BOSTON _ As Landry Shamet entered the locker room inside Boston's TD Garden, he had no idea what he was walking into.
The rookie guard's previous 48 hours had been a whirlwind. He'd been traded by Philadelphia at 2 a.m., flown coast-to-coast and met his new Los Angeles Clippers coaches and teammates in a blur. He knew two of the Clippers' plays _ and that they now trailed Boston, on the road, by 21 points at halftime.
What he didn't know, on Feb. 9, 2019, was how the new-look Clippers would respond to such dire circumstances in their first game together. But inside the spartan visiting locker room players stayed composed. Somehow, coach Doc Rivers' halftime message was upbeat.
"I walked in and said, 'I like us more watching us in the first half than I did before the trade,' " Rivers said. " 'Now we've got to get out of each other's way and just play basketball. Go ahead and have fun.' "
One year later the Clippers' roster went through a fraction of the turnover at the trade deadline it experienced in 2019. Yet as the league enters the stretch run of the regular season, any disruption can bring new challenges _ from how quickly new rotations will mesh to the amount of trust that can be built before the crucible of the postseason. That process is an inexact science, taking weeks or months. For last season's Clippers, much of it required only one game.
The then-franchise-record rally in Boston galvanized not only that game's second half, but the second half of the Clippers' season. And its effect would still be felt five months later when the Clippers secured an even bigger victory _ signing top free agent Kawhi Leonard.
"That game set the tone for us the rest of the year," Shamet said. "In more ways than just one."
