Can the Los Angeles Clippers Get Their Mojo Back?

With a come-from-behind win over the Chicago Bulls in a Crypto matinee this past weekend, the Los Angeles Clippers clinched their 13th straight season with a .500 record or better, the longest active streak in the NBA. The last time the Clippers finished with a losing record was 2010-11, when Blake Griffin was a 21-year-old rookie and Steve Ballmer was three years away from purchasing the team. And yet, despite all that regular-season success, the franchise has been unable to shed its reputation for falling short.

“I think Clipper fans [would] much rather it continue [to have] success after the regular season,” Paul George said after that Bulls game. “I think they know what and how good the team is in the regular season, which is why there’s so much frustration and heartache in the postseason.”

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In the 2019 offseason, the Clippers signed Kawhi Leonard and traded for George, kicking off a new chapter in the franchise’s efforts to win an NBA title and wrestle a greater share of L.A.’s basketball fandom. Five seasons in, the Kawhi-PG era has yielded mixed results. In the second round of the 2020 bubble playoffs, the Clippers lost to the Nuggets in seven games. A year later, Leonard tore his ACL, leaving his team undermanned in a six-game series loss to the Suns during the Clippers’ first Western finals trip in franchise history. With Leonard out for the entire 2021-22 season, L.A. missed the postseason altogether. And last year, the 6-seeded Clippers lost to Phoenix in the first round, as Leonard played just two games and George missed the entire series due to injury.

But this season—the Clippers’ last before a crosstown move into their own arena—is perhaps the most promising yet. With 57 games apiece, Leonard and George have so far managed to not only stay healthy, but also play some of the best hoops of their partnership. James Harden, whom L.A. acquired from Philly three games into the season, has taken on primary ballhandling duty and seamlessly meshed with the Clippers’ All-NBA wing duo.

From mid-November until the All-Star break, the Clippers went 33-10, the best record in the West during that stretch. They climbed from outside the play-in all the way to the top of the conference at one point, solidifying their place in the title picture with consistently dominant play.

But since then, the Clippers have struggled to recapture that rhythm. “That break didn’t help, obviously,” guard Terrance Mann told me recently. “It kind of came right in the middle of the good flow that we had.”

The Clippers have gone just 5-5 since the All-Star festivities, with curious collapses against the Bucks and Lakers, who erased a double-digit lead to stun their crosstown foe in the last Clippers-Lakers showdown as arena cotenants. To add injury to insult, Russell Westbrook fractured his left hand two days later; he has since undergone surgery, and it’s unclear when he’ll return.

Now, the Clippers find themselves fourth in the West, having all but fallen out of the race for the no. 1 spot. But L.A. has its sights set on more than seeding. It has just over a month to get healthy and get its mojo back, starting with a crucial home matchup on Tuesday against the Timberwolves, who currently lead the Clips by two games in the standings.

“We’ve won some games off of talent, just having the team that we have,” Clippers coach Ty Lue said recently. “We just have to understand and pay attention to detail and work on executing on both sides of the basketball, which we haven’t done a great job of over the last 10 or so games.”

There’s a certain irony to the stretch run of this Clippers season. After more than a decade of regular-season success, they know all too well that the real proving time is in the playoffs. But at the same time, they understand the importance of finishing the regular season strong and carrying momentum and winning habits into the postseason. And despite their midseason lull, the Clippers project the steady self-confidence of a veteran team that knows itself—and knows what’s required of it.

“We, when healthy, have been exceptional,” George said. “Now, hopefully, it’s due time to put it all together and make it mean something.”

The turning point of the Clippers’ season arrived 15 days after the Harden trade, on the morning following a mid-November loss to the Nuggets, their sixth defeat in a row. Harden had missed most of training camp while plotting his exit out of Philly, and the Clippers were struggling to find a rhythm as their new point guard learned Lue’s offense on the fly. After the loss to the Nuggets, Westbrook approached Lue with a proposal.

“He said, ‘Listen, we lost six games in a row,’” Lue told me. “‘Whatever it takes for us to be better … I’ll come off the bench if that’s going to help.’ I said, ‘I don’t know if that’s necessarily the change we need, but we’ll take a look at it.’”

Lue ended up taking his star guard up on his offer, and the modification immediately bore fruit. With more room to operate, Harden unlocked his game—and those of George and Leonard. But the move also allowed Westbrook to carve out a more optimal role for himself. Playing against second units, Westbrook thrived as a tone-setting, pace-pushing ball of energy on an otherwise slow and methodical roster. And, even more importantly, according to Lue and other Clippers, Westbrook’s outspokenness and tough love remained critical for a team whose stars prefer a reserved form of leadership.

“Kawhi and PG, they more do it by example,” Lue told me. “But [Westbrook] came in, instant leadership, instant talking, and the communication and helping our young guys along has been really good.”

Westbrook has been especially valuable in bringing the Clippers’ younger players along and facilitating buy-in up and down the roster. “That’s why he’s so crucial,” guard Bones Hyland says, “and so important to our team. Because we have guys that are maybe just not as vocal and maybe not just going to speak up on anything, but Russ provides that. So it’s big.”

This stretch of the regular season seems tailor-made for Westbrook. Players who bring maximum effort every night can propel their team through the dog days, when most of the NBA is slogging its way toward the finish. That is especially important for an older team like the Clippers as they try to rediscover their midseason form. Westbrook is listed as week-to-week as he recovers from hand surgery, and the organization is reportedly hopeful he will return in time for the playoffs. The Clippers should be able to replace his 23 minutes per game in the meantime, but they will miss his energy and aggression as they navigate the stretch run.

In Westbrook’s place, Hyland has seen increased minutes in reserve units. Amir Coffey has provided valuable minutes as a versatile forward who can come off the bench or start in a pinch. The Clippers are deep with multiple looks they can throw at opponents, but ultimately, they’ll go as far as their core stars can take them. It’s up to Lue to steer the ship over the final five weeks so that his team arrives at the playoffs with a clean bill of health and an established rhythm.

The Clippers’ past weekend offers a snapshot of what that may look like. Due to overlapping home stands with the Lakers and the L.A. Kings, the Clips hosted back-to-back afternoon games, with the tipoffs separated by just 23 hours (not including the lost hour to daylight saving time). They won on Saturday against the middling Bulls and lost on Sunday to the Bucks, with both Leonard and George missing the latter game. As the team builds toward the finish, health has taken precedence. But can they maintain execution and tap back into the kind of basketball that made them contenders?

“You’re not going to play great for 82 games,” Lue said. “We understand that. But you still gotta build the right habits and play the right way.”

With plenty of season left between now and the playoffs, that’s where the Clippers find themselves. The regular-season winning isn’t new, but they hope their postseason outcome will be.