{"id":662437,"date":"2026-03-17T07:59:04","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T07:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/662437\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T07:59:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T07:59:04","slug":"clippers-playing-without-kawhi-leonard-come-up-short-against-spurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/662437\/","title":{"rendered":"Clippers, playing without Kawhi Leonard, come up short against Spurs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Victor Wembanyama had 21 points and 13 rebounds and the San Antonio Spurs overcame an early 14-point deficit before blowing most of a 24-point lead and recovering to hold off the Clippers 119-115 on Monday<\/a> night at Intuit Dome.<\/p>\n

Stephon Castle had 23 points, eight assists and seven rebounds to lead the Spurs (50-18), who reached 50 wins for the first time since 2016-17 and trail the first-place Thunder by three games in the West. Devin Vassell added 20 points.<\/p>\n

Fighting to secure a spot for the play-in tournament<\/a>, the Clippers\u2019 second straight loss dropped them back to .500 with Kawhi Leonard watching from the bench. The NBA\u2019s sixth-leading scorer sat out with a sprained left knee.<\/p>\n

\"Darius <\/p>\n

Darius Garland drives to the basket against De\u2019Aaron Fox and Victor Wembanyama of the Spurs in the second half.<\/p>\n

(Eric Thayer\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Darius Garland led six Clippers<\/a> in double figures with 25 points and 10 assists. Jordan Miller had 22 points off the bench, which outscored the Spurs\u2019 reserves 57-30.<\/p>\n

After the Spurs ran off seven in a row to lead 115-102, Garland scored seven of the Clippers\u2019 nine points to get within four with 38 seconds remaining. But the Spurs made four straight free throws to preserve the win.<\/p>\n

The Spurs led by 24 points in the third before the Clippers closed with a 16-3 run to trail by 10 going into the fourth.<\/p>\n

The Spurs started slowly, missing eight of their first nine shots, while the Clippers surged to a 17-3 lead. They shot 65% from the floor in the opening quarter, hit five of seven three-pointers and made 10 of 12 free throws.<\/p>\n

San Antonio turned things around in the second. The Spurs erased all of their 14-point deficit, helped by 15 straight points over the end of the first and start of the second. In the period, they outscored the Clippers 37-15 to lead 66-52 at halftime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victor Wembanyama had 21 points and 13 rebounds and the San Antonio Spurs overcame an early 14-point deficit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3789],"tags":[5061,7,1142,7736,559,791,8037,1727,529,4034,192,4032,1213,251,135,4033,4031,6,65,3039,474,1653,534,946],"class_list":["post-662437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles-clippers","tag-assist","tag-basketball","tag-bench","tag-clipper","tag-clippers","tag-darius-garland","tag-deficit","tag-free-throw","tag-kawhi-leonard","tag-la","tag-la-clippers","tag-laclippers","tag-lead","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-clippers","tag-losangeles","tag-losangelesclippers","tag-nba","tag-point","tag-rebound","tag-san-antonio-spurs","tag-second","tag-spurs","tag-win"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116243462596207751","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}