Lue, Clippers Vanquish French Quarter Demons, Clobber Pelicans
LA Clippers coach Tyronn Lue finally got his first-ever victory in New Orleans.
Never is a long time.
It’s for that reason that the saying “Never say never” exists.
But for LA Clippers coach Tyronn Lue, he had never won in New Orleans in his head coaching career. Not once.
Seven times Lue took a team into The Big Easy. Seven times they walked out with a loss when the final buzzer sounded. And oftentimes it wasn’t even competitive.
Until Friday night.
L.A. rebounded from being on the wrong end of a 9-0 run early in the first quarter to throttle the New Orleans Pelicans, 111-95. The win moved the Clippers to 22-12, pushing them to their 19th win in the last 24 games.
The Clippers, as the kids say, are cooking.
Defense was the hallmark for the Clippers on Friday night as they held the Pelicans to 35.9 percent shooting. New Orleans was stuck in the mud for a large portion of this game once the Clippers started to get the ball rolling and keyed in on the Pelicans’ more important players.
“I just think defensively we were locked in,” Lue said following the team’s first win in New Orleans since Jan. 18, 2020.
Lue continued: “We know [Brandon Ingram] is a hell of a player and so is CJ [McCollum], and Zion [Williamson], but we wanted to make sure we try and take the ball out of [Ingram]’s hands early because his first quarters against us are crazy, so we wanted to make sure we did a good job with that.”
Ingram managed just 12 points on nine shots in his 30 minutes of action while adding in four assists and a rebound. But, as Lue mentioned, the Clippers did indeed do a quality job of forcing the ball out of Ingram’s hands early in the game, limiting the smooth-scoring forward to two points in the opening quarter as Lue’s squad focused on making others beat them.
Zion Williamson played just 19 minutes after being ruled out with a right leg contusion in the third quarter. The former No. 1 overall pick had a similar line as Ingram — 12 points on nine shots. Williamson also had six rebounds on his ledger.
Guard C.J. McCollum finished with 12 points on 13 shots, bringing the total for New Orleans’ trio up to 36 total points on 31 combined field goal attempts.
The game turned for the Clippers late in the first quarter when a unit featuring Paul George as the lone starter alongside a bench group of Russell Westbrook, Norman Powell, Amir Coffey, and Daniel Theis helped erase an eight-point deficit and draw the Clippers level heading into the second.
Westbrook was especially helpful early on, finishing his night with eight points, five rebounds, five assists, two steals, and two blocks off the bench in 22 minutes.
The guard’s defense was impenetrable at times, limiting the Pelicans to tough possessions and ill-timed attempts while allowing himself and the Clippers to get out in transition and tighten the screws on New Orleans.
“I thought [Westbrook] when he came in the game with his defense, with his pace, really did a good job with changing the game late in that first quarter into the second quarter,” Lue espoused postgame. “So, I just think defensively that really got us going, able to get in transition, get some easy baskets, and then get some 3s as well.”
Westbrook agreed with Lue that the defensive focus from the team was the ultimate turning point.
“Our effort defensively should be our DNA,” echoed Westbrook. “We got enough men around here that can put a ball in the basket, that should not be our problem. Defensively, we lock in, just making sure our energy and our mind is locked on that end. Sky is the limit for us.”
It was the first time since he signed with the Clippers last February that Westbrook notched multiple steals and multiple blocks in the same game.
“Coming in the game with my energy, my effort defensively,” said Westbrook. “I need to be locked in. I can change games with that each and every night. That is what I did tonight.”
On the offensive end, the Clippers were led by Paul George’s game-high 24 points in 30 minutes. George made six 3s and secured seven rebounds on the night as he was able to help push the Clippers into a 31-point second-half lead.
The Clippers, as a team, began the game just 3-for-16 from deep before finishing the night by making 12 of their final 20 attempts, with George being a major reason for that turnaround.
Kawhi Leonard added 19 points, but his streak of games where he shot at least 50 percent while attempting at least 14 shots came to an end. Leonard was 7-for-15 from the field in 30 minutes on Friday. Leonard also grabbed nine rebounds.
James Harden finished with 13 assists on the night, his fourth straight game reaching double figures in helpers. Harden also scored eight points and turned the ball over just one time.
Norman Powell was a game-high plus-36 off the bench as he scored 13 points in 25 minutes. Ivica Zubac added 15 points and eight rebounds while Terance Mann had eight points in 17 minutes.
Mann has turned something of a shooting corner so far in 2024. The versatile wing made two of his three 3-point attempts on the evening and is now 5-for-9 on 3s since the turn of the calendar. The Clippers surely hope that’ll be here to stay.
What does appear to be here to stay is the team’s joy and buy-in. Things could have gone dangerously south when the team lost six straight games to push them to 3-7 in mid-November. Instead, the team banded together and pulled themselves out of a dark time.
As a result of their win and losses by both the Denver Nuggets and Oklahoma City Thunder on Friday, the Clippers find themselves just one game back in the loss column of the two-seed in the Western Conference.
Awaiting the Clippers as they return home after this brief two-game road trip will be the Los Angeles Lakers (17-19), a team that has sputtered of late and lost nine of their last 11 games.
A win on Sunday against the Lakers will do what never seemed possible through the first decade that the two sides shared an arena in downtown Los Angeles: win the overall head-to-head series against the Lakers inside Crypto.com Arena (formerly known as STAPLES Center). The Clippers presently own a 49-46 advantage with three games left to play before the team moves into their brand new Intuit Dome in Inglewood for the 2024-25 season.
Then again, as Lue and the Clippers showed on Friday night, maybe you should never say never. It’s worked so far for them.