A good portion of us woke up Wednesday morning and opened our phones to an overabundance of NBA chaos. Mostly lousy news — coach firings, GM firings, a player having entered the league’s health and safety protocols, etc. Amongst those headlines was likely the most dreadful story of the day, surely for Clippers fans, which was the news that Kawhi Leonard would be out indefinitely after injuring his knee towards the end of Game 4. The Clips getting a bad injury break at the most crucial time of the season is certainly par for the course regarding the franchise’s historically poor luck. Still, it’s now opened the door for the Clippers to get reacquainted with the “next man up” mentality that has primarily defined them for much of this season.
Suppose you’ve followed the Clippers closely throughout the season. In that case, you might be familiar with the fragmented edition of the team known as the “Canoes,” a name dubbed by the Clipset Podcast’s Brian Cullen and Joseph Raya-Ward. The Canoes had plenty of moments during the regular season — a few wins against Miami, a Memphis win, and a second-half track-down of the Atlanta Hawks, to name a few — that fit the billing of “next man up.” Down one star, two stars, multiple starters, or whatever the situation may have been at the time, the team was able to log important minutes and get in plenty of reps during the truncated 2020-2021 season. It’s had carryover to this point in the postseason. And it’ll need to stay that way with the status of Leonard still unclear.
In arguably the Clippers’ biggest game of the season, some Canoe-regulars were able to showcase their values as the “next man up” who is ready to fill a role. Terance Mann moved into the starting lineup in place of the injured Kawhi Leonard despite having fallen out of Lue’s playoff rotation earlier in the series. Luke Kennard, who was primarily a disappointment throughout the 72 game regular season, led all bench players in minutes played and points scored in Game 5. And Patrick Beverley, a Canoe as of late, re-emerged as a defensive pest following the Mavs series in which he caught DNP’s. However, the most important to step up to the plate was somebody who’d been doing it all season long.
Paul George tapped into a familiar state of mind. He delivered his best game as a Los Angeles Clipper, hopefully putting to rest any outrageous and false narratives that followed him. “I’ve been in Indiana where I had to lead a franchise,” said George during his post-game media availability. “That’s really the mindset that I came out with…I just dug into a place where I’ve been already in my career.”
It would have been understandable for the Clippers to have laid an egg on Wednesday night and readied themselves for a full capacity Staples Center on Friday after having had to deal with the emotions of losing their star player. Yet, Ty Lue’s process and the team’s competitive spirit once again showed up tremendously in the bright lights of the NBA playoffs — something that has grown to become the norm for Lue’s Clippers. “When things get tough, we come together,” said Lue after the Game 5 victory. “That’s the kind of culture I wanted to establish here.”
The culture has been well-established, and the Clips have a unique opportunity to make history in a manner that is only fitting of the Clippers. Not the higher-seeded Clippers of the Orlando Bubble. Not the pre-season championship favorites of 2019-2020. And not Lob City. Instead, the “next man up” Clippers have a chance to make their first-ever conference finals in the same manner in which they’d failed back in 2015.
As Terance Mann put it, “Game 6 is gonna be tough…We just gotta stay locked in and do what we do.”