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The Clippers finally are coming together, playing the type of playoff basketball that was expected when Paul George and Kawhi Leonard teamed up in 2019. But that never happened and the Clippers politely allowed George to sign elsewhere without the max offer he was expected, and moved forward with Leonard and often-criticized James Harden, who finally has found a comfortable home.

Harden has revived his career after unsavory stops in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, turning himself into more of a distributor along with his natural scoring ability. Harden is less about numbers and more about camaraderie and victories.

“Very fun. When you think about an NBA team, this is what you envision,” Harden said after Game 3. “And I’ve been on different teams and it’s probably one of the coolest teams in the sense of like, everybody understands who each other is, accepts them for who they are and go out there and compete and have each other’s back. Knowing who’s the guys, and this is what you’re great at, this is what your weakness is, but we can cover up for that ... we all know, and that’s what makes it seem so special.

The offseason addition of Jeff Van Gundy, who was part of the Celtics’ front office staff and won a championship ring last season, has been instrumental to the improvement of the Clippers’ defense. And it was the feisty Van Gundy who actually got into a tussle for the ball on the bench with Denver superstar Nikola Jokic in Game 1. Van Gundy has paired with coach Tyronn Lue to uplift the Clippers to NBA Finals contenders.

“It’s like the perfect relationship,” Harden said. “I don’t know, it’s just [they] know what the hell they’re doing. Seriously, like they’re always on the same page. They tell us what we need to do on both ends of the ball and we go out there and do it. But it’s just like Yin and yang. Literally the Ying Yang Twins.”

Leonard is playing some of his best basketball since leading the Raptors to the NBA championship six years ago. And he credits the guidance of Lue and Van Gundy for putting the Clippers back into contention.

The Clippers finished fourth in the NBA in points allowed and eighth in opponents’ field goal percentage.

“I have to give credit to my coaching staff starting with JVG [Jeff Van Gundy], just being focused on that end and coming in with a passion and aggressive mind-set for us all and it kind of trickles down to us,” Leonard said. “From there it’s guys on the floor that want to guard. They’re not just pointing at me telling me to take him. These guys motivate me defensively, especially Kris Dunn. With Derrick Jones Jr. coming in and [Ivica Zubac] being the backline, they just want to play. The guys are just digging in deep and want to guard and it just trickles down to everyone on the floor.”

Norman Powell won a championship with Leonard in Toronto and is now watching his teammate return to his form after years of dealing with nagging injuries that affected his reputation, pundits pondered his desire to play. Healthy now, Leonard has been the most impressive player in this early postseason.

“Everybody wants to talk about his injuries or talk about how he’s not trying to play or he’s sitting out on purpose,” Powell said. “They don’t know what he’s going through. I’ve been around him, I’ve seen his work, I’ve seen his due diligence, the amount of time and effort he puts into his body before games, after games, on days off, in the off season, being able to work out with him down in San Diego and stuff like that.

“He’s committed to this game and I think everybody just talks about his injuries and the amount of games he’s missed, but for him to come back every single time after one of those injuries and still play at the level that he’s playing at, there’s commitment there. ”

Ditching office job

Joe Dumars had been absent from running his own team for about 10 years. He was actually enjoying his position as league discipline czar and one of the voices of reason in the league office. Dumars attempted to implore players to take more pride in the All-Star Game and to improve their on-floor conduct.

He was comfortable and happy. But the Pelicans decided to clean the front office house, firing executive vice president David Griffin after a miserable, injury-plagued season that began with great optimism. Dumars, a Louisiana native who starred at McNeese State, decided to leave the league office and come back home.

“I enjoyed my job in New York. It was great,” he said. “Loved the league office. I wasn’t looking to leave but sometimes opportunities come along and it’s right place right time.”

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After rebuilding the Pistons two decades ago following his Hall of Fame career, Dumars will inherit one of the league’s toughest jobs. The Pelicans have had some recent success but centerpiece Zion Williamson can’t stay healthy and focused. Griffin traded cornerstone Brandon Ingram, refusing to sign the swingman to a long-term extension. Griffin also included defensive ace Dyson Daniels in a deal for Atlanta’s Dejounte Murray, but he broke his hand early in the season, then tore his Achilles’.

Dumars has to reassess every aspect of the organization, from the coaching staff to the future of Williamson and whether the Pelicans can be a destination for free agents in a city that’s mostly considered the team an afterthought to the Saints.

Dumars emphasized there has been no insistence from ownership to fire coach Willie Green or trade the highly paid but moderately productive Williamson.

“I’ve known Willie forever, a great man. But we haven’t sat down and talked yet. There’s no mandate,” Dumars said. “We’re going to do things the right way and we’re not going to waver from that. At the league office, I’ve had to talk to Zion a few times. We’ve talked since then and we’ve had exceptional conversations.”

Like in Detroit, Dumars said he wants to build a gritty mentality in New Orleans. While as a player and executive, those Pistons teams were tough and relied on physical defense. It could take considerable time to build that same philosophy in New Orleans.

“You build a culture where you think you can win every game,” he said. “You never walk on the court and think there’s no chance for us to win. My focus will be what we build here and the results will come from that. What the good teams will talk about is what we do every day. We want to build on just being great every day.”

