The LA Clippers fell 125-122 to the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday night at Crypto.com Arena, but head coach Tyronn Lue focused less on the standings and more on his team’s fight.
“Kawhi’s been dealing with some left ankle soreness so it got stiff on him. So we got him out and JC is still being evaluated,” Lue said postgame.
Kawhi Leonard scored 31 points on 11-of-19 shooting before exiting with 5:10 left, while John Collins finished with 12 points in 16 minutes before suffering a facial injury.
Despite losing Leonard late, Lue pointed to the group’s response.
“You saw it. That’s who we are,” he said. “This group, we’re going to compete. We going to fight every night. And that doesn’t look like a f*cking team that’s trying to lose to me. Like, we’re going to scrap every night.”
The Clippers dropped to 27-28, remaining 10th in the Western Conference, but they had a chance to tie in the final seconds after Nicolas Batum’s steal.
“JC goes down, Kawhi goes out. Benn fouls out,” Lue said, referencing Bennedict Mathurin, who had 26 points and 14 free-throw attempts before fouling out with 1:49 left. “And guys are still scrabbling and competing. Had a chance to tie it up with a shot at the end. So I mean that’s who we are.”
Los Angeles shot 45-for-82 from the field and 24-for-29 at the line, but went 8-for-21 from 3-point range. The Lakers countered with 17 triples and 31 assists, led by Luka Doncic’s 38 points and 11 assists.
Lue also addressed the stop-and-start nature of the game, which featured frequent whistles.
“Just got to play through it,” he said. “Keep competing, keep your head, just, you got to get through it.”
He then referenced the challenge of guarding elite shot creators.
“When you’re foul baiting the whole game and we run into it every night, and so it just, it’s tough,” Lue said. “Like these guys are already great players and so it’s just tough to stop them at that point, but we did everything we could.”
The Clippers were on the second night of a back-to-back, yet closed a 15-point deficit and trimmed the margin to three in the final minute after consecutive buckets from Derrick Jones Jr.
“If teams are going to play against us, they’re going to be in for a dog fight every night,” Lue said.
The Clippers return home still battling for positioning in a crowded Western Conference race, with the margin between the sixth seed and the 10th seed sitting at fewer than four games.
