OKLAHOMA CITY — When Clippers power forward Marcus Morris Sr. addressed the media in Salt Lake City following his team’s loss to the Utah Jazz on Wednesday night, he took some time to look ahead to the weekend.
“Just one of those games,” Morris said after the rematch from the 2021 postseason. “We go back to the drawing board, get the one on Saturday. Go back home.”
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Obviously, that was oversimplifying things in the midst of what has been a chaotic month in the NBA. But after a short-handed loss where the Clippers were at a logistical disadvantage on the road against the NBA’s best offense, the team had two days off to look forward to, and then come out against an Oklahoma City Thunder team that had also lost Wednesday night.
Of course, the Thunder loss was far more memorable. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, formerly of the Clippers, made a game-tying 3 from 30 feet away. Gilgeous-Alexander left 2.5 seconds on the clock, and New Orleans Pelicans point guard Devonte’ Graham made a 61-foot game-winning buzzer-beater despite having no timeouts.
The Clippers flew to Oklahoma City on Thursday and practiced on Friday. But shortly after shootaround Saturday morning, Morris was on his way back to Los Angeles to isolate after being placed in the league’s health and safety protocols. The Clippers would not get Paul George back due to a right elbow sprain that has kept him out since playing in Portland on Dec. 6. And Nicolas Batum would return from a right ankle sprain suffered in his return from health and safety protocols on Dec. 8, but would come off the bench behind Justise Winslow due to a minutes’ restriction.
Wins aren’t handed to you. You have to go get them. And there have been plenty of games this season when the Clippers snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. There are a number of comeback wins one can point to, but the first of the season came against the Thunder in LA; one that was somewhat tainted by the NBA’s Last Two-Minute report that suggested the Clippers benefited from multiple incorrect calls. Last Saturday, the Clippers needed a Reggie Jackson game winner to escape a matinee game against the Orlando Magic. And the game prior to that saw the Clippers nearly blow a 21-point second-half lead against a short-handed Boston Celtics team playing on the second night of a back-to-back, with turnovers by Jackson leading to multiple fast break points allowed.
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Sometimes, when games end in blowouts, you do as Morris said in Utah: go back to the drawing board. But blowout losses are blunt. The Clippers hadn’t been hurt this season yet.
They got hurt Saturday night.
Gilgeous-Alexander, traded from LA along with control of every Clippers first-round pick through 2026 in exchange for George, hit a game-winning buzzer-beating stepback 3 to give the Thunder a 104-103 victory.
View from the stands of Shai's game-winner…
🎥 @LawMurrayTheNUpic.twitter.com/4PQbZSBLoh
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) December 19, 2021
It was the first time a former Clippers player hit a buzzer-beating game-winner against the Clippers since Randy Foye did it in Denver in February 2014. Speaking of former Clippers, Gilgeous-Alexander marked the occasion with a dance that was a tribute to Lamar Odom from the 2003 offseason in New York in front of Jay-Z and LeBron James.
Shai said this is the “Lamar Odom” dance https://t.co/jfLx4oyGpl
— Andrew Schlecht (@AndrewKSchlecht) December 19, 2021
“Lamar Odom did a dance in like a summer league game, the exact dance, and me and Baze (Darius Bazley) thought it was so cool,” Gilgeous-Alexander said after the dagger. “But I told (Bazley) the first time I hit like my real game winner … I was going to do the dance. Then I forgot to do it, and then as soon as I seen Baze on the court, it came back to my head. … for us, it’s the Lamar Odom dance.”
It’s the first time the Clippers lost back-to-back games at the buzzer since the 2020 NBA restart in Florida. That’s when Luka Dončić ended Game 4 of the quarterfinals with a stepback shot over Jackson, and before that, Devin Booker made a contested shot over George in the seeding games. The defender on Gilgeous-Alexander’s shot, Batum, actually made a 3 with 33.8 seconds left that gave the Clippers a 103-99 lead.
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“He made a great shot,” Batum said of Gilgeous-Alexander. “When we switched, I anticipated a drive. But he had a big stepback and got me on the stepback. And he made a big shot. So congrats to him. Got to move on, that’s a tough one. Got to learn from it.”
For Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue, this game came down to “a tough shot at the end to win,” though he struck a positive tone overall.
“Nothing to improve, we played a good game,” Lue said. “We just got beat. You can play well sometimes and lose, and tonight was one of those nights. We played well enough to win, and we just lost the game on a last-second shot. So, just keep plugging away. Like I said, keep doing what we’re doing. Twenty-six assists, we only had 13 turnovers. So just continue to keep doing what we’ve been doing.”
This is an understandable assessment on a day when the team lost Morris before the game, never got George in the game, had Batum limited overall, and lost backup center Isaiah Hartenstein to an ankle sprain at the end of it.
