NEW YORK — It was during the final minute of the first quarter Saturday that the coach who didn’t expect to be the Clippers’ acting leader, left with no good alternatives, turned to a lineup no one expected to see.
At that moment, three of the five Clippers on the court inside Brooklyn’s Barclays Center — guard Xavier Moon, wing James Ennis III and forward Wenyen Gabriel — had not been on the roster as recently as Christmas. In fact, by virtue of their previous 10-day contracts with Brooklyn, Ennis and Gabriel had spent more time with Saturday’s opponent than their new team.
This is the state of the Clippers, where the most anticipated results can feel less related to wins and losses but COVID-19 tests.
They are patched together.
But not pushed over.
Missing 10 players, multiple coaches, relying on an exhausted core that had played heavy minutes only 24 hours earlier and facing a Nets team featuring a healthy all-star duo of Kevin Durant and James Harden, the Clippers kept fighting en route to their biggest and most stunning victory, a 120-116 win aided by a player whose game-changing shot felt like fate.
With the Clippers leading 114-113 with 24 seconds left to play, wing Amir Coffey drove into the lane before finding a wide-open Terance Mann beyond the 3-point line in a corner. Mann, born 25 years ago in Brooklyn Hospital, less than a mile away from where this arena now stands, drained the 3-pointer before yelling at his teammates in glee. They never trailed from there.
Eric Bledsoe had a season-high 27 points while Mann and Reggie Jackson each scored 19 to spark an offensively challenged team to an improbable win after trailing by 13 with 5 minutes, 57 seconds left to play.
Harden finished with 34 points and Durant with 28, but those two incandescent stars couldn’t match the Clippers’ depth or energy — neither of which would have been suggested as strengths before tipoff.
The Clippers improved to 19-18.
Playing shorthanded is a reality that is not unique to the Clippers this season. Yet where some rosters have been wiped out en masse all at once, leading to postponements without the necessary eight players, the Clippers have endured a slow drip of bad news, losing at least one Clipper to the NBA’s health and safety protocols before eight of their last nine games — a figure that doesn’t include ankle sprains and elbow injuries that have sidelined their leading scorer, their glue-guy and their backup center.
The latest absence arrived just hours before tipoff Saturday when Luke Kennard entered protocols. And though forward Marcus Morris Sr. was in uniform, he didn’t play a second as the team sought to rest him after he’d averaged 34 minutes in his three previous games since returning from his own stint in protocols.
Making matters more complex is that their coach, Tyronn Lue, apparently remains in Canada after entering COVID-19 protocols while across the border Friday. The situation has left the team “working on the safest way to get him back home,” it said in a statement.
All things considered, it should have added up to the perfect start to the Nets’ new year — a cruise-control victory behind the healthy duo of Durant and Harden. In no other league do stars matter more than in the NBA, and the Nets had all of them.
In contrast, Jackson, playing more than 30 minutes for a second consecutive game since returning from an eight-day protocol stay, was so exhausted he reached for his shorts and labored for breath — with one quarter still to play. Coffey, an invaluable forward amid all the attrition, looked in discomfort, holding his left leg during the fourth quarter.
Yet with four minutes left play the Clippers unrolled the season’s most unexpected 10-0 run, raising hell instead of a white flag.
Bledsoe made a jumper, then the free throw from a foul. He stole a telegraphed Patty Mills pass and took it the other direction for a layup — the Clippers’ 20th fast-break points of the night.
A clear-path foul led to two free throws for Mann and one make. Nine seconds later Jackson’s long jumper pulled the Clippers to within four, and two free throws from Bledsoe with 3 minutes, 47 seconds left pulled the Clippers to within two. An audible gasp ripped through the arena when Coffey, with 2:27 to play, stepped into a game-tying 3-pointer.
