Join the 213Hoops community tonight for our Clippers vs Jazz pre-season game thread, as plays their final warm-up game before the regular season begins next week. The game is at 7:00pm Pacific Time on Fox Sports Prime Ticket and Fox Sports San Diego.
The Jazz, who blew a 3-1 lead to the Denver Nuggets before it was cool, are led by stars Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert… with the caveat that it’s pre-season, so you wouldn’t be surprised to see either guy sit out or at least play lower minutes than normal with lower intensity than we’ve come to expect from them. Utah has played two pre-season games so far, both wins against the Phoenix Suns, and has given relatively high (by pre-season standards) minutes to their starters in each. With this being their final chance to get live reps before they open their season next Wednesday against Portland, I’d expect more of the same tonight.
The Clippers have put up two unexciting pre-season performances so far against the Los Angeles Lakers, using the first half of each game as a testing ground for their rotation players to force live reps of new offensive plays and giving the second half to their developmental players and training camp invites. After releasing Ky Bowman, Jordan Ford, and Malik Fitts on Monday, only Rayjon Tucker remains on the outside looking in with this group.
The team currently has an open roster spot, but no money under the NBA’s hard cap with which to fill it, even on a minimum salary for Tucker. If he’s seriously in contention to make the team, it would likely have to be on a two-way contract at the expense of Amir Coffey. The 23-year-old Tucker, a 6’5″ wing with high-level athleticism and a defensive mindset, hasn’t done anything special in pre-season garbage time with LAC but has been impressive in practice sessions and was able to work his way into 20 appearances on a good Utah Jazz team last season after being picked up in December.
With just that one roster battle remaining, we’ll at the very least see a bit more of our regular Clippers tonight than we did in the first two games, as Ty Lue will have to field a fourth-quarter lineup without the players who were released this week. While it would be surprising to see the Clippers go full strength in an exhibition, look for them to show a little more of a normal rotation tonight, including having their starters play in the second half for the first time this pre-season.