INGLEWOOD — Time is running down for the Clippers to make a playoff push. They have 18 regular-season games left to figure out their team chemistry, get healthy and move up in the Western Conference standings. It’s a big ask, but James Harden believes, with his help and some outside factors, the Clippers have a chance to secure a playoff spot and avoid the Play-In Tournament.
Sunday night’s overtime win against the Sacramento Kings was the next step forward, Harden said. It was the team’s third consecutive victory after their sixth three-game losing streak of the season.
First, though, the Clippers need a full roster. Injuries to Norman Powell (hamstring) and Ben Simmons (knee) and a minutes restriction on Kawhi Leonard have hampered their recent efforts to stay within the top six teams in the West. Neither Powell nor Simmons are expected to join the team on their three-game trip that begins Tuesday at the New Orleans Pelicans.
In less than a week, the Clippers (35-29) dropped from sixth place to their current No. 8, and sixth-place Golden State (36-28) – 11-2 since Jimmy Butler’s debut – is threatening to distance itself from the pack. Teams that finish 7-10 compete for the final two spots in the eight-team playoff bracket.
“It’s forming the way it needs to form,” Harden said. “Hopefully in the near future we get Norman (Powell) back and we get Ben (Simmons) back, and we get a full roster, making a playoff pitch.
“I’m trying to do something special with this team, but we haven’t had that yet this year. So, I think that’s the most exciting part, that Kawhi is fully healthy. He played 40 minutes tonight, and our team, we have a lot of depth and a lot of guys who can play multiple positions and do a lot of different things on both ends of the ball.”
And Harden finds that exciting and promising and time pressing.
“We still gotta keep pushing away. I think they said we got 19 games left and every game is crucial for real,” he said.
ON THE INJURED LIST
Coach Tyronn Lue stiffly stepped off the interview platform before Sunday’s victory, the only hint that something was bothering him. He didn’t say anything about experiencing back pain or that he would not be on the bench.
Yet, shortly before tipoff, the team announced that Lue had gone home because of discomfort and would be replaced by assistant Brian Shaw. There wasn’t clear after the game whether Lue would accompany the team on their three-game trip.
“Ty is tough as nails, and for him to sit out a game you know it has to be something that is really, really bothering him,” Shaw said. “So, we were in constant communication with him throughout the game and the guys, they stayed with it tonight in a game that was tough.”
Shaw said the coaches talked to Lue on FaceTime after the game and felt a pang of concern for their head coach.
“He was watching at home … and he looked like he was having a heart attack feeling the same way that we felt out there not knowing how it was going to go,” Shaw said of a game they won, 111-110, when Leonard’s overtime buzzer-beater bounced in. “But he was happy for us and we’re all wishing that the pain that he’s dealing with in his back goes away and we can get back ASAP.”
CLIPPERS AT PELICANS
When: Tuesday, 5 p.m. PT
Where: Smoothie King Center, New Orleans
TV/radio: KTLA (Ch. 5)/570 AM
