There’s no mer­cy in the NBA play­offs. No sym­pa­thy, either.

Against a belea­guered Nuggets squad, the Clip­pers sent an unam­bigu­ous mes­sage in Thursday’s Game 1 of the West­ern Con­fer­ence semi­fi­nals: Los Ange­les is a dif­fer­ent kind of beast.

Well-rest­ed and hun­gry, the Clip­pers pound­ed the Nuggets, 120–97, dom­i­nat­ing the phys­i­cal aspects of their sec­ond-round open­er and shred­ding Denver’s defense.  The Nuggets will look for redemp­tion come Saturday’s Game 2.

Despite mul­ti­ple defen­sive cov­er­ages, Kawhi Leonard was unstop­pable. His bruis­ing shoul­ders cre­at­ed what­ev­er space he need­ed, pour­ing in a game-high 29 points on 12-for-16 shooting.

Fol­low­ing his heart-stop­ping Game 7 game-win­ner against Utah, Nuggets cen­ter Niko­la Jokic strug­gled to assert him­self in the paint and man­aged only 15 points on 6‑of-14 from the field. His star coun­ter­part, Jamal Mur­ray, was sim­i­lar­ly con­tained, fin­ish­ing with just 12 points on 5‑of-15 shoot­ing. The Clip­pers threw waves of defend­ers at Mur­ray in what was a marked dif­fer­ence from what he saw against the Jazz.

Aside from Leonard, Los Ange­les got 19 points from Paul George and 18 from Mar­cus Mor­ris. The lat­ter drained four 3‑pointers and exploit­ed his for­ward matchup, no mat­ter if it was vet­er­an Paul Mill­sap or rook­ie Michael Porter Jr. try­ing to con­tain him.

The Clip­pers shot 56% from the field, com­pared to just 42% from the Nuggets. The lack­lus­ter defense trans­lat­ed to slow, plod­ding offense, and the Nuggets could nev­er recov­er as the deficit grew to as large as 29.

Only Nuggets swing­man Jera­mi Grant found any sem­blance of rhythm, but after a 12-point first-half, he was held score­less as the Clip­pers main­tained a healthy mar­gin the entire sec­ond half.

As if they didn’t have enough fire­pow­er, the Clip­pers enjoyed the return of feisty PG Patrick Bev­er­ley after he played just one game in the first round due to a strained calf. He was one of many who harassed Mur­ray into a mis­er­able night.

It was a tax­ing turn­around for the Nuggets, who came off their Game 7 high only to see a well-rest­ed Clip­pers team wait­ing for them Thurs­day night.

“It goes from Dono­van Mitchell, Jor­dan Clark­son and Mike Con­ley, to now, super-size it,” Nuggets coach Michael Mal­one said. “Now you have Kawhi Leonard and Paul George and then Lou Williams off the bench. So, yes, they’re going to test us. This will be a hell of a chal­lenge. This Clip­per team is a team that a lot of peo­ple have picked to win the NBA championship.”

Mur­ray aver­aged 31.6 points dur­ing his super­no­va first round against Utah. In three reg­u­lar-sea­son games against the Clip­pers this year, two of which Bev­er­ley played, he aver­aged only 13.3 points on just 37.5% per­cent shooting.

In the first half, the Clip­pers bul­lied Mur­ray into 10 points on 4‑of-11 from the field. The Nuggets antic­i­pat­ed the vary­ing looks he saw.

“Last time when we played them in L.A., start­ing with Patrick Bev­er­ley, Paul George, Kawhi Leonard, you have three elite defend­ers on the perime­ter, and they all took turns guard­ing Jamal Mur­ray,” Mal­one said. “Obvi­ous­ly we’re going to have to do a great job of screen­ing, get­ting our guys open, and try­ing to lim­it the amount of ball pres­sure those guys apply.”

Between Leonard’s phys­i­cal pound­ing and strong 3‑point shoot­ing, the Clip­pers hung 38 points on the Nuggets in the sec­ond quar­ter to stake a 69–51 half­time lead.

After three con­sec­u­tive games of stingy efforts, Denver’s defense didn’t arrive in the first half. Its ball con­tain­ment was awful, which led to a huge dis­crep­an­cy in points in the paint. Offense didn’t come eas­i­ly, either, con­sid­er­ing Den­ver was tak­ing the ball out of their net so often.

Only Grant and Jokic found any sus­tained suc­cess, com­bin­ing for 23 points over the first two quarters.