Clippers ‘not worried,’ stressing patience after falling to 0-2 with James Harden
NEW YORK — Clippers coach Tyronn Lue eased his way down the hallway inside the Barclays Center late Wednesday night after talking to the media when he spotted Gillian Zucker, the team’s president of business operations. Lue smiled and put his arms around her shoulder and tried to reassure her.
“It’s going to be OK, Z,” Lue said. “We’re going to be all right.”
Two games into what some consider this Great Clippers Experiment, Lue and his squad are preaching patience and to trust the process.
They have not become an overnight sensation, like many projected the Clippers (3-4) to be when they added the offensive firepower of James Harden to the weapons they already had in Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and Russell Westbrook.
The first two games the foursome played together have not resulted in victories, a 100-93 loss at Brooklyn on Wednesday night that followed a 111-97 loss at the New York Knicks on Monday night.
The Clippers struggled to get the ball to Kawhi Leonard against Knicks, raising the question: Will the James Harden trade be the latest franchise failure?
“It’s going to be a process,” Lue said after Wednesday’s game. “We’re going to be good once we get it down.”
Harden, who joined the team last week, is having to adjust his game to go along with Leonard, George and Westbrook — playing off the ball more than he has in the last eight or nine years.
“I’m just trying to wiggle my way, you know what I mean?” Harden said. “Trying to figure it out. It’s OK. It’s OK. Two games. I’ll figure it out. I just want to win so it doesn’t matter about the points or whatever stats. I just want to win games.”
Harden found himself passing up open looks, or hesitating when he got a pass from one of his teammates.
He looked rusty at times against the Nets, with three of his five turnovers coming in the fourth quarter. He finished with 12 points and was a team-high minus-15 in the plus-minus department.
“It’s hard, especially for James,” Lue said. “You come to a team that you got Russell, PG and Kawhi who have been here for all this time and now you try to integrate yourself into a team that’s been here for three or four years. It’s tough, cause you don’t want to come in and try to do too much and stepping on PG’s and Kawhi’s toes and things like that. We need James to be James. PG and Kawhi will echo that as well. So, it’s just going to take some time for James to get comfortable.”
Harden played 36 minutes against the Nets, but he took just nine shots during that time.
George took 20 shots, Leonard 16 and Westbrook 18.
They all claimed not to be deferring to each other.
“I don’t think no one is really trying to step on each other’s toes,” Leonard said. “We’re just trying to figure out the chemistry and rhythm out there. Like I said, we didn’t start training camp with these players, with James or PJ Tucker, so it’s a little bit different dynamic once we’re all on the floor. But we got to keep getting better.”
James Harden has 17 points on six-of-nine shooting and six assists in 31 minutes of his Clippers debut, which is a loss to the Knicks in New York.
The Clippers, who have lost three straight games, are 0-4 on the road heading into their next game Friday night in Dallas.
“It’s early in the season and we didn’t expect right away that this is going to mean success off the jump,” George said. “We’re going to go through growing pains. We’re going to come out of this and we’re probably have to make another adjustment based on how the season goes later in the year. I’m not worried about this. Of course we want to win these games. These are games that we feel we should win. But it’s early in the season, too early to even be in that mind-set. We got too much star power here. We got too many great players here for it not to work, us not figure it out.”
George said the four of them talk to each other all the time.
They talked during practice, after practice, before games, during games, during timeouts and at halftime. They want to get this right and they want the other to feel comfortable with his game.
“It’s an ongoing conversation of a lot of times of, ‘How can I help you? What are you seeing out there? What can I do better?’ A lot of those conversations is we’re just trying to figure it out too,” George said. “Everybody is trying to figure it out and again, we’re going through a tough period, tough patch. … But we’ll just continue to take this one game at a time and enjoy the process as we go along. I don’t see nobody deferring. I see everybody trying to be themselves while playing within the system. I don’t honestly see guys deferring or unsure. I think we’re just trying to figure out how can we be ourselves while playing out there with one another.”
Perhaps the most surprising thing about having Harden, Westbrook, George and Leonard on the same team has been the low scoring output in their first two games together — they have yet to crack 100 points.
“They got to be themselves. That’s the biggest thing. That’s the biggest message is be who you are,” Lue said. “If you are doing too much, we’ll let you know. But you can’t be passive and we need every one of these guys to be who they are. So, it’s going to take a little time. We understand that.”
From top to bottom, the Clippers are stressing patience.
Clippers backup center Mason Plumlee sprained the MCL in his left knee during Monday’s loss at New York and will return to L.A. to have the injury reevaluated.
Even Lawrence Frank, the Clippers’ president of basketball operations, was not panicking.
He spoke during the Clippers broadcast on Bally Sports during the Brooklyn game and said: “I think if you watch us a couple months from now, we’ll be a completely different team and we’ll still be, I think, a very good team up to that point. But I really think we’ll hit our stride two, three months down the road as these guys really get a feel for each other. Even now as you watch us, we’re still learning in terms of trying to play off each other and that takes time.”
The Clippers have 75 games left to get it right.
That’s more than enough time for Harden, Westbrook, George and Leonard to iron things out.
“First of all, just patience,” Lue said. “You can’t get frustrated with the process. We knew it was going to take some time. You can’t put a team like this together and be good overnight.”
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