But Lue’s players took this loss especially hard. They know that a result like this had mostly eluded them, but that the inconsistent level of play in certain categories set them up for a worst-case scenario.
“I don’t want to be cliché, but we didn’t lose on that,” Batum explained. “Of course, we lose on the last shot. But we made so many mistakes. We could do some stuff to don’t put yourself in that situation. But we had to make a stop at the end, we didn’t make it. I didn’t make it.”
I asked Batum to elaborate. He was the first, but not the only Clippers player who cited specific examples.
“They had 17 offensive rebounds,” Batum said, which was the second most the Clippers allowed this season and the most in a loss. “A ton of transition. We didn’t run back. I don’t know how much, but at least 15, 16 points off transition offense. I mean, if we clean that up, we have a good win tonight, we don’t put ourselves in that situation. I mean, tonight, it was just effort.”
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Luke Kennard, who scored a season-high 27 points and tied his career high with seven 3s for the second time this month, was visibly frustrated after the loss. And he didn’t mince words.
“We shouldn’t have lost that game,” Kennard said. “Plain and simple. We didn’t play as hard as them. They played a lot harder than us.”
Like Batum, Kennard had his own specific examples.
“Off of our free throw, they got layups off of that, and that’s just unacceptable,” Kennard said. “We know that. Happened multiple times. Not getting matched up, not being locked in, especially defensively.”
Kennard was referring to Thunder rookie Josh Giddey, who was struggling (eight points, 4-of-14 field goals) but had 18 rebounds from the shooting guard position and 10 assists. Here is one of those rebounds and assists after Terance Mann missed a free throw in the second half, resulting in a dunk by Luguentz Dort:
Two nights after Donovan Mitchell made all eight of his field goal attempts inside the 3-point line, Dort made his first six attempts inside the arc and finished with a game-high 29 points on 12-of-19 shooting from the field, including 4-of-8 3s. Even when the Clippers stepped up defensively after the second quarter (40.4 percent field goals for the Thunder in the second half after making 53.3 percent in the first half), they didn’t end enough possessions with rebounds.
“We talked about it at halftime, that we need to do better guarding the ball, we needed to do better helping each other,” said Mann, who played a game-high and season-high 40:36. “I feel like we did a great job of that in the second half. We forced them to miss a lot of shots, which came off long, which forced a lot of long rebounds which kind of hurt us.”
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The Clippers aren’t throwing each other under the bus. Winslow, in his first start of the season, had a chance to ice the game with two free throws following driving scores by Dort and Gilgeous-Alexander in the last 30 seconds of the game. Winslow missed both, setting up Gilgeous-Alexander’s game winner. But overall, in the last 2:37 of the game, Batum’s late 3 was the only made field goal by the Clippers. Batum’s 3 put the Clippers in free-throw icing mode, but the three possessions before that were ended by two missed shots from Jackson and an after-timeout turnover by Jackson.
“I thought he did a really good job of coming in, doing his job, playing hard and played well especially on the defensive end,” Kennard said of Winslow. “Starting on their best player and also hitting some nice shots. The free throws, it is what it is. There were so many things that put us in that position there at the end. Everybody was positive with him. He’s all right. Just got to move on from it.”
Moving on from this particular result is going to be necessary, but the results aren’t going anywhere. The Clippers have played 11 games against teams ranked 10th (the final Play-In Game spot) and 15th (last) in the Western Conference. In those 11 games, the Clippers are now 5-6. The Clippers will host the San Antonio Spurs on Monday night, a team that managed to win in Utah on Friday night despite allowing 126 points, before visiting the Sacramento Kings again on Wednesday. The Kings, of course, have already ensured that the Clippers will not win that regular-season series after two wins over the Clippers two weeks ago. The Clippers get three days off going into Christmas, but then play a five-in-seven set that takes them into the New Year.
Even if the Clippers get back George, who embraced Gilgeous-Alexander after the postgame news conference in the hallway, they likely won’t have Morris due to health and safety protocols. The Clippers will need to control what they can control. That’s effort, like rebounding and transition defense. But that’s also awareness, like taking care of the basketball and finishing fast breaks. As of now, the Clippers have left wins on the table against middling teams in a soft part of the schedule and haven’t learned from results that could have gone poorly.
Gilgeous-Alexander’s shot could have missed, and the Clippers could go home triumphantly. But he didn’t, and the reality of just how much they need to clean up should stick with them perhaps a little more now.
“It’s just tough,” Mann said. “Guys in and out. I am not making excuses. But it is just hard as a team to get a groove, get something going, get the same looks every night. It is not always like that. But we fought hard today. We fought hard the last game also. I feel like we are still heading in the right direction, though.”
(Photo of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s game-winning shot: Zach Beeker / NBAE via Getty Images)
