The Los Angeles Clippers finally had a season where they were healthy and playing well going into the playoffs, seemingly with a chance to make a deep run and compete for a championship. Unfortunately for Tyronn Lue and company, the No. 5 seed in the west still crashed out in the first round with an embarrassing 120-101 loss in Game 7 against the Denver Nuggets on Saturday.

The Clippers seemed to have all of the momentum coming into Game 7 after a very impressive win back at home in Game 6, but that all quickly evaporated on Saturday. The Nuggets took an 11-point lead at halftime before exploding on a 24-4 run in the third quarter to blow the game open. By the halfway point of the fourth, Lue had already pulled the plug and emptied his bench.

As he has become known to do, James Harden had another underwhelming game in the biggest game of his season. After the loss, Harden left the arena without talking to the media, according to Joey Linn of Sports Illustrated.

“No postgame media for James Harden again. Just left the arena,” Linn reported on X, formerly Twitter. “He didn’t talk after the last three Clippers’ losses.”

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Harden played 35 minutes in the loss, but managed just seven points on 2-for-8 shooting. He did have 13 assists and was able to set his teammates up nicely in the first half, but his lack of a scoring punch eventually proved to be too much for the Clippers to overcome.

The Nuggets threw a lot of defensive looks at Harden in Game 7, showing him multiple bodies in the first half before bogging down the Los Angeles offense in the second half with a zone changeup on that end.

The Nuggets will now move on to face the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in the next round while the Clippers are left looking at what went wrong in another postseason. In the past, health has been the primary culprit, but it's a more complicated dilemma in 2025. Los Angeles had the momentum and had Kawhi Leonard and Ivica Zubac playing great basketball. However, Harden let them down again in another massive game at the end of a series.