LOS ANGELES — Paul George has gotten off to a hot start for the Los Angeles Clippers. Through two games, that hadn't resulted in any wins, and it had head coach Tyronn Lue emphasizing defense.
LA entered Monday's game against the Portland Trail Blazers as one of the four teams remaining in the NBA that hadn't won a game in the 2021-22 season yet. The Clippers dropped their first two games, one to the Golden State Warriors and the other to the Memphis Grizzlies, by a combined eight points. It's not like the Clippers were that far off in either game. Still, they weren't able to get the job done because of their porous defensive effort.
On Monday, they decided to up the ante on the defensive side of the ball.
“I just liked our activity,” Tyronn Lue said after the dominant 116-86 win. “I thought our activity was great. I thought Nico came out and really set the tone of denying the basketball and just being in passing lanes.”
The Clippers took the preseason a bit lighter than head coach Tyronn Lue would've liked. They were the worst transition team in the league over the exhibition games, allowing 25.7 fast-break points per game. They allowed 25 to the Warriors in the opener and 15 to the Grizzlies over the weekend. Portland managed just eight transition points Monday, and that wasn't even the most impressive stat from the night.
The Blazers committed a whopping 30 turnovers against the Clippers. Apparently, that's not even close to the NBA record, which is 45 turnovers by the Warriors back on March 9, 1971 in a game against the Boston Celtics.
“Paul George had eight steals and Terance Mann had four steals,” Lue added. “PG might've had eight deflections at halftime, so just our activity, being active, understanding we had to know where Dame was on the floor at all times, and I thought we did a great job with them and kind of just kept flying around. We kinda covered for each other, everyone just stayed the course defensively.”
"He's been doing it for so long. He's always been one of the top two way players in the league."
Ty Lue on Paul George's ability to score 40 one night, get 8 steals the next. #Clippers pic.twitter.com/qx9olk6p3t
— Tomer Azarly (@TomerAzarly) October 26, 2021
If you're looking for something even more impressive than that, look no further than the Reggie Jackson and Paul George's shooting lines. The Clippers won by 30 with Jackson shooting 6-of-20 from the field and George shooting 6-of-16. They went a combined 12-of-36 (33 percent) while their Clippers teammates shot 32-of-57 from the field (56.1 percent).
Despite their two leading scorers struggling, defense and ball movement got the job done against Portland.
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“I think our defense, just getting stops,” Lue responded when asked how his team won a game with his stars struggling. “I think our activity defensively was really good. Not too many game plan mistakes today. I thought we did a really good job with that. We had a couple times we went under on Simons and CJ [McCollum] when we weren't supposed to, but for the most part, we did a good job sticking to the game plan.
“And I think offensively, when PG and Reggie struggled, we did a great job moving the basketball. I thought we got open shots. We had 37 assists, but we should've had 50 because I thought we had 15 shots that were wide open and we didn't make. If we keep playing that way, we're gonna be pretty good. Gotta just continue to keep building off that, we're gonna talk about that all season long.”
CLIPPERS WIN! pic.twitter.com/TEY3nrOCeT
— LA Clippers (@LAClippers) October 26, 2021
After the Clippers' loss to Memphis, Paul George preached getting back in transition and not settling for moral victories in losses.
“I think still the emphasis needs to be to get back,” Paul George said. “Especially playing against these fast teams. We just gotta get back. I think we’re still getting out of preseason mode. We gotta start to find our way and figure it out. Season’s started, we’re here, so we just gotta dial in on that. Getting back, getting matched up, and getting our defense set.
“It comes to a point where, yeah, I’m happy we fought, but that can’t be who we are. Just be happy that we played hard. We gotta come in, we gotta do our job, we gotta win games. With that, though, we have to play hard, and so I know it was a moral victory in Golden State, but tonight, we gotta do a better job. We gotta come out first, establish who we are. Playing hard should be a given. We gotta win games.”
The Clippers earned their first victory of the season Monday with another young, hungry opponent in the Cleveland Cavaliers visiting Wednesday night. The team featuring No. 3 overall pick Evan Mobley is coming off back-to-back wins over the Atlanta Hawks and Denver Nuggets, so Paul George and co. will have their hands full.
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