The goal for the Clippers is to stay among the top six teams in the competitive Western Conference and avoid the NBA’s play-in tournament.
How the Clippers handle the difficult road ahead will determine their outcome.
They have 23 games remaining to make the playoffs a reality. They were unable to take a step forward Friday night, their turnovers and poor three-point shooting dooming them in a 106-102 loss to the Lakers at Crypto.com Arena.
Yet by the end of the night, the Clippers still held the sixth spot in the West, even though they had an identical 32-27 record as the surging Golden State Warriors.And the schedule doesn’t get any easier for the Clippers. They face the surging Lakers again on Sunday at Crypto.com Arena. The Clippers then travel to Phoenix for a game Tuesday before coming home for games against Detroit, New York and Sacramento.
All these pressure-packed games are against teams fighting for seeding in the standings.
“With the schedule, it’s more challenging. But we’re up for the challenge,” Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said. “So, it’s the tough part of our schedule. We play a lot of good teams, a lot of games in this last month and a half. We’re slowly starting to get healthy and the guys we acquired, we just got to continue to get them up to speed. But I like where we’re at and it’s in our hands. So, we’re in a good spot, we’re in a good place and now we just got to start building off of it.”
Those new guys are backup guards Ben Simmons and Bogdan Bogdanovic. But it’s stars such as Kawhi Leonard, James Harden, Norman Powell and Ivica Zubac who the Clippers will keep leaning onZubac was a force against the Lakers, producing a double-double with 27 points on 13-for-15 shooting and 16 rebounds.
Leonard was solid with 21 points. But James Harden was not in scoring 18. He was five for 22 from the field, had six turnovers and did not talk to the media after the game
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