The Clippers knew they were going to be fighting uphill today.
After winning their second-round series late Friday night, they were rewarded by the NBA’s scheduling office with a game 1 36 hours later, in Phoenix, against a team that had 6 days of rest. That advantage is what the Suns earned by sweeping the Denver Nuggets in the second round, and Clipper coach Ty Lue noted in both Saturday’s off-day media session and his pre-game presser that he would have to carefully monitor minutes for his main players and reach deeper than usual into his bench.
The Clippers opened their game with their typical small unit and had success defensively, holding a 16-13 lead when Ivica Zubac replaced Nicolas Batum 7 minutes into the game. Ultimately, the teams ended the opening frame locked at 21 points apiece, as Paul George got off to a strong start with 12 of his own.
As part of his aforementioned more aggressive lineup tinkering to buy rest for his core players, Lue opened the second quarter with a really sketchy lineup featuring Rajon Rondo, Patrick Beverley, Luke Kennard, Nicolas Batum, and DeMarcus Cousins. With multiple defensive liabilities or shot creators, the crew immediately sputtered defensively but managed to hold steady early in the quarter as Cousins overmatched Suns backup center Dario Saric with his physicality. Suns coach Monty Williams kept Devin Booker and DeAndre Ayton tethered to each other in this game so that they could work together offensively–with both off the floor for shifts and no Chris Paul available to run the second unit, the Clippers were able to exploit Saric’s presence.
Ultimately, the experiment worked, as the Clippers had pulled ahead by two before Ayton returned to the game at the 7-minute mark to counter Cousins’ physicality. But Lue was caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and instead of proactively countering Monty Williams’ move to negate Cousins, he kept Rondo and DeMarcus on the floor through the middle of the second period. In just under 3 minutes of overlap, the Suns outscored the Clippers by 8 points and forced the Clippers’ starting unit to face a defecit in the closing minutes of the half. When the buzzer sounded, LAC had shrunk the deficit to 3 and went into the locker room feeling like they had survived a tricky first half that had forced them to make high-risk gambles.
But these Clippers just can’t catch a break. Marcus Morris, who has been essential to the team’s defensive success in small ball lineups throughout the playoffs (whether his extremely streaky three-point shot is falling or not), was unable to start the second half with knee soreness. He did ultimately play a few second unit minutes to bridge the third and fourth quarters, but asking LA to endure both one of Morris’ bad shooting games and find consistently viable defensive lineups without him or Kawhi Leonard was simply too much. Zubac took Morris’ place and had a solid-yet-unspectacular second half, playing 13 minutes (which the Clippers won by 3 points) and scoring 9 points in not-very-pretty fashion against the bigger, more athletic Ayton. Ultimately, between Zubac and Cousins, the Clippers played a traditional center for almost 19 of the second half’s 24 minutes, a sharp deviation from their gameplan so far in the playoffs forced by injuries to Leonard and Morris.
The real story of the third quarter, though, was not the Clippers’ unusual lineups but an epic duel between Paul George and Devin Booker. The best player on the day, Booker finished with a triple double while playing the entire half and shooting a monstrous 11-18 on two-point jumpshots. No matter what the Clippers did defensively, Booker navigated ball screens, used his body to create space, worked his way to comfortable spots in the mid-range, and elevated for clean looks. In the third quarter alone, he had 18 points on 7-11 field goal shooting while Paul George put up 15 points of his own, including some really high-difficulty moving threes that kept the Clippers in the game even as they were losing the execution battle.
George, Booker, and Ayton all played the entirety of the third quarter, and despite Booker’s unstoppable scoring burst, the Clippers ultimately won the frame and entered the fourth quarter tied, 93-93. As the Clippers transitioned to bench minutes again to begin the fourth, the game slipped away from them. Rajon Rondo and DeMarcus Cousins again entered the game, but Booker (who played the entire second half) and Ayton stayed in to start the fourth. While Ayton would check out soon after, a quick bad spell for the Clippers left them down 8 when Paul George checked back into the game with 9 minutes to play.
Chasing the lead, Lue made the call to go back to a small lineup without a center–but without Leonard or Morris, sliding Batum to center and George to power forward meant playing a small interior group alongside three guards as well, with Mann, Jackson, and Rondo joining the closing lineup. While he has received major warranted criticism for his performances throughout the playoffs, Rondo was not a negative during this stretch, contributing 8 fourth quarter points–and yet, with Patrick Beverley playing substantially better on both ends of the court throughout the playoffs, it felt as though the lineup could have been improved with his presence. Pat played just 15 minutes tonight to Rondo’s 22, but was his usual pesky self and helped the Clippers force turnovers, something that’s sorely needed when you are trying to close a gap late in a game. Additionally, Rondo’s biggest contributions down the stretch were making a pair of threes. While it’s great that he made them (and maybe this can give him some confidence to find something resembling good form going forward), generally Beverley is the substantially superior shooter and would be a preferred outlet in those spots.
The cockroach Clippers did ultimately make a game of it, cutting a deficit that was as large as 10 in the final frame down to 2 in the waning possessions before ultimately coming up short. But it was clear as the fourth quarter wore on that LA felt in their legs the weight of the three games they’ve played since Phoenix last had a game–George and Jackson both struggled to force defensive collapses with dribble drives, and they settled for a lot of bailout threes in the closing possessions instead of working to create good shots. For much of the second half, Phoenix consistently out-executed the Clippers and certainly left the game deserving the win, having created higher quality shots on the night.
But if you’re looking for reasons to be optimistic in the Clippers’ chances moving forward, they’re surely there. LA lost the 31 minutes where they played with a center by 11 points (Zubac 18 minutes, 0, and Cousins 13 minutes, -11) and won the remaining 17 non-center minutes by 5. If Morris is able to get some treatment on his knee and feel good to play normal minutes in game 2, LA will be able to stick to their preferred defensive look for a longer portion of the second half. When countering Ayton, the Clippers actually won the 15 Zubac vs Ayton minutes by 3 points, giving them a secondary look with additional size that seems viable, and they lost 5 Ayton vs Cousins minutes by 5 points–an unforced error by Ty Lue that is easily correctable going forward.
This game had 39 minutes of Paul George and Devin Booker sharing the court, 5 minutes of Booker on his own, and 4 minutes without either. The Clippers won the shared minutes by 1 point, lost the Booker-only minutes by 4, and played Phoenix even in the non-star minutes. With fresher legs for game 2 on Tuesday evening (LA gets a bonus extra half-day of rest because game 1 was early in the afternoon, and they get a true off day tomorrow without needing to travel), we can hopefully see George and Booker match minutes going forward. That difference likely would have maintained this game’s status as a coin flip instead of giving Phoenix a narrow but discernable upper hand.
But ultimately, two players who didn’t suit up tonight will define the trajectory of this series. There are no set return dates for either Chris Paul, who missed this game in accordance with the NBA’s health and safety protocols, or Kawhi Leonard, who suffered a knee sprain in the second round following an intentional foul by Jazz guard Joe Ingles late in a Clippers blowout win. Neither has been ruled out for Tuesday’s game 2 (Leonard did not travel with the team to Phoenix on Saturday, but could still theoretically join the team tomorrow), though we could very well watch a rematch of this game Tuesday night as both sides wait for their reinforcements. I expect Paul will be available earlier than Leonard, though nothing is certain with either case, so missing this chance to steal a coin flip win before being overmatched in potential future games when Paul is playing but Leonard is sidelined is particularly agonizing.
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