Clippers hold off Spurs rally amid boos and extend their win streak to three games
SAN ANTONIO — During their first six games together, all losses, the new-look Clippers were crushed.
In their last three, all wins, they got comfortable.
It’s their next five, all coming in a seven-day gantlet, that will give the best indication yet of who these Clippers really are.
In a game featuring a most unexpected moment — when San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich admonished the home crowd inside Frost Bank Center to “knock off the booing” as former Spurs star Kawhi Leonard shot first-half free throws — the Clippers did the expected Wednesday in a 109-102 win, beating reeling San Antonio, which has lost 10 consecutive games, for the second time in three days.
The former MVP has become the Clippers’ primary ballhandler and, after losing the first five games with him in the lineup, the team has won two in a row.
The Clippers seized control, then saw it slip away — twice. Their 17-point first-half lead was trimmed to three in the last 6:48 before halftime, then an 18-point lead with 6:47 to play in the fourth quarter dwindled to five with 30 seconds left.
Coach Tyronn Lue said his team had to be “more professional” in playing through the game’s end.
“We just can’t let our guard down,” Lue said.
What made it more striking is that the Spurs (3-12) are no one’s idea of a Western Conference contender, a class the Clippers measure themselves against — they would not have traded for James Harden if they didn’t — and includes their next five opponents: New Orleans, Dallas, reigning champion Denver, Sacramento and Golden State, who have a combined winning percentage so far of .573. The five-game run includes a pair of back-to-backs.
Half the Clippers’ victories so far have come against the Spurs. It gets tougher from here.
“I think we’re in a good place,” said Paul George, who scored 24 points, but needed 23 shots. “We kind of know at this point what the rotation is and I think we’re getting a rhythm. There’s some consistency there. And I think we’re in good shape. We’re playing well, we liked how we looked offensively and defensively and it’s time to test it.”
The Clippers (6-7) are now 6-0 when leading entering the fourth quarter. Leonard scored 26 points; Harden scored 16 points, with nine assists, six rebounds and four turnovers; and Russell Westbrook had eight points, seven assists, six rebounds and four turnovers off the bench.
If the Clippers hope to emerge from that five-game run with an overall winning record, it will require a cleaner effort than Wednesday. At one point late in the second quarter the Spurs, who missed 14 of their first 15 shots, were shooting 27% to the Clippers’ 54% — and yet the Clippers led only by eight because they’d already turned the ball over nine times in 24 minutes, two more turnovers than they’d committed in all of Monday’s victory. They had 11 turnovers in the first half and finished with 16 overall.
“We had some careless turnovers, they got some easy looks at the basket, wide-open layups, so we got to buy in and figure that out,” Leonard said.
Their calamitous close to the first half featured something even more bizarre than the Clippers managing just one field goal in the last seven minutes.
With 3:06 before halftime, as Leonard made his first free throw immediately after the Spurs unsuccessfully challenged an out-of-bounds call, Popovich suddenly walked to the scorer’s table and grabbed the public-address microphone.
“Excuse me for a second,” the league’s longest-tenured coach said. “Can we stop all the booing and let these guys play. It’s got no class, it’s not who we are. Knock off the booing.”
The booing only intensified on every subsequent Clippers possession.
“Anybody that knows anything about sports knows you don’t poke the bear,” Popovich said when asked what prompted his plea.
The Clippers, Leonard included, interpreted “the bear” to mean Leonard, the 2014 NBA Finals most valuable player with San Antonio before leaving four years later in a messy divorce from the franchise, and not fans’ ire with the officials. George called it “a hell of a moment, Pop having Kawhi’s back in that situation.”
Since leaving San Antonio, Leonard has been booed virtually every time he touches the ball when he plays on the Spurs’ home floor.
“If I don’t have a Spurs jersey on, they’re probably going to boo me for the rest of my career, but I mean it is what it is,” he said. “They’re one of the best fans in the league and they’re very competitive and once I step on this basketball court out here they’re going to show that they’re going for the other side. When I’m on the streets or going into restaurants they show love, so it is what it is.”
Clippers guard Russell Westbrook said he remained committed to helping the team win as he embraces shifting from the starting lineup to the bench.
Said George, who receives the same treatment whenever in Indiana, six years after he last played for the Pacers: “[Leonard] has hung championship banners here and been part of winning teams. Regardless of the situation, it sucks to give an organization something and a city something and for that to be at this point the treatment you still get. It’s unfortunate, but that’s what makes sports sports.”
What makes the Clippers either a viable West contender, or a team still searching for itself, will be better known in one week, but Lue already identified one significant preference for how he wants his team to play: big.
Before tipoff, Lue said he wanted to stay away from small lineups without a traditional big man as much as possible before they’d often proven to be a sieve defensively. Entering Wednesday, lineups without centers Ivica Zubac, Mason Plumlee or Daniel Theis had scored 125 points per 100 possessions — essentially a league record if it held up over an entire season — but allowed 123.2 points, according to Cleaning The Glass, an advanced statistics site.
Lue held to his stance when Powell could not play in the second half by inserting 6-foot-7 wing Amir Coffey, who had not played since Nov. 10, into the rotation. Coffey has long arms and coaches’ trust to rebound and defend centers up to shooting guards. He scored four points with three rebounds in 10 minutes, and was lauded by teammates for remaining ready despite scarce opportunities during the past two seasons.
The lineup he first joined included point guard Westbrook, and Lue did not want a smaller backcourt featuring him and reserve Bones Hyland.
Clippers guard Russell Westbrook said he remained committed to helping the team win as he embraces shifting from the starting lineup to the bench.
“With Bones and Russ, just it’s a small combination,” Lue said. “You can see they’re starting a 7-5 four man [Wembanyama] so it’s just tough to be small out there. We learned our lesson of the last couple of two, three years of playing small and how it hasn’t worked and so we just try to stay away from it as much as possible.”
Amid the rocky start after Harden’s arrival, one other window into who the Clippers are, or could be, was quietly being opened. Leonard and George played their 13th consecutive game together Wednesday, tying for their longest streak together as teammates — a rarity for a roster that has been devoid of continuity, and thus consistency, in their four previous seasons together.
“I’m happy he’s healthy, he’s happy I’m healthy, we’re happy we’re healthy,” George said.
Last season, their irregular availability left teammates unclear about their roles and coaches making lineup adjustments sometimes on short notice. When the star duo returned from injuries, the team put them on prescribed limits on when they could play, which frustrated coaches. It has not been the case this season, which has helped everyone, Leonard said.
“When those two guys are healthy, we’re a different team,” Lue said. “I know we hit a rough patch after the trade, just trying to get guys acclimated, losing guys for the Lakers game, but I think now [we are] just seeing who we can be and how we can play once those guys are healthy. And now they’re healthy.”
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