Can Clippers stop slide toward Play-In Tournament before it's too late?
Norman Powell made his long-awaited return to the Los Angeles Clippers' lineup on Sunday. The last time Powell finished a game was in the pre-All-Star break finale at Utah, when the 31-year-old shooting guard dropped a season-high 41 points in a comeback victory over the Jazz. Powell participated in the 3-point contest on All-Star Saturday at San Francisco, then missed the rest of February because of left patellar tendinopathy.
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The Clippers have been desultory without Powell this season, losing nine of 14 games, including four of five since the All-Star break. Powell's return for the regular-season series finale against the Los Angeles Lakers was already marred by the fact that the Clippers lost small forward Derrick Jones Jr. (groin) and backup point center Ben Simmons (knee) to day-to-day injuries.
And then Powell checked out with 3:13 left in the first quarter Sunday, never to return. The Clippers made six fewer 3s than the Lakers in a 108-102 loss that dropped them to 32-28 with 22 games to go. Powell has right hamstring soreness and will be evaluated Monday. Judging by his reaction after the game, Powell is likely staring at another multi-game absence.
Despite all that — the Clippers still enter Week 20 of the NBA season with the highly coveted sixth seed in the Western Conference:
6 weeks left in season.
So any team Clippers are more than 6 games ahead of, no concern of them passing Clippers.
That said!
Here's what I think LAC record should be if they are targeting a seed # with 22 games left:
#1: nope.
#2: 22-0
#3: 21-1
#4: 20-2
#5: 19-3
#6: 12-10
#7-8: 11-11
[image or embed]
— Law Murray 📘 (@lawmurraythenu.bsky.social) March 2, 2025 at 10:12 PM
It seems like these Clippers are destined for a Play-In Tournament spot. Their chances of moving up are relatively remote, especially considering that they own only one tiebreaker among the teams in the top five (against the Memphis Grizzlies). Clippers coach Tyronn Lue seemed to acknowledge that ahead of Sunday's loss.
'Whatever path we got to take, we got to take,' Lue said. 'We can't have situations when guys are in and out of the lineup, when guys are getting hurt and banged up. We just got to stay the course.'
Let's get one thing straight here. The Western Conference has many competitive, interesting teams. But most of them are so deeply flawed that they're not expected to be taken seriously in May. The Clippers are still in sixth in part because the Minnesota Timberwolves lost in Utah on Friday night without a suspended Anthony Edwards, while the Golden State Warriors were the team that got trapped into breaking the Philadelphia 76ers' losing streak. This is a conference full of also-rans. It's the Oklahoma City Thunder, and everyone else, with a nod to the Lakers being the NBA's best team since Inauguration Day.
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The Western Conference's worst team since play resumed from the All-Star break? That would be the Clippers, who've gone 1-5 out of the All-Star break for the second time in three years. You might recall the last time the Clippers screeched out of the midseason intermission.
Two years ago, the Clippers made significant changes to their role player corps by adding four new standard-contract players, including buyout market starting point guard Russell Westbrook. That team's stumbles were compounded by a calf injury to Ivica Zubac. That Clippers team clinched the fifth seed on the last day of the regular season before losing a quarterfinals matchup against the Phoenix Suns, a series in which Paul George didn't play and Kawhi Leonard failed to finish after two games.
But that 2023 Clippers team had real expectations. Leonard pointed out how this 2025 team should be looked at differently, in no small part because of Leonard's delayed start to this season and how the talent on the roster resembles more the 2021-22 team that made the Play-In Tournament.
'A little different scenario, just from a talent-wise, what we had, and the situation I was in early in the season,' Leonard said Sunday after scoring a game-high 33 points in just over 40 minutes, his first 30-point game in exactly 52 weeks. 'Just got to keep fighting. Gotta stay focused with each and every game and try to limit our mistakes as much as possible.'
It would be nice for the Clippers to get healthy, get some cohesion with the lineups after adding six new players to the team since February began, and to go on a run. But waiting for full health is like a broken traffic light stuck on yellow. The Clippers need wins. And they're not going to get any relief in the short term.
Powell's likely out until the team goes on the road next week to New Orleans, Miami, and Atlanta before returning home to host the Charlotte Hornets, the only team in the NBA with a worse post-break record (1-6) than the Clippers. If they're not careful, the Clippers will enter that road stretch at .500 and with a season-long losing streak.
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The Clippers visit Phoenix on Tuesday, a nationally televised matchup against a Suns team that is going for a regular-season series sweep. The following night, the Clippers play their first game at Intuit Dome in three weeks against a Detroit Pistons team that already beat them a week ago on zero days' rest; the Pistons will be rested this time. On Friday night, the Clippers play the New York Knicks for the first time, before ending Week 20 against a Sacramento Kings team that has Zach LaVine now.
The Clippers will likely be shorthanded for all of those games, which puts more on the plate of Leonard and James Harden. Leonard is unlikely to receive clearance to play on zero days' rest despite the encouraging increase in minutes, while Harden is starting to wheeze. In six games since the All-Star break, Harden is shooting 34.5 percent from the field and 31.3 percent from 3 while turning the ball over a ghastly 5.3 times per game. The Clippers have lost his minutes by an average of 10.7 points per game, yet he is playing 37.7 minutes per game, an increase from his 34.3 pre-break average.
'You definitely can see some fatigue setting in — he's played almost every game, he's had to carry this team for 40-45 games with Kawhi being out,' Lue said after Harden scored only 31 points on 36 shots in the two losses this weekend to the Lakers.
'It's to be expected. He's going to go through some tough times like when he's fatigued and he's not going to be able to make a shot. So just being able to impact the game in other ways, by passing the basketball, by directing. And that's when Kawhi can do his thing and give James a chance to kind of breathe and relax a little bit. It's a long season. And he's been grinding after all of these games, and games we try to get him to sit, he wouldn't sit because he wants to play. I think he gets a little tired, a little fatigued, but we just got to continue to keep fighting through it, because the schedule don't get any easier.'
Harden disagreed with Lue about his energy level. Harden subscribes to this being a make-or-miss league, while pointing out the rash of injuries afflicting the Clippers.
'It's not fatigue; it's just lineups, different rotations,' Harden said. 'We got to figure it out.'
The Clippers have 15 more games in March. In a sense, this is their playoffs now. They control their fate for the sixth seed, but it will require digging out of a difficult place.
'Everybody is fighting for positioning, fighting for playoffs, and whatnot,' Harden said. 'It's around the league.'
(Photo of Kawhi Leonard and Luka Dončić: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
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