomfort since a Game 3 collision, he has been poorer than his standards in all four games. (He shined defensively in Games 2 and 3, but it must be noted Game 4 was a letdown in that regard.) This is a player who entered this postseason with a scoring average second to only Michael Jordan. But while Dončić has averaged 29 points, he’s done so shooting 38.6 percent from the field and just 26.5 percent behind the arc.

Dončić is the primary reason Dallas won 50 games and closed the season with 24 victories in 33 tries. He’s the defensive nightmare that made Dallas comfortable doubling down on players who defended much better than they created shots. Without Game 4’s emotional highs and lows, without the failed comeback and the tied series it represents, it’d be easier to chalk off Sunday’s game to unrepeatable shooting variance. The Clippers, after all, hit 18 of their 29 3s to go along with what could be called an overperformance on non-rim paint shots.

But the postseason is not kind. Dončić’s 3-pointer has abandoned him, an enormous departure from a season in which he was the league’s best high-volume shooter not named Stephen Curry. That’s made it easier for the Clippers to guard his pick-and-rolls. He’s begun too many games without physicality and force, which Kidd has identified as one of the team’s problems even without naming him specifically. As was the case in Game 1, Dončić took until the second half to bully defenders who switched onto him or exploit the Clippers’ centers hanging back.

“We’re always critical of him,” Irving said. “And I think he’s always critical of himself.”

These are the realities of being one of the league’s very best players. Franchises build rosters and game plans around expectations created by their own excellence. Dončić hasn’t lived up to them in this series, and Dallas is struggling to overcome that.

Still, there is no single culprit for Dallas’ failures this series, one tied at 2-2 despite the absence of the Clippers’ best player in Dallas’ two defeats. Kidd failed to adjust to a first half on Sunday that played out in a suspiciously similar way to this series’ first one. Even Irving, who said he is “always hypercritical” of himself on the basketball court, was not perfect. While Irving was the main reason Dallas even came back into the game, he didn’t start scoring until the second quarter was halfway gone.

“I definitely can be better as one of the leaders of the team,” he said. “To come out and make my imprint felt a little bit earlier.”

As far as failure goes, though, this is a manageable one. It’s a tied series, and two more wins right all wrongs. How Dallas gets there doesn’t matter so much as actually doing it. But however that must happen for Dallas, it must start now.

Required reading

(Top photo; Tim Warner / Getty Images)