The Oklahoma City Thunder have officially found out its second round opponents for the first time since 2016.

It’ll cross paths with the No. 5-seeded Dallas Mavericks, led by the star guard pairing of Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving. They got past the LA Clippers in six games the previous round, possessing loads of playoff experience and high-level offense.

It’s a much different look for the Thunder than the New Orleans Pelicans were, who were without their No.1 scoring option in Zion Williamson for the entirety of the series. The Mavericks had a top 10 offense in the NBA throughout the regular season, and are near at full capacity heading into the series, outside of the absence of Maxi Kleber from an AC joint injury.

“Our guess for them is to stay big, but we’re ready for everything.” Oklahoma City head coach Mark Daigneault said on Kleber’s absence. “It definitely changes their looks in the frontcourt.”

Kleber has been an important piece in Dallas’ lineup for several seasons now at the power forward position, and although he only averaged 4.4 points and 3.3 rebounds per game this season, his ability to defend opposing forwards and space the floor is still providing crucial minutes in the rotation. It’ll be a significant loss against a team with great frontcourt talent, most notably in regards to Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren.

Still, the Mavericks are equipped with a fairly deep roster that can cover Kleber well enough. P.J. Washington has flourished since joining them at the trade deadline, Tim Hardaway Jr. is still giving close to 15 points per game and Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II make for a great center rotation.

“Anybody advancing in the playoffs is a really good team,” Daigneault said on Dallas. “We obviously have a lot of respect for them. They’ve been playing exceptionally … Post trade deadline I thought that really changed their team … Obviously a tall task for us.”

The Thunder will not underestimate its opponents just because it’s coming off a first round series sweep. The Mavericks made it all the way to the Western Conference Finals in 2022, making it a total of four playoff appearances in the Doncic era. They’re more than prepared for another stab at making it to the WCF, or even a NBA Finals run.

This second round matchup could easily reach seven games if both teams continue to play they did in the first round, and Oklahoma City knows that. Doncic is one of the largest talents the league has seen in the last decade, an unideal matchup for any team.

“[He’s] a great player,” Luguentz Dort said on Doncic. “Good ability to create shots. Makes a lot of tough shots. The ball is gonna be in his hands a lot so my main thing is to make everything tough.”

Doncic will be by far the most difficult matchup the Thunder has faced in the playoffs up to this point, but if any team can hold him to below his standards, it has one of the best shots. Dort is an elite on-ball defender on the perimeter that can make any guard have a difficult night, so most of the assignment can be expected to go to him. Even beyond him, Shai-Gilgeous Alexander and Cason Wallace can also give the 25-year-old troubles.

Oklahoma City’s first true test of the playoffs will begin Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. CT , inside Paycom Center for Game 1.

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The Dallas Stars have reached the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs for the second consecutive year after defeating the Vegas Golden Knights in seven games in their first-round matchup.

Dallas advances to face the Colorado Avalanche, a Central Division rival, in the second round. Colorado cruised to a 4-1 first-round victory over the Winnipeg Jets.

The Stars, as the Western Conference regular season champions, have home-ice advantage, meaning they’ll host Games 1 and 2 as well as Games 5 and 7 (if necessary) at American Airlines Center.

The series will start Tuesday, with Game 1 scheduled to begin at 8:30 p.m. Game 2 will start at 8:30 p.m. Thursday.

Here are five things to know about the Stars’ second-round matchup:

A pivotal playoff foe

The Stars have never reached the Stanley Cup Final without going through the Colorado Avalanche. In five postseason meetings, the Stars hold the 3-2 advantage with wins in the 1998-99 season, 1999-2000 season and 2019-20 season.

Their most recent meeting was in the second round of the 2020 Stanley Cup playoff bubble when the Stars won in seven games.

Dallas’ three wins all required a Game 7. Colorado’s two wins were decided in only five games in 2003-04 and 2005-06.

Record doesn’t tell whole story

As division opponents, the Stars and Avalanche met four times in the regular season and Colorado won the series 3-1.

Colorado won the first three meetings — two of which were blowouts — while Dallas came away with arguably its best win of the season on April 7 by a 7-4 margin on the road. That win was key in clinching both the Central Division and Western Conference titles.

The circumstances in which the Stars faced the Avalanche this season were not easy. Dallas’ two road games came on the second night of a back-to-back, and the second home game Jan. 4 was the night Miro Heiskanen collided with Scott Wedgewood and was injured in the third period, leading Dallas to blow a two-goal lead with 10 minutes to play in a 5-4 overtime loss.

The Stars won’t have to worry about back-to-backs in the playoffs. Colorado’s Ball Arena is a difficult environment in which to play, but the Stars will start the series at home as the higher seed.

Avalanche started playoffs hot

The Avalanche lead the NHL this postseason with a whopping 5.6 goals per game. While most other teams saw their goal average decrease in the playoffs, Colorado’s soared. The Avalanche also managed to do so against Winnipeg — one of the best defensive teams in the league with Vezina front-runner Connor Hellebuyck in net.

They are led by forward Nathan MacKinnon, who finished second in the race for the Art Ross Trophy with 140 points in the regular season. He already has nine postseason points (two goals, seven assists) in just five games.

Two other Avalanche players also have nine points — forward Mikko Rantanen and defenseman Cale Makar, a finalist for this year’s Norris Trophy.

