Playing without Kawhi Leonard, Clippers’ win streak ends at nine
DALLAS — One night after Kawhi Leonard crashed to the court in Dallas, his team’s nine-game winning streak came crashing to an end without him Thursday in Oklahoma City.
With Leonard sidelined by a contusion of his left hip, which he’d suffered in the final minute of his team’s win the previous night, the Clippers’ undefeated month finally saw its first blemish in a 134-115 defeat.
Asked about the severity of Leonard’s injury, coach Tyronn Lue said Leonard was “day to day.” The team next plays Saturday in a home matinee against Eastern Conference-leading Boston.
Paul George returned following his one-game absence because of illness and scored 22 points in 29 minutes. James Harden scored 23 points, with nine rebounds, six assists and three turnovers.
Playing their third game in four days on the road, the Clippers (17-11) trailed by 14 points early into the second quarter. When they plugged one gash in their defense — limiting the effectiveness of most valuable player candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to 31 points, but on 11-of-25 shooting — another burst elsewhere. They struggled to contain the Thunder’s lone big man, the 7-foot-1 but slight Chet Holmgren, who scored 13 of his 23 points in the first half and created what ultimately stood as the game-altering highlight in the third quarter.
In 15 NBA seasons, the Clippers’ Russell Westbrook has never been named to an all-defense team. Would such an honor bring validation for him?
“He’s a talent,” George said. “We didn’t quite figure it out because he’s not necessarily a ‘big.’ He can play and move like a guard and wing so he gave us some problems.”
George said the groin pain that sidelined him when he missed his first game of the season last week no longer bothered him, but that his previous two days had “been hell” while fighting an illness.
The loss, the Clippers’ first since Nov. 30, “doesn’t take away from what we’ve built and what we’ve done” during their three-week unbeaten streak, Lue said.
In that span, different Clippers pointed to different areas where they’d seen the most progress.
“Figuring out how we want to play offensively, like what we want to run, what’s the plays, where we are going to get our main guys the ball,” center Ivica Zubac said.
There are plenty of reasons for the Clippers’ recent turnaround. But what underpins it all is the resurgence of Kawhi Leonard.
Los Angeles ranked 17th in offensive rating through Nov. 30 while averaging 113.6 points per 100 possessions. Ever since, they’ve ranked second and produced 125.2 points.
“Probably defensively, just getting stops on demand, especially in the fourth,” said Russell Westbrook, who earned a standing ovation when he checked in during the first quarter by fans who’d seen him earn a league MVP honor while with the Thunder. Westbrook finished with 15 points and a season-high 13 rebounds, but also five of the team’s 15 turnovers.
“Closing games and getting stops is very important and winning teams make big stops in the fourth,” he said. “Execution, I think we made some jumps there.”
The Clippers owned the league’s fourth-worst defensive rating in clutch situations through Nov. 30; but had allowed only 93.8 points per 100 possessions since, an improvement of 33.3 points — not a typo — compared to before. As one team source said Wednesday, the change followed the team’s increased sense of urgency that set in amid their six-game losing streak in November.
For Lue, the largest steps forward were also the fastest. The coach believed the half-court pace was far superior to November, both in how quickly the Clippers are starting their offense and how much faster they made decisions and drives with the ball and cuts without it.
“Just being headstrong, being resilient,” he said. “Had a tough start when James and PJ [Tucker] got here but just staying the course, putting in the work every single day and understanding it’s going to be hard. I give these guys credit, they’ve done that and so now we know a tough game coming into it [Saturday] and now we just got to be ready to start another streak. But I am proud of our guys for all we’ve been through and come back with a nine-game winning streak and the way we’ve been playing has been phenomenal.”
For every improvement, there are issues still on their mind. For Zubac, it was curbing turnovers and allowing opponents on the offensive glass, problems that are not new but have been persistent at times. Westbrook felt the Clippers still could be better at “making the right reads, quicker reads, a little faster at times,” he said, “but for the most part I thought we did a good job this stretch of three weeks or so.”
Their three-week turnaround in areas the team felt were both quantifiable and not helped them stay in a game Thursday despite missing Leonard, and despite Oklahoma City coming off two days of rest.
Three-pointers by Harden and George in the third quarter gave the Clippers a one-point edge and momentary momentum. But if taking that first lead had taken the Clippers more than two quarters, it took only two and a half minutes for them to trail again by double-digits, part of a 12-0 run by the Thunder (18-8) sparked by Holmgren’s alley-oop dunk that he’d thrown to himself, off of the backboard.
The Clippers trailed by 17 at the quarter’s end after Oklahoma City scored 45 points — the most allowed by the Clippers in any quarter since Nov. 10.
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