Half of the first quarter was over by the time Kawhi Leonard and Paul George arrived at their sideline seats in street clothes Monday, yet six minutes in, the pair of injured All-Stars had missed almost nothing.
Phoenix had made one of its first 13 shots, the Clippers three of their first nine.
This was not quite the rematch envisioned when the NBA scheduled these teams’ first meeting since June’s Western Conference finals, a 111-95 Clippers win as much about everyone who was missing as all the shots that were missing.
With George’s strained elbow costing him a third consecutive game, and Nicolas Batum’s sprained ankle a second straight absence, the Clippers were without 34% of this season’s offense. In contrast, Phoenix coach Monty Williams would have loved if only two of his rotation players were missing. The Suns did not have Deandre Ayton, the center whose game-winning, out-of-bounds alley-oop last June still haunts the Clippers, leading scorer Devin Booker or Frank Kaminsky and Jalen Smith. In all, nearly 49% of Phoenix’s scoring was gone.
“You’re talking like we got a bunch of guys on layaway,” Williams said before tipoff, when asked whether more opportunities for role players was a silver lining of the absences. “We don’t have anybody else.”
What followed could be read as perhaps the expected outcome: a largely one-sided game tilted toward the relatively healthier Clippers, who grabbed a double-digit lead with four minutes to go before halftime and held on to it for the next 15 minutes, leading by as many as 17 points before entering the fourth quarter leading by 10.
But without the baseline amount of scoring and defense provided by two healthy all-stars, nothing has or will come easy this season with the latest example Monday.
Despite owning what was once an 18-2 advantage in free-throw attempts, the Clippers’ easy points slowly evaporated in the third quarter and with it their lead. Having taken a knee to his thigh and falling down multiple times on fouls, guard Reggie Jackson labored around screens early in the fourth quarter.
Jackson’s jump shot saved the Clippers in Saturday’s win over Orlando. On this night, it was Marcus Morris Sr.’s shooting that helped them win a battle of attrition. Since returning late last month from nearly one month off while regaining strength in his knee, Morris has moved markedly better in recent days, his increased rhythm on display with his off-the-dribble pull-up shot in the third quarter and spot-up 3-pointers.
The Suns did not have a center. But they had one of the league’s most decorated point guards, which meant they had a chance.
Playing nearly 10 years to the day since being traded to the Clippers, Chris Paul chatted with Bob Iger before tipoff, then was held scoreless after one quarter. But in the second quarter, Paul revealed again why at 36 he remains in any discussion of the league’s best guards.
Sprinting to track down a pass thrown well ahead of him on a second-quarter fast break, Paul in one motion corralled the ball and bounced it behind him with pinpoint accuracy to a cutting Mikal Bridges for a dunk. He later blew by Isaiah Hartenstein after using a screen to get the Clippers’ big man on a switch. And when he made one of his signature fall-away jumpers — it might as well be the picture that accompanies his eventual hall of fame bust — for his eighth point of the second quarter, he looked like the version whose 41 points closed out the Clippers in June’s conference final.
But starting with an offensive foul late in the quarter, when Paul tried dribbling between center Ivica Zubac’s legs that led to a technical foul, his grip over the pace of play weakened and Phoenix had few other answers offensively to create points. He failed to score in the third quarter.
If Paul’s history with the Clippers was one subplot, another involved two players with intertwined paths to and from the franchise. Not yet 13 months after guard Luke Kennard arrived to Los Angeles in a three-team trade that saw the Clippers trade away Landry Shamet to Brooklyn, the pair of young guards occasionally guarded one another. Kennard made three of his first five 3-pointers and also was an unexpected force rebounding. Shamet was quieter, making three of his 11 shots after injuries thrust him into the starting lineup.
Kennard’s 3-pointer helped push the Clippers on a 13-2 run to lead 92-73 with seven minutes to go.
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