On the flip side, the Avalanche allowed 3.0 goals per game, which is the highest among teams advancing to the second round.

Colorado enters series fresh

The Colorado-Winnipeg series was projected to be the toughest first-round matchup in the league with many assuming it would require seven games.

However, Colorado closed it out in five, ending Winnipeg’s season on Tuesday.

With the Stars-Avalanche series starting Tuesday, Colorado will have a full week off the ice by the time the series gets going. That’s a rare break in the postseason and it allows the players to be well-rested entering the Dallas series.

It may not be the worst situation if the Stars have to jump into another series. After having nearly a week off following their last regular season game, the Stars dropped two straight to Vegas at home to start the playoffs.

The quick turnaround could allow Dallas to build on its four-game win streak and Colorado to cool off from its hot start offensively.

Familiar faces on both sides

A handful of Stars and Avalanche players will reunite with their former teams.

For the Stars, Matt Duchene will return to where he began his NHL career. The first-year Dallas forward spent 8.5 seasons in Colorado from 2009-18. It was the longest stop of his career before playing for Ottawa, Columbia, Nashville and now Dallas.

On Colorado’s side, Joel Kiviranta, Valeri Nichushkin and Andrew Cogliano will all return to Dallas.

Kiviranta left most recently, as he was a part of Dallas’ Western Conference finals roster last season. He played four total years in Dallas. Nichushkin started his career with the Stars, spending four various years with the team from 2013-19. Cogliano was in Dallas for three seasons from 2018-21.

Find more Stars coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.

There is never a good time, especially in the postseason, to lose a player of Maxi Kleber’s caliber.

But if Mavericks fans are looking for a silver lining after Sunday’s confirmation that Kleber will miss a minimum of three weeks with a right shoulder AC joint separation, there are worse second-round opponents to face under the circumstances than the Thunder.

“Oklahoma’s not a big team,” coach Jason Kidd noted Sunday, after the Mavericks’ first practice in preparation for the Western Conference semifinals, which open Tuesday in Oklahoma City. “We’ve got quite a few bigs that we can go to.”

Not that Kidd in any way is downplaying the significance of losing Kleber, Dallas’ best-defending big man. The reality is there’s nothing the Mavericks can do about Kleber’s absence and, if anything, Dallas on paper has a decided muscle advantage in the middle in this series.

Granted, Thunder rookie sensation Chet Holmgren stands 7-1, but at 195 pounds he will be challenged to contain Mavericks counterparts Daniel Gafford (6-10, 234) and Dereck Lively II (7-1, 230) if they catch the basketball anywhere near the basket.

Starting with MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, 57-win, No. 1 seed Oklahoma City has a talent array that belies the team’s average age of 24, with only one basket scored by a player age 25 or older during its first-round sweep of New Orleans.

Dallas’ two most notable matchup advantages, though, are that it has two superstars – Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving – to OKC’s one; and that it has become more physically imposing since the Feb. 8 acquisitions of Gafford and P.J. Washington Jr.

Two days after those trades, Dallas hosted OKC in what would be the Mavericks’ only meeting this season against the Thunder with both Doncic and Irving on the court.

Oklahoma City was playing with three days of rest, but the Mavericks pummeled the Thunder 146-111. Despite playing without Lively (nasal fracture), Dallas outrebounded OKC 54-40 and dominated in paint points, 66-34.

“That’s just a regular-season game; playoffs are a little different,” Kidd said. “But making those trades and having Kai and Luka play for the first time against Oklahoma City, we can look at some of the things that we had success with and hopefully we can do that again on Tuesday.”

Kleber, though, not only played in that Feb. 10 game, but started and finished with 12 points and 12 rebounds.

Kleber was limited to 43 games this season, with 38 of his absences coming as a result of a right small toe dislocation. How important is he to Dallas’ success? The Mavericks were 27-16 with him this season; 23-16 without him.

According to NBA.com tracking, opponents shot 43.1% this season when guarded by Kleber, the lowest percentage among Mavericks.

In the first round playoff series, Clippers players shot 27.9% against Kleber before his scary fall and hard landing in the second quarter of Game 6, when Amir Coffee tried to take a charge – after Kleber became airborne.

“Just seeing one of our family members go down that, we all get hit,” Lively said Sunday. “Just being able to know we’ve got to be able to pick him up, there’s a lot of people who were looking at us; a lot of people was questioning what we were going to do.

“Maxi knows that we’ve got his back and we know that he’s going to do whatever we can to get better. But we’ve got to be able to take it game-by-game. Next man up.”

A Mavericks official on Saturday told The News that Kleber suffered a third-degree sprain of his AC joint ligaments. The Clippers’ Chris Paul in 2014 sustained a similar injury and did not require surgery, but he missed 18 games.

The Mavericks on Sunday announced that Kleber will be re-evaluated in three weeks, seemingly meaning the soonest he would be cleared to practice is May 26.

The conference finals are scheduled to begin May 21-22. If Dallas is able to get past Oklahoma City, they would face either Minnesota – a team with a deep and formidable front court – or Denver and MVP favorite Nikola Jokic. If the Mavericks are still alive then, those are challenges they’ll gladly embrace, with or without Kleber.

Until then, they’ll miss him, but in terms of second-round matchups, it could have been worse.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Kidd said. “It’s on to the next guy.”

Find more Mavericks coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.