If this Los Angeles Clippers season goes to plan, the season may have two distinct components, veteran Marcus Morris says.
The first section is constructing Kawhi Leonard again into kind after the five-time NBA All-Star missed all of final season with a torn ACL.
The second begins when Leonard turns into totally built-in into the rotation and not using a minutes restriction.
The Clippers are nonetheless firmly within the former stage as they head into Tuesday’s sport in opposition to the Thunder in Oklahoma City. Leonard has coming off the bench and has a good leash as he works to regain the explosiveness that made him one of many NBA’s finest gamers earlier than his damage.
“We’re not really nervous. We’re not really stressing,” Morris stated. “But to have a top-five player to enter your team and be able to play full strength, obviously we’re going to get better.”
Leonard has performed in two of the Clippers’ three video games to this point, averaging practically 21 minutes per sport with 12.5 factors, 6.5 rebounds and a couple of.0 assists. He’s made simply 1 of 6 from past the arc.
Leonard is not the one one struggling from past the 3-point line to this point for the Clippers. Norman Powell, sometimes a powerful shooter from downtown, is simply 1 for 7 on such pictures via the first three video games and is capturing simply 25.9% from the ground general.
The Clippers have made 9 3-pointers in every of their three video games to this point this season – 27 for 83. Only the Lakers (8.3) are averaging fewer.
“We’re still working through stuff,” Paul George stated. “Still working on playing with small lineups, still working on chemistry, continuity.
“We’ll get via it. We’re three video games in.”
The Clippers are coming off their first loss of the season, a 112-95 defeat by Phoenix in Los Angeles on Sunday.
Four of the Clippers’ next five games are against either the Thunder or the Houston Rockets, the two teams that finished at the bottom of the Western Conference last season and are expected to be in the same vicinity this season.
Tuesday’s game is the first of two-games-in-three-nights stretch between the teams in Oklahoma City.
Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said he liked the format, saying it was easier to evaluate his team’s progress from game to game.
Oklahoma City is still looking for its first win of the season, while allowing an average of more than 117 points a game.
The Thunder could be without two of their top scorers Tuesday. Leading scorer Shai Gilgeous-Alexander missed Sunday’s game with a hip contusion, and Josh Giddey left the game in the third quarter with a right ankle sprain.
One of the few bright spots in the Thunder in Sunday’s 116-106 loss to Minnesota — was the play of Jeremiah Robinson-Earl, who was 5 of 6 from the floor with 15 points.
“In the preseason he wasn’t in nice rhythm, and I believed it affected his general sport,” Daigneault said of Robinson-Earl. “He’s obtained himself on monitor.”
Though it’s a small sample size so far, Robinson-Earl is shooting 73.3% from the floor (11 of 15) and is 7 of 11 (63.6%) from beyond the arc.
Robinson-Earl credited his improved shooting to new Thunder shooting coach Chip Engelland, who is in his first season with Oklahoma City after 17 seasons with the San Antonio Spurs.
–Field Level Media
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