LOS ANGELES — There’s always next year.
After Friday’s 105-101 loss to New Orleans in the Western Conference’s final play-in game, the Clippers will have 2022-23 to look forward to, when they expect to have All-Stars Kawhi Leonard and Paul George playing, hopefully healthy after missing all or most of this season, respectively.
But the 2021-22 Clippers proved a tough out.
“We fought so hard the entire year,” veteran forward Marcus Morris Sr. said. “It was a lot of ups and downs, a lot of comebacks. Getting our guys back towards the end, felt like it was turning in the right direction for us. To go down like this, it’s tough. It’s just tough.”
It was an arduous play-in journey that began with a blown lead and tough loss against their old pal Patrick Beverley in Minnesota.
That set up a must-win game at home against a Pelicans team that has given them fits over the past couple of seasons – without George, who was ruled out Friday morning in accordance with the NBA’s health and safety protocols. Sharpshooter guard Luke Kennard also missed the game, his second in a row, because of a sore right hamstring.
And then, to add an extra degree of difficulty to the task, the Clippers tumbled into a 16-point hole, falling behind to the sizable Pelicans squad by 45-29 with 7:11 left in the second quarter.
Right where they wanted them, in other words.
This time, the Clippers rallied but couldn’t hang on, finally succumbing at Crypto.com Arena, where the Pelicans – who began the season 1-12 – roared back from a 13-point deficit with 10:51 left in the third quarter for the victory and a date with the top-seeded Phoenix Suns in a best-of-seven first-round series, which begins Sunday night.
If they’d held on, the Clippers could have had their 15th successful rally from a double-digit deficit this season.
It’s been that kind of season for Coach Tyronn Lue’s squad, which hasn’t had Leonard, a five-time All-Star, at all because of a torn ACL, and had George, a seven-time All-Star, for only 31 games after he was taken out by a torn elbow ligament.
“I’ve been in this league for 14 years,” Nicolas Batum said. “I haven’t seen that before. COVID, injuries, comebacks, everything. It was fun, though. That was fun. We been through it all. Trades, missing players. I mean, we had everything.
“We were still top eight in the West without our best player, without two best players technically because PG played (31) games (and) we miss him for the biggest game of the year because of COVID and we still almost find a way to win this game!”
That bad news about George’s elbow injury came on Christmas, word of newcomer Norman Powell’s broken foot on Super Bowl Sunday and, on Friday morning, hours before their do-or-die game against New Orleans, the world learned that the Clippers would have to survive to advance without George (who entered COVID-19 health and safety protocols).
The last blow finally did them in.
The Clippers had players miss a combined 345 games (the second-most in the league), and, per spotrac.com, they paid $74,069,847 to those unavailable players (by far, the most in the NBA).
And still, they finished the regular season 42-40 and in eighth place in the Western Conference, six games ahead of ninth-place New Orleans (36-46).
Two seasons ago, that would have been enough for the Clippers to wrap up a postseason berth, before the introduction of the play-in tournament, which ushered the seventh- through 10th-place finishers into a bracket playing for their postseason lives, regardless of record.
“I’m not a fan of the play-in,” Marcus Morris Sr. said, noting, however, “… we should have won one of those games and we would have been in the playoffs, that’s all I really can say.”
On Friday, the Clippers came oh-so-close in a whiplash-inducing game in which they used a 38-18 third quarter to go from trailing by 10 points to leading by 10. They did it with a small, aggressive lineup that featured a rotation of Reggie Jackson, Terance Mann, Robert Covington, Batum, Morris and Powell.
But as swiftly as that group built a 13-point lead, the Pelicans won it back as the Clippers on the court began to tire. New Orleans went on runs of 11-0 and 10-0, the latter of which, capped by rookie Trey Murphy’s 3-pointer, gave them a 101-94 lead.
Twice in the final 1:17, the Clippers got within two points, but they missed two of their final four free-throw attempts (and 12 of 34 for the game) and the curtain came down on the game and their often-improbable season.
“It was like a heavyweight fight. Seriously,” Pelicans coach Willie Green said. “(Lue) was making adjustments. He took his bigs out, we were trying to adjust to them. It didn’t work for us, we put our bigs back in.
“That didn’t work for us, either, so we were throwing darts at the dartboard just trying to figure it out, how can we find an environment that we can play in on both ends of the floor because they’re tough. They’re tough to match up with.”
The Clippers got 27 points apiece from Jackson and Morris Sr., 17 from Powell and 14 from Covington.
Batum played stellar defense, and despite shooting 1 for 7 from the field, finished a team-best plus-11 in the box score.
Brandon Ingram scored 30 points and CJ McCollum added 19 for New Orleans, which is playoff-bound for the first time since 2017-18.
It’s the first time in his five seasons as a head coach in the NBA that Lue has missed the playoffs – and an opportunity to play for a conference championship, for that matter.
“I’ve never not been in the playoffs as a coach – as an assistant, as a head,” said Lue, who led the Clippers to the Western Conference finals for the first time in franchise history last season. “It’s tough. It’s going to make me stronger. I’ve been through a lot worse. I am disappointed in us not being able to make the playoffs, no matter who was playing.
“It is tough for me. It will be something that’s different, something I never experienced before.”
Even so, Lue didn’t have trouble finding this season’s silver linings, with an eye on the future following an offseason in which the Clippers’ free agents will be Covington and backup center Isaiah Hartenstein as well as third-year wing Amir Coffey (restricted) and Batum, who has a player option.
“I think it’s been an unbelievable season for our guys, everything we had to go through,” he said. “Like our fans staying loyal, continuing to support throughout the whole season … for the guys in the locker room, like, scrapped, the way we competed all year long. No matter who played, was in the rotation, who was in and out.
“We have to hold our heads high. Some great things to be proud of. Get ready, keep rebuilding and get ready for next year.”
Or as Batum put it: “I love that team. I been here for almost two years now … it’s been two different years. But I loved it, I loved it. I love it here. That coach, those guys. I mean, it’s tough today, but it’s going to be fun next year.”
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Clippers’ season ends as Pelicans grab final playoff spot in West - OCRegister
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