Following yet another painful season ending for the Los Angeles Clippers, head coach Ty Lue erased the swirling speculations around the partnership of him and the club as they now face a major offseason.
“Yes, Sir,” Lue briefly said if he expects himself to be back as the team’s head coach next season despite rumors of potential exit.
Lue’s three-year tenure so far as the Clippers’ bench boss has been generating plenty of enticing narratives. Since acquiring the team’s head coaching keys in 2020, the club has been either coming up short or facing such unavailability disappointments, mainly from their top two stars in Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, which ultimately hinders them to complete that quest for the elusive championship.
And this year, the injury dry spell persisted at their camp. Leonard and George, both out because of their respective knee sprains, can only observe at the sidelines and watch Los Angeles’ 2022-23 campaign come down crumbling on Game 5 of their first-round series against the Phoenix Suns this Tuesday.
As much as the entire season was troubling for the team as a whole, Lue also experienced a bit of hardships of his own regarding the death of his family members. But for him, he and the Clippers can only look at the bright side of their uncertain situation: The entire club got an ample opportunity to take a rest and be ready for the next season.
“It’s always in the back of your minds like ‘What if?’, you know? It’s easy to say whatever because a lot of guys get hurt,” Lue said following L.A.’s 136-130 elimination loss. “Our luck in the last three years and if you look back to my first year taking over, we did some really good things and Kawhi tears his ACL and he misses the whole next season.
“But we haven’t lost a series with our whole team and so that’s encouraging. I think it just take some time and let our coaches get a break, let everybody get a break, just reflect on the season and then come back. Just try to be better than we were this year.”
It’s been two years have passed since a complete Clippers team managed to get over the hump and win a series. It took them seven games to thrash Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks in their heated first-round matchup. They even managed to make it through as deep as their first conference finals in franchise history, but only came up short against a Suns team that outgunned them and capitalized Leonard’s eventual ACL injury.
This year, the Clippers got no choice but to play as an undermanned squad yet again, and having no such chance to offer a frightening challenge against the Suns that boasts Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Chris Paul as early as the first round. But for the previous games of the series that both Leonard and George out, Lue is nothing but proud of the effort that his team has shown amid the towering odds.
“Our two best players got hurt. Take both Steph [Curry] and Klay [Thompson] off the Golden State. Take [Devin] Booker and KD off this [Phoenix] team. Greek Freak was out two games [against the Miami Heat]. You know? Take your two best players off in any team in the league and see if they can win in the playoffs. No let downs,” said Lue. “Like I said I’m proud of every guy in that locker room scrapped and competed every night. That’s all you can ask for when you’re shorthanded.”
“You take the two best players off anybody’s team, they’re not gonna win. I don’t care how you look at it. They’re not going to do it.”
