The roster used by the Clippers was unstoppable to start Wednesday’s first quarter, clinical to end the second and dominant in the second half during a 134-101 victory against San Antonio.
There’s no guarantee that roster will look the same when these teams meet again Thursday night.
With two open roster spots and championship ambitions, the Clippers are expected to remain active leading up to Thursday’s noon PDT deadline for trades, even if the team has been said to feel largely content with the team’s makeup as is. Their front office has made two trades the day of the deadline each of the past two seasons and this year, league observers have said help beyond the perimeter has been the primary target. Their search could extend beyond the deadline based on options available in the buyout market.
Any looming possibility of changes, however, certainly did not distract the players in the first of their two matchups against the Spurs.
The Clippers followed an 11-2 start with a 12-2 run, and after their 18-point lead was trimmed to five in the second quarter, their 7-0 finish to the second quarter pushed their buffer to 14 at halftime. The Spurs never cut their deficit to less than 10 again en route to a third consecutive loss.
Even with Paul George missing all six of his three-point attempts, the Clippers, who have won three in a row, still made 53% of their shots from deep, with Marcus Morris making five of his seven on his way to 20 points. It marked a league-high ninth time this season the Clippers have made more than 50% of their three-point tries.
Kawhi Leonard scored 25 points and Lou Williams scored 16 points to reach 15,000 points for his career.
The Clippers (29-16) continued their trend of holding on to the ball by committing only eight turnovers. Meanwhile San Antonio (22-19) — the league’s best at limiting turnovers entering Wednesday — turned the ball over 16 times, leading to 28 Clippers points.
The surgical second-half rout came two days after a 22-point rally to beat Atlanta sparked by coach Tyronn Lue’s decision to bench his starters en masse after a sluggish start after halftime. After one such reserve, Luke Kennard, answered with a 20-point performance, Lue said the guard who had fallen out of the rotation had “earned something” — and that meant first-quarter minutes Wednesday. Kennard was inserted alongside Nicolas Batum and Terance Mann, the pair of reserves who, along with Kennard, helped spark the comeback.
Kennard finished with six points in 13 minutes, while Mann had seven points and Batum 13.
The wire-to-wire suggested the Clippers had followed their coach’s lead and focused only on the game instead of the potential for a changed roster only hours later.
“I’m a person who played the game and been traded a lot — a few times, so just don’t speak about it, just approach the game, and whatever happens is gonna happen,” Lue said before tipoff.
The showcase of last year’s deadline was a three-team trade that netted starting forward Morris. There’s no indication whether the Clippers will be able to pull off a move Thursday that could shake up their rotation to that degree.
Though they own a slew of second-round picks, they don’t own their first-round pick outright until 2027 and their willingness to part with other pieces of a roster that has produced the league’s fourth-best net rating not believed to be strong, as one league source said this month. As the Clippers left the All-Star break, the belief was that the team would count on better health and moves it could make around the margins to set up their playoff roster.
As the Clippers’ most promising young player, 23-year-old center Ivica Zubac has heard his name in trade rumors. He underscored his value again Wednesday, with 14 points, eight rebounds and two highlight-worthy dunks starting in place of the injured Serge Ibaka. Lue said he did not know the timeline for a potential return for Ibaka (lower back tightness) and guard Patrick Beverley (right knee).
Zubac said this week he didn’t sense a tense atmosphere around the team as the deadline approached.
“If I didn’t get on social media I wouldn’t really know it’s the trade deadline,” he said. “It is what it is. We all know how NBA works. It’s a business so there’s nothing you can do about it.”
