The Clippers began this season believing their depth and talent would put them in a class apart within the Western Conference.
Sixty-seven games in, they have done exactly that, transforming from what some believed would be one of the NBA’s best teams to perhaps its most confounding.
Appearing headed toward free-fall in Sunday’s third quarter, they went full-throttle to close out the season’s gutsiest, most desperately needed victory, a 135-129 win against Memphis.
Behind 42 points by Paul George and 34 from Kawhi Leonard, including 15 in the fourth quarter, the Clippers ended their five-game losing streak and salvaged a win on a night when, at one point, the franchise’s direction appeared lost.
After allowing 51 third-quarter points to Memphis, the Clippers allowed just 17 in the fourth quarter.
The Clippers arrived Sunday evening at Crypto.com Arena as the West’s only winless team since the All-Star break ended in mid-February.
At the season’s start, the schedule’s stretch run after the All-Star break appeared as a chance to rest up and tune up for the playoffs.
Instead, a streak that has continued through one-point losses in Denver, San Francisco and Sacramento has turned into a gantlet of survival just to remain in the postseason picture.
And it was why the stakes Sunday were more heightened than usual, their virtually full-strength roster — down only Norm Powell and his injured left shoulder — holding no excuse against a severely short-handed Memphis roster.
Its All-Star ignition in Ja Morant is missing at least two games, his timetable for a return unclear beyond that, amid a league investigation into the guard’s Instagram video in which he posed with a gun.
Starting big man Steven Adams had a hurt knee.
An Achilles tendon tear late last week sidelined athletic wing Brandon Clarke for the rest of the season. And drawing too many technical fouls had drawn a suspension for chief instigator Dillon Brooks.
The Clippers badly needed a win.
They produced another reminder why they are treading water — and why a flicker of hope in capturing their potential remains within their locker room, as they improved to 34-33.
Instead of tweaking his starting lineup, coach Tyronn Lue turned again to his standard look of Leonard, George, Ivica Zubac and Marcus Morris Sr.
Yet when the Clippers still looked lackluster at halftime, with Morris’ impact minimal after missing all four of his shots while adding one rebound and one assist, Lue started Nicolas Batum over Morris in the second half.
Within one minute, their five-point halftime lead had expanded to 11. But less than eight minutes later, with their defense again in tatters and three largely preventable turnovers leading to seven Grizzlies points, the Clippers trailed by 10.
And when Grizzlies reserve Santi Aldama turned and spun on Terance Mann at the free-throw line with a drive ending in a dunk, and Desmond Bane followed on the next possession with a 3-pointer in transition, the lead swelled to 16.
The Grizzlies scored 51 points in the third quarter, a nadir for a Clippers defense that has trended among the league’s worst for much of the last two months.
Between the third and fourth quarters, as the Clippers pondered how to dig themselves out of a 15-point hole, reserve Robert Covington — who received praise from Lue after a season-high 31 minutes Friday but was back out of the rotation against Memphis — looked on with a thousand-yard stare from the bench as Leonard sat next to him similarly without expression.
Then came the avalanche, the Grizzlies unable to score for nearly six minutes until a layup by Bane that ended a run of 17 consecutive fourth-quarter points by the Clippers.
Their run was punctuated by a Russell Westbrook dunk and foul in which he screamed at Bane, an exclamation that could not be heard among the roaring crowd.
The run grew to 24-2.
Eric Gordon scored 17 points off the bench and Mason Plumlee added 15 points.
That the Clippers needed such a rally in the first place, considering the Grizzlies’ skeleton-crew roster, was baffling. Morant’s timetable for a return is unclear, coach Taylor Jenkins said.
With a signature Nike shoe and All-Star credentials, Morant has been one of the league’s emerging faces, but a string of allegations, capped by his video late Friday, sparked time away from the team in which Morant said he would seek treatment.
“There are two elements to this I want to make very clear,” Jenkins said before tipoff. “There’s a supportive element, someone that’s got to get better and needs some help. And then also there’s accountability with the team that we got to stand for.”
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