The return of Kawhi Leonard, who traveled with the Clippers this week, could happen in a matter of days.
But Leonard will be coming back to a team that has been too easy to stop. A team that struggles to execute unless Paul George does everything. A team that, even with players out, still has usable players on the bubble of the rotation. And it remains to be seen whether Leonard can stay on the court long enough to help the Clippers find consistent solutions to an assorted list of deficiencies, especially on offense.
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After 15 games, the Clippers have struggled to form an identity. They haven’t been good enough with the lineups that were supposed to overwhelm opponents. And the team is still dealing with the consequences of finding enough playing time for certain players and putting them in the appropriate positions to succeed.
When Robert Covington checked in with just under a minute to play in the first half against the Rockets, it marked the first time in three games that he was in the rotation. It was a sighting that wouldn’t have been notable a month ago. Covington was supposed to be a major part of a wing-adjacent lineup when this season began. Covington said before and after signing a contract extension in May that he was looking forward to lineups that featured him with star wings Paul George and Leonard.
But things had gone somewhat sideways for Covington. After the Clippers’ brutal road miniseries against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the second week of the season, Covington was placed in health and safety protocols and missed four straight games. In Covington’s absence, Terance Mann found his footing in the rotation after a slow start, and the Clippers snapped a four-game losing streak. And after the Clippers attempted to slowly reintroduce Covington into the lineup for a couple of games, Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue shared that he spoke with Covington about the state of the rotation and how Covington would need to stay ready.
“He’s a pro, and he wants to win,” Lue said after the Clippers beat the Lakers last week. “We all got to be in. We’re going to need everybody. Right now, that’s the rotation.”
With John Wall not playing on the front end of a back-to-back in Houston, a rotation spot was theoretically open. Mann would be needed to play backup point guard minutes. It was an opportunity to get Covington back in the mix.
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The lineup that Covington came on the court with Monday night in Houston was one of the “wingiest” the Clippers had rolled out all season, as it also featured George, Mann, Norman Powell and Nicolas Batum. Amir Coffey, who discussed “Wingstop University” with The Athletic in the offseason, took George’s spot to begin the second quarter. That lineup was great against the NBA’s worst team, expanding the lead by five points to begin the second quarter and expanding a lead from 11 points to 19 points to begin the fourth quarter. The Clippers outscored the Rockets 33-20 in 11 minutes with Covington, Mann, Batum, Powell and Coffey sharing the floor.
The wing-heavy lineup came one game after a particularly disastrous fourth quarter featuring a lineup that had cost the Clippers before. Against the Brooklyn Nets last Saturday, the Clippers were outscored 31-15 in the 11 minutes that Reggie Jackson shared the floor with Wall and Powell. That’s a small sample size but one with an alarming lack of success. At the very least, it’s the opposite of what the Clippers would get from their wing-heavy Monday night group. The Clippers waited until the fourth quarter to roll out “Small Guard Community College” against the Nets, with the game tied at 77 with 10:05 left. By the time the trio of Jackson, Wall and Powell was broken up, the Clippers were down 96-88 with 3:48 left to play, and the Nets were in the midst of a 15-0 run that turned a close game into a blowout.
The Clippers didn’t use the Jackson/Wall/Powell lineup Tuesday in Dallas. They also did not play Covington until the Mavericks had already built a 42-21 lead with 5:22 left in the first half. That’s when Lue had Covington finish the half with a group that included George, Batum, Coffey and Marcus Morris Sr. — a different wing-heavy group. The Mavericks would outscore the Clippers 12-11 to close the first half and take a 54-32 lead into halftime, a new low for what is the NBA’s lowest-scoring team.
The Clippers rank 29th in the NBA in offensive efficiency, averaging only 105.9 points per 100 possessions. The team is slightly better offensively when center Ivica Zubac has been off the floor, but the 106.1 points per 100 possessions when Zubac is on the bench would still rank 29th in the NBA. A big reason the Clippers are so bad offensively is the possession battle. In a league where the offensive rebounding percentage is at an eight-year high (per Basketball-Reference), the Clippers are behind every team in the league, grabbing a league-low 21.8 percent of offensive rebounds. Naturally, that number dips even more with Zubac off the floor.
If a team is playing small and punting offensive rebounds, it has to take care of the basketball and shoot it at a high percentage. The Clippers only shoot 34.5 percent from 3, ranking 2oth in the NBA. That number drops to 30.3 percent in the fourth quarter, which ranks 24th in the league. The high-level shooting that was supposed to be present even without Leonard hasn’t been there consistently. Conservatively, this was supposed to be a top-five shooting team. It has been decidedly below average, and lineups that lack interior threats like the ones the Clippers deploy especially falter when the shooting is bad.
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The Clippers remain one of the more charitable teams in the NBA, ranking 26th in turnover percentage. The 1.34 assists per turnover are better than only Houston and Orlando. Per NBA advanced stats, only the Atlanta Hawks pass the ball fewer times per game than the Clippers, but the Hawks have the cleanest turnover percentage in the league. The Clippers are the rare team that doesn’t move the ball or take care of it. Despite taking a fourth-quarter lead Tuesday in Dallas, the Clippers were unable to complete the comeback in large part due to George’s career-high 10 turnovers, the last three of which led to fourth-quarter 3-pointers by the Mavericks to evaporate the final lead the Clippers held.
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The positionless nature of the personnel hasn’t always been a good thing. Mann’s improved play has come with an acknowledgment that he had been overwhelmed by the responsibilities of playing every position for the Clippers. He was a center in training camp, a backup point guard when Wall is out and excels as a backup forward at Covington’s expense. Mann has even started at shooting guard, which might be his future again because Luke Kennard left Tuesday’s game with a right calf strain.
The Clippers did get back into Tuesday’s game by teaming up Jackson and Wall together, without Powell, to begin the second half. In 14 second-half minutes, the Clippers outscored the Mavericks 39-20 with Wall and Jackson on the floor together, fueling a 30-point turnaround. The point guards can play together if there is size dotting the rest of the lineup.
Powell was originally the starting shooting guard when the season started, as Leonard was coming off the bench to maximize his limited minutes and have him available to close games. But Powell struggled with his offensive efficiency, and Lue put him in the second unit by the end of October with Leonard in mind.
“Just trying to get Norm used to the role he’s going to be in going forward when we get Kawhi back,” Lue said before a loss to the New Orleans Pelicans, Powell’s first game as a reserve this season. “Trying to start building some kind of chemistry on both sides of the floor and getting him in his normal role would be pretty smart.”
There is plenty of time for the Clippers to improve. Leonard’s return to play should help. This was a team that wanted to figure out how to maximize small lineups with Leonard on the floor and spent training camp focusing on that.
“Just continue to keep understanding who we wanna play through, how we wanna play,” Lue said, “and then once we get Kawhi back, we gotta kinda go back to the drawing board a little bit more, but it’s coming and so we just gotta stick with the game plan.”
(Photo of Leonard: Kiyoshi Mio / USA Today)