Knee stiffness sidelines Kawhi Leonard, Paul George out too as Thunder beat Clippers
OKLAHOMA CITY — Clippers guard Terance Mann sat in a chair, his head in his palms, in the corner of the visitor’s locker room. To his left, point guard Reggie Jackson looked ahead with a thousand-yard stare, still in his blue uniform a half-hour after the final buzzer had ended a night in which little had gone right.
The Clippers entered this season knowing it would take time to see their full potential as they slowly worked Kawhi Leonard and John Wall back, after their long basketball layoffs, into what eventually will be regular rotation roles.
Even against those tempered expectations, they probably never expected to look like they did in Tuesday’s 108-94 loss at Oklahoma City, a ragged defeat in which they trailed by as many as 26 to a previously winless opponent that could not shoot.
Afterward, the Clippers didn’t bury one another. Coach Tyronn Lue faulted his team’s executions but not its effort. Jackson, after a 2-2 start, criticized his own play as “hurting us,” but said “we don’t want to peak until the end of the season, anyway.” Nicolas Batum, who has seen almost all of it in a career spanning 15 seasons, preached perspective.
“Fan base, relax,” he said. “We know it’s not easy, it’s not cool to watch a game like that and we love the support, but we’ll be OK.”
Kawhi Leonard and Paul George say they’re ready to pursue an NBA title this season, but the Clippers’ 112-95 loss to the Phoenix Suns is concerning.
Yet the defeat brought to the fore, only four games in, the central challenge they face in this season’s early months — how to build on-court chemistry while their rotations remain fluid as Leonard and Wall continue to acclimate.
Leonard was held out after feeling tightness in the right knee he underwent surgery on 16 months ago to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament. The Clippers also were without starting forward Marcus Morris Sr., who will miss a second consecutive game against the Thunder (1-3) on Thursday for personal reasons, and starting wing Paul George, who was ill. Lue was unsure whether George would be available Thursday.
Leonard wanted to play, Lue said, but “we want to be cautious, make sure we’re doing the right thing by him,” and that was why Leonard will return to Los Angeles on Wednesday to continue his rehab. Lue added that Leonard “can be mad at us if he wants to,” but playing him would be “just not smart right now.”
Stiffness typically means swelling in the knee, said T.O. Souryal, who served as the Dallas Mavericks’ team doctor for 22 years and is a former two-term president of the NBA’s association of team physicians.
Still, Souryal said, “it is a tad unexpected to experience stiffness at 16 months” after the operation.
What was missing Tuesday went beyond the presence of the Clippers’ stars.
Their offense, already ranking second worst in the NBA one week into the season, fell into a hole for a second consecutive game, this time 8-0. The Thunder ultimately shot four for 30 from deep, and only four teams in NBA history have attempted at least 25 three-pointers and finished with a lower percentage and still won, according to ESPN research. Yet the Clippers couldn’t take advantage.
“It’s going to take at least two months to really get everything in the same groove, get set,” Batum said. “That’s normal. We’ve barely had less than three weeks of training camp. Only four preseason games. So we’re going to be OK when we bring everybody back and going to be ready down the road for sure.”
They weren’t ready Tuesday, however, after failing to heed the pregame instructions that the Thunder liked to send four or five rebounders to the glass. The Clippers surrendered 21 offensive rebounds.
“Stuff like that just kills you mentally,” said center Ivica Zubac, who had 10 points, 14 rebounds and a career-high seven blocks. “You play 20 seconds of great defense, you force them into a tough shot and then they just get an offensive board.”
Despite Lue’s weeklong message that the team cannot afford careless turnovers, there were 19 more that became 23 points for the Thunder. Oklahoma City took 27 more shots.
There was Zubac, unaware of the game clock, heaving an 80-foot shot with still eight seconds to play in the second quarter, and a five-minute stretch of the third quarter when the Clippers were outscored 21-0.
With Kawhi Leonard and John Wall not playing, Paul George finishes with 40 points as the Clippers hold off a late surge to defeat the Sacramento Kings.
There was Norman Powell, whose shooting slump continued in a three-for-10 performance that dropped his three-point accuracy to 8.3%.
And there was a moment with seven minutes to play in the fourth quarter, the Thunder’s lead down to 11 and the Clippers with the ball, when offensive miscommunication led Luke Kennard to throw up a long shot that missed everything, only for former Clippers guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to effectively snuff out any L.A. run once and for all with a three-pointer.
“We just can’t have the casual turnovers, the non-thinking turnovers,” Lue said. “We got to be better with that. I didn’t fault our effort. I thought we did some good things. We just got to continue to keep getting better.
“When you are shorthanded like that, the small things mean a lot. When you are missing Kawhi, PG and Marcus, all the small things add up so we got to understand that and go back to the drawing board.”
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