Tyronn Lue did not hide from the Los Angeles Clippers’ problems after their 114-104 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday night at Intuit Dome. The Clippers were beaten on the glass, outworked in transition, and forced into a small-lineup approach they could not control.
“We’re not good enough with the small lineup right now,” Lue said. “I take accountability for that because we haven’t had a chance to practice and we haven’t played small all year.” Portland grabbed 18 offensive rebounds and turned them into 32 second-chance points, a number Lue said was too much to survive.
Lue said the Clippers understood Portland’s size going in, but still could not find a workable rhythm offensively with the altered rotation. “We don’t know how to play offensively with the small unit yet, and we will get better, but we don’t have a lot of time to really practice on it,” he said. “We were just running around all over the place, not sure what to run.”
The Clippers also struggled to get Bennedict Mathurin going, finishing with just four points. Lue pointed to the early foul situation and Portland’s physicality as part of the problem, saying, “We got into the penalty really early and we didn’t get a chance to utilize him the way we normally do.”
Portland’s pressure and pace clearly bothered Los Angeles. Lue said, “They came in and played well. They were more aggressive. They attacked more. They were more physical, and they beat us.” He added that the Clippers “looked sluggish a little bit” and “didn’t have much pop” as the Blazers controlled the game from late in the first quarter onward.
Deni Avdija led Portland with 28 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists, while Jrue Holiday added 30 points and seven 3-pointers. The Clippers got 23 points from Kawhi Leonard, who extended his streak of 20-point games to 52 straight, but it was not enough to stop Portland from moving within a half-game of Los Angeles in the Western Conference standings.
Lue also addressed the wear on Brook Lopez, who played 36 minutes one day before turning 38. “It’s definitely a concern,” Lue said. “The way it was killing us on the glass, it just made sense to have a guy that’s 7-2 on the floor as much as we possibly could.”
He finished by stressing that the Clippers must figure out how to survive short-handed lineups quickly. “We got what we got, and we just got to figure out ways to get them rest and shorter stints, maybe.” The Clippers host San Antonio on Thursday, with the season series against Portland still set to resume April 10 in Portland.
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