INGLEWOOD — Heard it first from a former college basketball coach: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
Don’t know why anyone would want to eat an elephant, but I can appreciate imagery more colorful than the old “one game at a time” cliché.
Unfortunately for the 13-22 Clippers, they’re not looking at an elephant. They’re working their way through a task the size of a brontosaurus. Or maybe something even bigger – Jupiter?
That’s not a job many would have the appetite for, but the members of coach Tyronn Lue’s team seem legitimately undeterred and undaunted.
“Everybody’s going to be surprised where we end up at the end of the season,” promised rookie guard Kobe Sanders before introducing himself to NBC’s audience by dropping 20 points in a surprise start against the Golden State Warriors on Monday in a game at Intuit Dome that the Clippers won 103-102.
One game at a time, one win at a time, one bite at a time. The Clippers are 7-1 since Lue did the math aloud Dec. 20: “Our main goal,” he said when his team was 6-21, “is to go 35-20 the rest of the way.”
So, get to .500. Finish 41-41, a record that last season would’ve earned them the ninth seed and a possibly a couple of Play-In games for the right to face the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in a best-of-seven first-round playoff series.
Such a modest reward for such a Herculean ask, especially considering the state of the squad.
The oldest team in the league, the Clippers were slow and out of sorts – and, yes, undermanned, hurt by early injuries to Kawhi Leonard, Bradley Beal, Bogdan Bogdanovic and Derrick Jones Jr., the latter three of whom are still sidelined, dealing with setbacks that will keep them out for weeks or the season.
The Clippers were playing so badly the on-court product was distracting from the off-court drama, the NBA’s investigation into alleged salary cap circumvention and the very public middle-of-the-night breakup with retiring franchise icon Chris Paul.
When Lue plugged in coordinates for 41-41 that day, the Clippers were averaging 110.9 points per game, the third-fewest in the league, while giving up 117.
But since then, Kawhi Leonard has been magnificent, averaging 35 points on 49.7% shooting, including 37.3% on nearly 10 3-point attempts per game. That’s helped punch up the Clippers’ scoring output to 116.1 points per game.
Most importantly, the defense the Clippers relied on last season to wrap up the fifth seed at 50-32, it’s showing its teeth again. In the past eight games, their opponents are scoring the fewest points in the league (106.6).
It helped, actually, that the NBA Cup went on without them. That opened up some important practice time to work on assistant coach Jeff Van Gundy’s defensive schemes, which, Lue said, have been simplified and better tailored for this season’s personnel. “That’s been a lot better for the guys,” Lue said. “Easier to lock in defensive and not play in thought.” And those guys, they’ve been staying after practice, fine-tuning, he said.
We all know the refrain “Defense Wins Championships” – but it can also win respectability. And it might even keep the defending champion Thunder from drafting a lottery pick next summer, considering they hold the unprotected rights to the Clippers’ next-first round selection, continued payment for the 2019 deal that sent reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to OKC and brought Paul George to L.A. to team with Leonard.
But defense also requires players not be on the fence. They have to be all in, they have to want to work. The NBA is a make-or-miss league, and a show-don’t-tell league, so it’s the Clippers’ defensive activity that’s making me believe them when they say they’re not sweating the steep climb it’ll take to get out of the rabbit hole they got lost in at the start of the season.
“Honestly,” said forward John Collins, “not to say we didn’t care, but it’s just that air of confidence. We knew we had enough.”
“It’s such a long season,” third-year guard Jordan Miller said. “You’re gonna have a streak where you don’t play well, so hopefully we got ours out early.”
“Sometimes,” said forward Nicolas Batum, “you just need one game to get back to it, just one game. So we won one and we’re on a roll now.”
One win (against the Lakers), one bite – and rolling. On a roll … and nine games under .500. One of the NBA’s hottest teams … and still out of Play-In position.
Big in-game comebacks are exhilarating – and exhausting. Wouldn’t a huge in-season comeback wear a team out, too? Especially one on the older, injury-prone side?
Oh, but that’s something to chew on later. Much later.
Don’t know who’d bet on a team in this situation, but I appreciate a group of professionals who have pride in themselves and their work – and who might just be as nutty as their coach to believe they really can resuscitate a lost season.
After all, when his team was 5-13 and things were going to get worse before they got better, Lue assured me, like he was assuring his players: “Things will get better. We’ll be OK.”
And they have, and they’re getting there, one game at a time.