INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Tyronn Lue managed a small smile as he considered the kind of season it's been for the Los Angeles Clippers.
"A lot,” the coach said.
After a 6-21 start, the Clippers have scrapped their way into the play-in tournament. They finished 42-40, extending their NBA-best active streak of consecutive winning seasons to 15. They're the first team in league history to be 15 or more games under .500 and still end with a winning record.
“Usually a team deals with adversity maybe once or twice throughout a season,” Lue said, “but not five or six times.”
The Clippers host Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors in a play-in game Wednesday night. The winner moves on to an elimination game Friday. The loser goes home for the summer.
“Pretty remarkable turnaround,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “I know Ty well. One of his strengths is just staying the course and really keeping the guys on an even keel, and that’s not easy to do when you’re 6-21.”
The Clippers' woes weren't just on the court.
Kawhi Leonard and the team remain the subject of a league investigation that began last September into whether the Clippers circumvented the NBA's salary cap to pay Leonard as part of an endorsement deal with a now-bankrupt sponsor. There's no timetable for the outside law firm looking into the matter to wrap up.
The Clippers have said they welcome the investigation and have denied any wrongdoing.
“It doesn’t impact anything we do on a daily basis,” Lawrence Frank, president of basketball operations, said in February. “We know it’s out there, we know at some point there’ll be a decision made.”
The starting lineup took a blow in the early weeks of the season when Bradley Beal suffered a season-ending fracture that required surgery.
After warmly welcoming Chris Paul back to the franchise last fall, the team banished him in December.
He was sent home from a road trip in a sudden move. The 40-year-old future Hall of Fame point guard had aimed to retire with the Clippers after his 21st NBA season.
Then came the February trade deadline, and the Clippers shed their label as the league's oldest team by trading away 36-year-old James Harden and longtime fan favorite Ivica Zubac.
At times, it seemed the upheaval would overshadow their hosting of All-Star weekend at their 2-year-old arena.
Lue credited his players' resiliency for their ability to withstand a roller-coaster season.
“To not give up, not give in, it just shows a lot about the guys in the locker room that care to what they bring every single day,” he said.
Kerr compared the Clippers’ resurgence to the 1977-78 Seattle SuperSonics, who began with a dismal 5-17 mark that got their coach fired and under new coach Lenny Wilkens finished 47-35. They reached the NBA Finals that season before winning the franchise’s only championship the following year.
No one is predicting that kind of playoff run for the Clippers, but they've already survived an improbable set of circumstances.
“We always knew we were a better team that what we were showing,” veteran Brook Lopez said, “but to go out there and prove it, it’s a nice little honor.”
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