Clippers rest Reggie Jackson, Marcus Morris Sr.

Reggie Jackson had to take Monday off – those were the boss’ orders. So too did Marcus Morris Sr.

The Clippers rested those veteran starters in Game 71, in Cleveland, on the second leg of a back-to-back set.

To hear Coach Tyronn Lue tell it, the hardest part might have been persuading Jackson: “Sometimes you have to save the players from themselves.” Otherwise, it was a no-brainer.

With 12 games to go, the Clippers were all but “cemented” into the play-in tournament as the eighth seed, Lue noted, entering play Monday 3½ games behind seventh-place Minnesota and 5½ (plus a tiebreaker) ahead of the ninth-place Lakers.

And the Clippers – who have been without both injured All-Stars Kawhi Leonard (ACL) and Paul George (elbow) most of the season – figure to benefit from doing what they can to ensure the veterans who have been carrying an outsized load have as much in the tank as possible for the play-in game April 12.

Especially Jackson. The spirited 31-year-old is averaging a career-high 31.1 minutes per game this season with a usage rate of 27.4% (the percentage of team plays involving a player while he’s on the court), which is the second-highest of his career.

And since he’s been the team’s only pure point guard following the Feb. 4 trade deadline deal that sent Eric Bledsoe to Portland, Jackson’s minutes (33.1) and usage rate (28.4%) have increased.

Three of his seven 39-minutes-plus games have come in March, including on Sunday in Detroit. He logged 39 minutes, 38 seconds – including all 24 minutes of the second half – and played a major role down the stretch, hitting two clutch baskets to help the Clippers rally from an 18-point deficit to defeat his former team.

“If we were close to being out (of the play-in), then guys would have to play, just to make sure we could stay afloat,” Lue said, via Zoom, before tipoff at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. “But the guys who played all season long have done a good job to put us in that position where. We’re pretty much cemented in eighth and so we have a chance to get rest days when we need ’em, and like tonight is definitely one where we have to get guys some rest.”

Lue started Ivica Zubac, Nicolas Batum, Terance Mann, Amir Coffey and Luke Kennard together for the first time.

But the Clippers could afford to debut a lineup that had played virtually no time together before Monday, Lue figured. And Jackson and Morris deserved the day off, the coach stressed – with something of a sideways glance at the NBA’s schedule-makers.

“With us having the worst schedule, probably, in the league, playing I think what six five-in-sevens? The only team that’s doing that,” said Lue, who was close – the Clippers actually had five five-games-in-seven-days stretches, which was more than every team except for the Portland Trail Blazers, who also had five. And that was five more than seven teams that had no stretches with so many games in a single week.

Now, the schedule that didn’t do the Clippers any favors for most of this season – and will have had them travel 48,008 miles, the fourth-most in the league, per positiveresidual.com – lightens up on the backstretch, when they’ll play their final 11 games in the span of 26 days.

“Yes, it’s definitely coming at a perfect time,” Lue said. “Going into the play-in game, being able to implement some new things offensively, some different things defensively, and just kinda go from there. We’ll get a chance to experiment with our small lineup, which we gotta get better at once we get everyone healthy and get everyone back and then kind of see how that plays out.”