Griffin made some astute moves in his six years, acquiring Trey Murphy and drafting Herb Jones, picking up spark plug Jose Alvarado and trading for CJ McCollum. But the teaam has had constant trouble bringing in a point guard. Murray was supposed to be the answer before he got hurt, and injuries, especially to Williamson (Griffin’s first draft pick), became the theme the past few years.

“Griff did some good stuff here,” Dumars said. “We have some nice pieces here. This is a hard job. This is a really, really hard job. You’re in that glass box every day and every day you have to make decisions and you have to walk the walk. There’s some really good young pieces here. The fanbase, if you start winning in New Orleans, people are going to come out in droves.”

Dumars said something prophetic about today’s current player and it may be a message to Williamson: It’s his responsibility to sift out those players who love the life and the money more than they love the game.

“Every player in the NBA is not striving to be great,” he said. “You have to have the intangibles. You better know who the person is. The person may not be the right person for your building. We’ll know that here.”

Repeating chances

The 2019 Warriors were the last defending champion to get past the conference semifinals, losing to the Raptors in the NBA Finals, a series marred by injuries to Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson.

Essentially it would be an upset if the Celtics got past the second round this season. But Turner Sports analysts Stan Van Gundy and all-time great shooter Reggie Miller believe the Celtics are the favorites to win the title, despite the presence of powers such as Cleveland and Oklahoma City.

“I don’t say this jokingly, the reason it’s hard to repeat is there’s a lot of other teams trying to win too,” Van Gundy said. “There’s just a lot of good teams out there, so for you to beat the team year in and year out is hard.

“Boston’s had an amazing run of success over the last few years. Last year was their first championship but they’re making deep playoff runs with [Jayson] Tatum and [Jaylen] Brown every single year. They have been consistent but when you get to those last two rounds you’re going to run into other great teams and that’s going to make it tough to repeat all the time.”

Van Gundy said the Celtics may have been complacent at times during the regular season, which led to some struggles in December and January. But Boston finished the season 29-6 in the final 35 games, playing its best basketball since their title run.

“We saw Boston go through [a rut] this year,” Van Gundy said. “When you play in games that big, there is a problem at times of maybe getting fully motivated during the regular season. But you could see it down the stretch of the year, when it was time to get ready, they go 18-3 over the last quarter of the year and were playing as well as anybody in the league.

“I think Oklahoma City is great and we’ve got other teams who certainly can contend to win it. I still think you have to go into the playoffs with the idea that the Celtics are the team to beat.”

Miller said the Celtics understandably experienced more challenges this season because they were severely tested. The regular season was far more difficult than in last season’s 61-win campaign.

“If you had told me that the Celtics this season would have won 61 games but they’re No. 2 in the Eastern Conference, I would have looked at you like you’re crazy,” Miller said. “I’m going to quote Joe Mazzulla, he’s like ‘Look, last year was easy for us.’ That run on their way to their 18th championship. He’s like ‘we were rarely tested.’ This season’s a little different.

“Cleveland had 64 wins this year for a reason. They’re deep also, I believe well-coached. Their depth is amazing and they have a chip on their shoulder. Derrick White and Jrue Holiday will always be the key to me. The Celtics are difficult to beat and I can see them repeating. Even though they are the No. 2 seed, I like Boston because of that playoff pedigree that they have and they’ve built up over the past few years.”

The Hawks made the stunning move of firing general manager Landry Fields this past week after the club was eliminated from the postseason with consecutive losses to the Magic and the Heat. The puzzling aspect: What was Fields expected to do with a flawed roster. He did orchestrate a trade for Dyson Daniels, who is a Defensive Player of the Year and Most Improved Player candidate. He moved the long-term contract of De’Andre Hunter for the shorter deals of Caris LeVert and Georges Niang for cap flexibility. He signed rising center Onyeka Okongwu to a below-market value extension and he signed forward Jalen Johnson to a five-year, $150 million deal before he missed most of this season with a shoulder injury. He also drafted promising Zaccharie Risacher first overall. The franchise has a promising future with the major question being the future of franchise point guard Trae Young, who has two years left on his deal with a player option for the second. Would the Hawks consider a Young trade? Would Young ask out after the past few frustrating years? Those are questions a new president of basketball operations will have to address and apparently club ownership is willing to spend for an established franchise builder such as ESPN analyst and former Warriors GM Bob Myers. Fields’s downfall may have been poor drafts before Risacher. He took Michigan’s Kobe Bufkin 15th overall in 2023 over the likes of Keyonte George, Cam Whitmore, Marcus Sasser and Brandin Podziemski. In 2022 he used the 16th overall pick A.J. Griffin, who left the NBA during his second season to pursue the ministry ... Meanwhile, the Bucks signed general manager Jon Horst to a contract extension, meaning he will have responsibility for trying to retain Giannis Antetokounmpo and putting together a roster around the former MVP that can compete for championships. Horst made the controversial move of trading the popular Jrue Holiday to add Damian Lillard. Injuries have prevented an effective pairing between Antetokounmpo and Lillard but the rest of the roster is also flawed and aging. Horst traded Khris Middleton to the Wizards for Kyle Kuzma, believing the Bucks needed more youth. Kuzma has combined for 12 points on 5-for-15 shooting in Milwaukee’s first two playoff games against the Pacers. Forst’s first assignment will be to secure Antetokounmpo’s future in Milwaukee.

Gary Washburn is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at gary.washburn@globe.com. Follow him @GwashburnGlobe.