The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Lue would prefer no play-in
LOS ANGELES » One thing that Tyronn Lue’s team is not going to do, is complain.
Not often, anyway.
That chin-up, stiff-upper-lip forward march has helped his Clippers navigate challenges big and small these past two seasons.
Take last season’s stringent COVID-19 health and safety measures: “No excuses,” Lue said then. “Whatever the NBA puts in place, that’s what we have to do, especially to stay safe.”
How about losing Kawhi Leonard to what turned out to be a torn anterior cruciate ligament midway through the second round of the Western Conference playoffs, and then having to play a grueling every-other-day schedule through Game 6 of the conference finals without him?
“We’re not going to complain,” Lue said. “We’re going to have a next-man-up mentality. I know it’s cliche, but that really is our mentality.”
And this season, when the Clippers have been without Leonard — the five-time All-star and twotime NBA Finals MVP — and also his co-star Paul George. The seventime All-star wing played just 26 games before being sidelined by a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right shooting elbow.
Lue’s message: “No one’s going to feel sorry for us.”
What about the schedule, which came stuffed with five five-inseven-days sets of games — more than any team in the NBA beside Portland? Surely that warranted a peep of protest?
Lue offered acknowledgment, at least: “We’re the only team (but Portland) with five five-in-sevens.” Also a quick caveat: “But we don’t complain about the schedule.”
OK, so what about the play-in game, likely against Minnesota or maybe Denver — whichever of those teams winds up as the No. 7 seed that gets a date with No. 8, which figures to be the Clippers?
The NBA’S gambit to pump suspense into the season when there
Today: otherwise wouldn’t be, does that ultimately devalue some of the resilience that’s been required en route to a top-eight finish?
“Now that we’re eighth, I don’t like it!” Lue snorted, joking, sort of, as he walked a philosophical line. “If we were ninth or 10th, I would love it.”
The play-in tournament looms as an admittedly undesirable tightrope for Lue. He’s been lauded for his in-game adjustments, but he did really great work last postseason steering the Clippers back twice from 0-2 series deficits in the first and seconds rounds — comebacks that have happened only 31 times in NBA history.
“Go down 0-2 this time,” Lue said, noting the obvious, “you’re done.”
The seventh and eighth seeds will have to hope that the old balldon’t-lie adage pertains to the season-on-the-line single game too, although it’s the possibility of an upset that creates the desired intrigue.
The Nos. 7- and 8-seeded teams will face each other, with the winner earning the seventh seed and the loser facing the winner of the game between the Nos. 9 and 10 seeds. Then, the winner of that second play-in game will get the eighth and final playoff spot.
Conceivably, the 10th-seeded team (as it stands Thursday morning, the 28-41 New Orleans Pelicans) could win twice and knock off the seventh seed (currently the 41-30 Minnesota Timberwolves).
“I mean, I don’t know. Whatever’s best,” said Lue, with a nod to Commissioner Adam Silver, holding the reins. “Mr. Silver, he understands whatever’s best for the league and for us all to continue making good money and growing the game, then I’m all for it. So it is what it is.
“But this year, I would love to be the top eight seeds and kind of go from there.”
Terance Mann — taking his cues from Lue, like all his teammates — tried to remain philosophical.
“It is what it is,” he said, but at the same time: “It kind of sucks.
“I mean, it’s a tough situation to be in, especially when you fought all year to be in the eighth place and make the playoffs and now you gotta try and play in to make the playoffs. But we’re gonna go out there and try to win that game and get seventh.”
Crying foul
What about when whistles blow the wrong way?
“You know, they (officials) do their best,” Lue said last year. “I just don’t want to be one of those guys complaining on the sideline ’cause now your whole team’s complaining and you just kind of lose focus on the game.”
Nonetheless, the officiating was a focus of the Clippers after Wednesday’s 103-100 loss to Toronto, a hard-fought affair that featured several disputed calls and non-calls, including the foul charged to Mann with 15.7 seconds left in the game — and just 4.6 seconds left on the Raptors’ shot clock as they scrambled to create a shot.
He was whistled for the foul when he and Fred Vanvleet came in contact near the sideline after Mann appeared to deflect the ball off of Vanvleet.
Reggie Jackson, usually so was especially perturbed.
“Iffy call on the side, especially after the ball is deflected — 50-50 ball — so it was frustrating,” Jackson said. “That was just very frustrating, at the end.”
Jackson went on to answer a question about what stood out about the game by complaining about the official who made the late call on Mann: “Natalie Sago, is that who stands out?”
And he continued: “We were doing everything we could, we tried, but their best player made it difficult on us tonight, so Nat is great... so hat’s off to her, hat’s off to them.”
UP NEXT Clippers at Jazz, 6 p.m., BSSC
jovial,