LOS ANGELES — The Clippers are human. They get hurt, get sick, get gassed and, definitely, they get outrebounded.
Just as assuredly: They care.
That was evident in Tuesday’s bewildering lockdown comeback, unlike any game in the NBA in two decades – their 87-85 victory over the Denver Nuggets going down as the first time in 20 years that a team has successfully rallied from a 25-point deficit without scoring even 90 points.
Afterward, the coaches on either side of the comeback/collapse placed their fingers on the how of it.
“After being down 25, they didn’t roll over,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “They fought. They competed. Ty Lue found a group of guys that was willing to go out there and play the game the right way and (it) gave them life.”
Lue concurred: “You know, our guys on the floor, we’re gonna scrap and compete every night, and that’s what I like about this team. You’re not gonna make shots every night. But if you play at a high level defensively, you’re gonna be in every game and that’s kind of what happened tonight.”
That defense, though. That scrappy, competitive D.
Lue’s Clippers – who have been one of the NBA’s most decimated teams even in what’s been a turbulent, trying season league-wide – are 21-21 and among the lowest-ranked teams in plenty of categories.
They’re scoring just 104.7 points per game (26th in the NBA). They’re averaging 43.5 rebounds (25th) and just 8.8 offensive boards (29th), while their opponents are pulling down 48 rebounds (third-most), including a league-high 12.1 offensive boards per game. (Fittingly, Denver dominated the boards on Tuesday: 51-36.)
The Clippers also are giving up 49.5 points in the paint per game (28th), and they’re scoring only 9.1 second-chance points (30th) while allowing their opponents 14.6 second-chance points per game (fifth-most). And so forth…
And yet – and yet! – their 106.2 defensive rating (how many points teams score per 100 possessions) registers as the NBA’s fourth-best mark.
Performances like Tuesday’s at Crypto.com Arena – where they held the Nuggets to their lowest scoring total this season, including just 19 points in the fourth quarter – paint the picture.
Facing a 59-34 deficit with 7:04 to play in the third period, the Clippers got small and switchy with a lineup of Amir Coffey, Terance Mann, Eric Bledsoe, Nicolas Batum and Marcus Morris – none of whom stand taller than 6-foot-9.
And that group converged on reigning MVP Nikola Jokic. They fronted him, they double-teamed him, they rotated to disrupt his pick-and-rolls, doing anything they could to deny him touches.
“I mean, they were blocking, they were switching 1 through 5 and they were really aggressive,” said Jokic, who scored 21 points and missed only five shots, but was held to fewer than 15 field-goal attempts for just the ninth time this season.
“The guards, they played really good, especially the second half,” the dynamic Serbian center added. “They were really aggressive, especially defensively.”
“Defense saved us tonight,” said Batum, noting that the Clippers’ undersized defensive scheme delivered an outsized impact, all but short-circuiting the Nuggets’ offense, tightening the screws, sapping their confidence.
“The defense did that to them today,” Batum said. “Like, especially when you play small, you can switch one through five. I really tried to make Jokic work, make his life (hard) … He still got 21, 13 (rebounds) and eight (assists) … Still pretty good.
“In the second half, he got a couple good passes to (Aaron) Gordon on cuts, but I thought we really tried to make his life difficult (so he didn’t) really have an impact the last five minutes. Try to let get the other guys to make plays. And they didn’t really make plays at the end, and that was good.”
A good win, going down as the largest regular-season comeback at home, in fact. And, the Clippers hope, a good omen before they head out on the road for a grueling rest of the month.
Before January is over, they will traverse more than 8,000 miles and play nine of their next 10 games on the road – starting Thursday in New Orleans, where they’ll try to beat the Pelicans for the first time in three tries this season.
CLIPPERS (21-21) at PELICANS (15-26)
When: Thursday, 5 p.m.
Where: Smoothie King Center, New Orleans
TV/Radio: Bally Sports SoCal / 570 AM