Don’t exhale yet.
With two games to go, the Clippers are 75% into the most grueling road trip of the season.
Not their toughest road trip. The toughest.
The ongoing eight-game, 13-day odyssey that began in Denver on Jan. 19, ends with a back-to-back set, starting with another early affair Sunday in Charlotte before the final stop Monday in Indianapolis.
They will have touched down for brief stays in the Northeast, the Southeast and Midwest in what is the longest trip that, yes, the team has undertaken since the Clippers played nine consecutive road games in 2005.
It’s also the longest road trip any NBA team is taking in 2021-22.
And that’s just the half of it.
Although the Clippers – who are 3-3 since they left L.A. – aren’t exactly battling blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their back, they’ve been doing it almost entirely from behind and, somewhat connectedly, without injured All-Stars Kawhi Leonard (ACL) and Paul George (elbow), as well as veteran scorer Marcus Morris Sr. (personal reasons).
Tyronn Lue’s team trailed by 24 points in a 102-101 win in Philadelphia; by 14 in their 110-102 loss in New York; by 35 in the historic 116-115 victory in Washington D.C.; by 14 in their 111-102 win in Orlando; and by 23 on Friday in a 121-114 loss in Miami.
The only time they didn’t face a double-digit deficit was in Denver, where they fell behind by nine – in a game they lost in overtime, 130-128.
And, yes, “it’s exhausting,” Lue said after the Clippers’ runway ended before they could complete their latest spirited comeback on Friday against the Eastern Conference-leading Heat.
“Oh, I’m tired of it,” Lue said, on Zoom. “But our guys, we do what we can. We scrap and compete and when we find the right combinations, we stick with it and they stick with it as well, knowing that we can come back. … It’s not something that we want to continue to keep doing, but when you’re short-handed, you gotta do what you have to do to try to make a game of it.”
With their dogged determination and flair for the dramatic, the Clippers might be keeping their audience from tuning out, but still, they’re human, and the workload has been taxing.
Battled hard, back at it on Sunday in Charlotte. pic.twitter.com/zlloFulqAw
— LA Clippers (@LAClippers) January 29, 2022
Justise Winslow joined Kennard and Eric Bledsoe on the court for the duration of the fourth quarter on Friday, when his left calf began to complain.
“I mean, I was cramping,” said Winslow, who had 10 points, 10 rebounds and five assists and was on the court for the final 17:37 of Friday’s loss.
“But basketball should be hard, you should be sweating, you should be wanting Gatorade, you shouldn’t be able to play all the minutes straight like I did – I don’t know how I did it. My leg was hurting a bit, but man, this is what you want as a competitor, to be in these close games, to be able to fight and claw back. But it’s definitely an exhausting sport.”
Guard Luke Kennard has been leading the chase lately. In the past three games, the Clippers have outscored their opponents by 56 points in the 93 minutes he’s been on the court; he’s connected on 12 of the 22 3-pointers he’s taken and traversed seven miles in that span, according to NBA tracking data.
“We always believe, but you know, it’s tough, getting down that much in games,” said Kennard, who’s played 31 of 36 possible fourth-quarter minutes in the Clippers’ past three games – minutes in which he’s exercised impressive focus, hitting 10 of his 14 shots.
“I mean, it wears us down,” Kennard said. “It’s been a long trip. It’s been an exhausting trip. But we’re going to keep fighting. And hopefully, these last few games, we can start the game a little better and everybody just be locked in in the first half.”
CLIPPERS (25-26) at HORNETS (28-22)
When: Sunday, 10 a.m. PT
Where: Spectrum Center, Charlotte, North Carolina
TV/Radio: Bally Sports SoCal / 570 AM