New starting lineup, same result: Clippers’ losing streak stretches to six games
The coach’s words before tipoff sounded like a rallying cry.
His lineup choices led to a changing of the guard.
The result of the Clippers’ attempts to jump-start this roster into a new version of itself: a 112-108 loss to Atlanta for a Clippers team still stuck in neutral as it passes the NBA season’s midway point, still unable to gain traction in the standings, still yet to come close to reaching its vaunted potential after 48 minutes that felt like a microcosm of the previous 41 games.
Short-handed again, with Paul George’s hamstring sidelining him a second straight game, the Clippers tried a new starting lineup that authored an authoritative start and a blown lead before staging a second-half resuscitation this team desperately needed.
The Clippers began the season with championship hopes, but at the midway point of the season, they have lost five consecutive games and are just 21-20.
Trailing middling Atlanta, a team beset by questions about its leadership and future, by 14 at halftime, the Clippers responded like a team that had heard coach Tyronn Lue remark, pointedly, before tipoff that the losing streak was “tough on our team, but you got to dig yourself out of the hole and we’ve been through worse.” Lue added his coda: “And so I’m prepared for the fight, so those guys got to get in the fight with me.”
The Clippers erased their halftime deficit by taking that fight to Atlanta, winning the third quarter by 16, and led by as many as 11 with 6 minutes 31 seconds remaining in the game. But five scoreless Clippers possessions later, the Hawks had forged a tie, and with 33 seconds left a Trae Young floater pushed Atlanta ahead by two as part of a 19-6 Hawks run. Young scored 14 of his 30 points in the final quarter.
When Kawhi Leonard missed a contested three-pointer, an offensive rebound afforded Marcus Morris Sr. a wide-open chance to take the lead, but his three-pointer bounced off the rim and Atlanta ended the game with free throws.
The Clippers are 21-21, but “seeing what we did tonight, I was encouraged,” Lue said, and yet the sixth straight loss is the team’s longest losing streak since November 2017.
“Guys are still being positive,” said Leonard, who scored 29 points. “This is the spot where, see if you really enjoy the game and if we’re a team, seeing if we can dig out this hole.”
The furious finish capped a notable start: The benching of point guard Reggie Jackson, who had started every game since the 2021 postseason, for Terance Mann, the wing whose role just one week ago was undefined.
“My role?” Mann said. “I don’t know. I mean, I had 100 different roles already. So it could be anything. I mean, I’m ready for whatever.”
Three days after Leonard was critical of the team not playing with enough speed, urgency or ball movement, Mann crashed through the lane before assisting Ivica Zubac, who had 17 points and 18 rebounds. Mann was not a one-for-one replacement for Jackson’s ballhandling: More often the pace was controlled by Leonard, who turned the corner on high pick and rolls with his eyes on the rim and applied pressure on Atlanta’s defense to establish an early eight-point lead, doing the things he had asked for days earlier.
Leonard’s “pace” left Lue most encouraged, he said. Leonard said he enjoyed the more uptempo nature of the new starting lineup.
Paul George and Kawhi Leonard sat out to manage their health, and the visiting Clippers lost 128-115 to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday night.
This was different — but real change for the Clippers entering the season’s second half hinges on the energy lasting throughout multiple lineups, not only the first.
Though Lue made a philosophical change with his starting lineups, the same was not the case with the construction of his bench units.
Though Lue repeatedly has asked for his team to play with a more focused “defensive mindset,” he employed in the first half a three-guard lineup that has struggled throughout the season to score and defend. Jackson, John Wall and Norman Powell — Luke Kennard was unavailable because of a sore ankle — were part of a shift in which the Clippers gave up 13 unanswered points in fewer than three minutes to push Atlanta ahead 40-30.
Yet the lapses went beyond the bench. The first half ended with two Hawks dunks in three seconds after Leonard lost track of John Collins in a defensive switch, and Collins snuck behind Leonard for an alley-oop. Then Wall’s inbounds pass was intercepted for a dunk and 14-point Hawks lead.
Mann’s insertion into the starting lineup begged the question of how much the change was designed to last, and how much of it stemmed from Lue, already knowing his lineups would be altered because of Kennard and George’s absence, throwing a new idea in hopes of lighting a short-term fire. Either way, hard rotation decisions are coming for Lue as he sorts out the roles and responsibilities for his glut of guards, four weeks before the NBA’s trade deadline. If Mann continues his transformation from the rotation’s odd man out to a fixture, the trickle-down effect would have consequences for Jackson, Wall and Kennard.
For one night, Lue made his choice known, keeping Jackson on the bench for the entire second half while Powell and Wall, who played more than 22 minutes apiece, were featured heavily in the third-quarter comeback. But when the comeback could not hold, all of the new looks offered by the Clippers devolved into the all-too familiar.
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