LOS ANGELES — Maybe this should be considered a warning.
Kawhi Leonard had been saying it for a while, during the recent Grammy trip: His Clippers have been letting their talent carry them along on their journey in pursuit of the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference. Monday night they ran into another contender, and the Minnesota Timberwolves bruised them, winning 121-100 and outscoring the home team 59-36 over the last 18½ minutes of the game.
The Clippers could have moved back into first place in the West, but instead dropped to third, 1½ games behind the Timberwolves, a half-game behind Oklahoma City and six percentage points ahead of Denver. There are still 30 games left in the regular season – heck, the Clippers still have one more game, Wednesday night against the Golden State Warriors in San Francisco, before the All-Star break – so it’s still too soon to jump to any sort of conclusions.
But when there are trends, it’s best to confront them quickly and directly.
“We’ve been kind of winning off talent, you know,” Leonard said. “When you’re playing better teams, (defenders) are in the passing lanes. Those isolation shots, those misses get louder.
“So, like Coach was saying, we’ve got to do a better job of listening to him and trying to execute.”
Ty Lue, the aforementioned coach, noted that while the Clippers led 53-50 at halftime, that was due to a 20-6 run at the end of the half and particularly back-to-back 3-pointers by Paul George and James Harden in the final 25.2 seconds. The flaws were there. The Clippers were having difficulty at both ends against Minnesota bigs Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert – a 64-42 edge in points in the paint on the night spoke volumes – and the ball wasn’t moving on the offensive end the way it does when they’re playing well.
“Just physicality and attention to detail, they were better,” Lue said.
“You know, if we’re not making quick decisions, playing the game the right way, they’re gonna make you look bad offensively. And that’s what they did, you know, for the whole game. You know I thought their length bothered us, like us holding the ball and being stagnant really hurt us. And if we’re not going to (move the ball) side to side and make quick decisions, they’re the number one defensive team in the league for a reason. So you got to make quick decisions, be smart about it. And you definitely can’t turn the ball over like we did to start the third quarter (two turnovers and two misses on the first four possessions).”
Ivica Zubac, on a minutes restriction in his return from injury, played 22:36. Mason Plumlee played 8:55 and Daniel Theis 4:54, and the Clippers used small lineups for a quarter of the night, with Lue searching for answers as the night went on. Towns finished with 24 points in 27:02, Gobert had 17 points and 10 rebounds, five on the offensive glass, in 33:21. And Anthony Edwards (23 points), Nickell Alexander-Walker (15) and Jaden McDaniels (11) seemed to be treating Clippers defenders like blue pylons for much of the night, among the Timberwolves who were sashaying through the lane at will.
Was this a wake-up call?
“Yeah I hope so,” Lue said. “We’ve been talking about it and we just gotta do it more often, more consistent. I think we have some good one-on-one players. But at the end of the day, you just got to be more consistent, you know, getting to the second and third actions like we have done (before). Tonight was just a tough game for us.”
Before the game, Lue made the point that his players shouldn’t wait for the perfect shot against a team this big and this good defensively.
“Going back to our first game (against Minnesota), we turned down a lot of good shots,” he said. “And when you play against a good defensive team, if you don’t take the first open shot, you know the best shot, then you’re going to get a worse shot later on in the shot clock. And so we didn’t do a good job of taking our first available shot. … (And) the last thing is making quick decisions. You can’t hold it and allow them to load up because they’re so big and have so much lift, it’s hard to get into gaps and seams. So you got to make quick decisions, either shoot it, drive it or move it. So we got to be better with that tonight.”
They weren’t.
The Clippers have won 32 of their last 41 to put themselves around the top of the conference. But a loss in Cleveland during the Grammy trip – their only loss on that seven-game journey – exposed some of the issues against size. And they’re now 0-2 against the Timberwolves, losing 109-105 in Minneapolis in January.
“Our last four games (wins at Atlanta and against Detroit, and losses to New Orleans and now Minnesota) have been up and down, the ball kind of sticky,” Leonard said, referring to the lack of ball movement. “Obviously, those guys do have a great presence in the paint. But … I think it’s with us, you know what I mean? We gotta be better at driving for another player and just getting open shots.
“… I don’t think it’s a wake-up call game. I think, you know, there’s going to be games like this moving forward as well. I mean, that’s up to y’all to write about. But like I said, we have to look at what we’re doing, the things we’re not doing well, and trying to get better at it before it starts getting real.”
The potential is there.
“We’re right there,” Leonard said. “We’ve been winning games, as everybody’s seen. And like I said before, there’s ways for us to get better, and that’s what’s scary. … Now is the time to kind of turn it around.”
And while Lue can state his case – and, as we’ve noted, he’s pretty good at the NBA’s version of speaking truth to power, being pointed when necessary with his players – making those changes is ultimately the players’ responsibility.
“We’re playing the game,” Leonard said. “So we have to do it.”
jalexander@scng.com