Kawhi Leonard leaves Clippers’ loss early because of back spasms

It was one thing for the Clippers to lose forward Kawhi Leonard to back spasms that forced him to leave Crypto.com Arena on Tuesday night, but what upset Coach Ty Lue the most was how his team wasn’t “being mentally tough” after losing their All-Star and how his group succumbed to the Minnesota Timberwolves in the aftermath.

Lue essentially called his team out after the Clippers lost, 118-110.

The Clippers built a 22-point lead in the second quarter after Leonard left the game having played 12 minutes in the first quarter. But the Clippers eventually went down by 22 points in the second half, a stunning turn of events considering how important this game was for both teams in the Western Conference standings.

Lue said Leonard, who had six points, two rebounds and two assists before departing, had been dealing with back issues for a while but he still wanted to play.

“Yeah, he’s been dealing with it for a couple of days. Back spasms and…Wasn’t sure if he was going to go this morning,” Lue said. “But he came to shoot-around, got some treatment, did what he had to do and tried to get on the court and play today and it just didn’t loosen up for him.”

Ivica Zubac is fouled by Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert while attempting a shot in the fourth quarter.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

The Clippers play at Chicago on Thursday night and at New Orleans on Friday night.

The fourth-seeded Clippers have a two-game lead over the fifth-seeded Pelicans in the West, which makes that game another important one.

With that in mind, Lue was asked if Leonard would make the two-game trip.

“Um, I’m not sure,” Lue said. “I hope so.”

Lue then went into all that hurt his team after they let a 57-35 second-quarter lead turned into a 22-point hole in the second half.

When asked where they lost their grip on the game, Lue wasn’t shy.

“Um, mentally. Just being mentally tough,” he said. “They’re a good team without KAT (Karl-Anthony Towns). They are going to make runs and we can’t drop our heads and, you know, feel sorry for ourselves. So, it’s just part of the game. But just being mentally tougher when things are not going good.

“And, so, there’s a lot of things we didn’t do great. They had [22] more shots than we had. We had 18 turnovers for 24 points. They had 27 points in transition. They had 19 offensive rebounds. I mean, you can go down the list. It was a lot of things that we didn’t do well. And, I thought they were tougher than us. They played tougher than we did and that’s the result. And, so, we just got to be better.”

Paul George forces Minnesota’s Nickel Alexander-Walker into a jump ball as Daniel Theis helps on defense in the second quarter.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Lue said with Leonard out, it’s his job to make sure his team is mentally ready. But he also said James Harden and Paul George have to lead as well.

“So, a good team is going to make runs. It’s about how you deal with it and how you process it and move on and get to the next action, get to the next play,” Lue said. “And so we just can’t, when teams make a run, just give in and so they play well. Like I said, they play tougher than we did for sure. No doubt pisses me off when it comes to that. Just being mentally tougher, just mentally tougher when stuff gets hard. Just you got to get tougher. And so those are the things we’ve got to do. And so we can talk about schemes, we can talk about a lot of other things, but we’ve just got to be tougher mentally and physically got to be better.”

Lue was asked if his group was mentally tough enough to deal with difficult times during a game and a season.

“Yeah, I mean we’ve shown mental toughness and so when things don’t go right, you just got to get tougher,” he said. “If we can’t score, we can’t let them score. It’s okay. It’s part of the game like we did in Minnesota [last week], that was mentally tough. We scored 89 points and win the game. Yeah, that’s fine. However, you got to win the game. It’s not about shots, it’s not about minutes, it’s not about whatever. It’s about winning the game however you got to do it. And so we have shown that, but tonight we didn’t.”

The Clippers never got a handle on Anthony Edwards, who had 37 points, eight rebounds and four assists.

Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards scores a basket while being fouled by Ivica Zubac in the second quarter.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

George led the Clippers with 22 points.

In the midst of it all, the Clippers lost the season series to the Timberwolves 3-1.

Not only are the Clippers not sure if Leonard will play in their next game at Chicago on Thursday night, Harden also is unsure of his status.

Harden, who was dealing with a left shoulder injury, said, “We’ll see [Wednesday] how I feel.”