The Clippers have four games left in the regular season. Six days to find out who they will play in the first round of the playoffs, and until then Coach Tyronn Lue isn’t taking chances.
The Clippers (50-28) remain in fourth place in the Western Conference standings, two games ahead of the Dallas Mavericks (48-30) after their furious comeback victory against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Sunday. The Mavericks, however, are streaking; they have won nine of their past 10 games.
Lue isn’t going to relax or rest any of his players until the final buzzer of the season or should the Clippers secure the No. 4 seed before then. The Clippers face the Phoenix Suns in a home-and-away back-to-back set starting Tuesday night in Phoenix.
They then close out the season with home games against the Utah Jazz and Houston Rockets.
“I don’t see that right now,” Lue said when asked if he would rest any players down the stretch. “I mean we’re still fighting for that four seed, so (not) until we are able to clinch that, or we understand that we have a chance to clinch it or we don’t have a chance to clinch it.
“Right now, our focus is on just playing better basketball, continuing to keep getting better and ending up the best we can as far as seeding.”
All-Star Paul George, who had a big fourth quarter (when he scored 23 of his 39 points) to carry the Clippers to their 120-118 victory on Sunday, understands Lue’s caution but is hoping they can wrap up their seeding before the final game this weekend.
“Hopefully we’re locked up and I don’t need to be in that one,” George said. “Yeah, but my focus is this next one with Phoenix, and so we’ll get there when we get there.”
Should the Clippers clinch the No. 4 spot, they appear likely to face Luka Doncic and the Mavericks in the first round for the third time in five years.
Getting to the end with a high seed in hand is going to take continued improvement in rebounding, turnovers and defense. The Clippers – who have played their past four games without All-Star forward Kawhi Leonard (knee inflammation) – allowed the Cavs to score 80 points in the first half, signaling a complete breakdown in defense, catching everyone from Lue to the end of the bench by surprise.
“We knew that the first half wasn’t us defensively – 80 points in the first half,” George said. “There’s just no defense being played at all on our behalf. So, I thought defensively we stepped it up and played a little bit more physically and we just kept chipping away.
“We recognized it wasn’t us, we just addressed it.”
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Lue said he knew his team was better defensively than what occurred in the first 24 minutes, but the Cavs exposed their weaknesses in every facet.
“In the first half they just ran wherever they wanted to go,” Lue said. “It was our point of attack defense, one-on-one, just straight-line drives and blow-bys with no resistance, no physicality and it is tough to win like that.”
Lue challenged the team at halftime to pick up their physicality and man defense.
“If you guard your man one-on-one, the help defense is easier. But if you’re getting blown by, it’s just too hard,” he said. “I give our guys credit in that second half, outside the first maybe six minutes of the third quarter, after that we really started defending, we really got into them aggressively. That changed the game. And so that’s who we got to be and that’s who we’ve been for the last eight, 10 games. In that second half, we really got back to it.”
CLIPPERS AT SUNS
When: Tuesday, 7 p.m.
Where: Footprint Center
TV: KTLA (Ch. 5), 1150 AM
