After a loss like this, it can difficult to keep your head on straight and analyze. But let’s be honest, this is who we thought the Clippers were. A strong defensive team with multiple offensive weapons. The perfect candidate to be a hellacious matchup for the Mavericks. Dallas looked strong though four games, winning two. This game, without their starting center and second star, their weakness showed. Those became obvious from the jump.

When a team gets beat this bad, there’s not much to say. So we’re keeping it short with just one stat to know after the Mavericks 154-111 loss to the Clippers Tuesday night.

32-6: The Clippers early run

The Mavericks started this game strong, opening with a 16-9 lead. Almost immediately, Kawhi Leonard began to make everything he shot. The Clippers looked incredibly sharp, not missing for over five minutes. The Mavericks lacked any kind of offensive explosion or defensive resistance. There was a noticeable blank from Trey Burke, who has become one of the team’s most reliable scoring options. Luka Doncic played all 12 minutes, but just didn’t look right. He didn’t look any more hampered from Game 4 to Game 5, but maybe that ankle was still pretty tight coming into tonight’s game.

At one point during the run, the Clippers scored 24 points in four minutes and three seconds. That’s a lot of points in not a lot of time! It’s rare to see a team score 24 points in four minutes in a NBA game, let alone a playoff game. It was an avalanche.

The Mavericks did everything they could to slow it down, but 15 first quarter points from Leonard set the tone for the rest of the game. That in addition to Paul George breaking out of his playoff rut was simply too much for the Mavericks to handle tonight.

Here’s the postgame podcast, Mavs Moneyball After Dark. If you can’t see the embed below “More from Mavs Moneyball”, click here. And if you haven’t yet, subscribe by searching “Mavs Moneyball podcast” into your favorite podcast app.