The goal for the Clippers is to stay among the top six teams in the competitive Western Conference and avoid the NBA’s play-in tournament.
How the Clippers handle the difficult road ahead will determine their fate.
They have 23 regular-season games remaining to make the playoffs a reality.
They were unable to take a step forward Friday night, their turnovers and poor three-point shooting dooming them in a 106-102 loss to the Lakers at Crypto.com Arena.
Yet, by the end of the night, the Clippers still held the sixth spot in the West, even though they had an identical 32-27 record as the surging Golden State Warriors.
And the schedule doesn’t get any easier for the Clippers.
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They will face the Lakers again on Sunday at Crypto.com Arena.
The Clippers then travel to Phoenix for a game on Tuesday before coming home to Intuit Dome for games against Detroit, New York and Sacramento.
All of these pressure-packed games are against teams fighting for seeding in the NBA standings.
“With the schedule, it’s more challenging. But we’re up for the challenge,” Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said. “So, it’s the tough part of our schedule. We play a lot of good teams, a lot of games in this last month and a half. We’re slowly starting to get healthy and the guys we acquired, we just got to continue to get them up to speed. But I like where we’re at and it’s in our hands. So, we’re in a good spot, we’re in a good place and now we just got to start building off of it.”
Those new guys are Ben Simmons and Bogdan Bogdanovic.
But it’s guys like Kawhi Leonard, James Harden, Norman Powell and Ivica Zubac that the Clippers will keep leaning on for their chances.
Zubac was a force for the Clippers against the Lakers, producing a double-double with 27 points on 13-for-15 shooting from the field and 16 rebounds.
Leonard was solid with 21 points.
But James Harden was not in scoring his 18 points. He was five-for-22 shooting from the field, had six turnovers and did not talk to the media after the game.
The Clippers had 18 turnovers as a group, five in the fourth quarter.
They shot just two for nine (22.2 percent) from the three-point line in the fourth, including a missed three by Leonard with 21.5 seconds left and the Clippers down by four and a missed three by Bogdanovic with 10.2 seconds left and the Clippers still down by four.
“Missed shots. Turnovers, obviously,” Leonard said. “And the Lakers played good basketball tonight.”
The Clippers now have lost four of five games since the All-Star break.
They are still in the thick of things in the West. As such, the Clippers fully understand the importance of being a top-six team versus a play-in team at the seven through 10 positions.
‘It’s very important for us to be able to solidify, to be in the playoffs instead of having to play in the play-in game,” Lue said. “But it is what it is. Whatever challenges we have to take, we’re going to be up for that challenge. So, whether it’s keeping the sixth seed, which we want to do, whether it’s seventh or eighth, whatever, we got to continue to keep fighting to get to the playoffs and that’s our mindset.”
Etc.
Clippers guard Norman Powell missed his fifth straight game because of left patella tendinopathy, but Lue said his leading scorer “is getting close” to returning. Powell leads the Clippers in scoring (24.2 points per game) is shooting 49.6% from the field and 42.8% from three-point range.
“We’ve been missing that dearly,” Lue said about Powell’s production. “But like I said, he’s getting close and we need him back as soon as possible.”
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