LOS ANGELES \u2013 The Los Angeles Clippers ride a five-game NBA winning streak into a potential play-in round preview on Tuesday (Wednesday morning, Singsapore time), as they welcome the Portland Trail Blazers to Inglewood for the first of two late-season matchups between the teams.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles (39-36) moved within striking distance of the Western Conference\u2019s top play-in seed over the last week. They clinched their fifth win in nine days on Sunday with a 127-113 defeat of Milwaukee, pulling them within 2 1\/2 games of seventh-place Phoenix.<\/p>\n
Battling for post-season positioning down the stretch underscores a dramatic turnaround for a Clippers team that sat at 6-21 on Dec 18.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest thing is a healthy Kawhi (Leonard),\u201d Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said of the midseason turnaround.<\/p>\n
Leonard is averaging a team-high 28.2 points per game and his 1.9 steals per game leads a defense that ranks 10th in the league in points allowed (112.5 ppg).<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then, just the guys we\u2019ve got in the locker room. That\u2019s what I\u2019m most pleased about,\u201d Lue added. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey could have easily gave up, they could have easily gave in, (but) every single guy in the locker room \u2013 including Kobe Brown, (Ivica Zubac) and James (Harden), they played a big part in it as well… sacrificed, no matter what it took to win games.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trio of Brown, Zubac and Harden were traded in deals that brought Bennedict Mathurin and Isaiah Jackson to Los Angeles by way of Indiana, and Darius Garland from Cleveland. Each of Mathurin, Jackson and Garland have played significant roles down the stretch.<\/p>\n
The rejuvenated Clippers corps looks to hold off Portland, the team currently slotted into an opening-round play-in matchup with Los Angeles as the No. 9 seed.<\/p>\n
The Blazers (38-38) are winners in three of four after a 123-88 rout of Washington on Sunday. <\/p>\n
They will try to carry the momentum into Los Angeles, for what Toumani Camara said was a crucial matchup.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re fighting for the eight spot, and we play them two more times before the season\u2019s over,\u201d the forward said. \u201cIt\u2019s the most important game for us right now, looking at (the schedule).\u201d<\/p>\n
The Clippers visit Portland on April 10 in the penultimate date of the regular season for both teams.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile in the highlight of NBA action on Monday, Victor Wembanyama bagged a season-high 41 points and scored the fastest double-double in NBA history as the San Antonio Spurs rolled to a ninth straight victory with a 129-114 blowout of the Chicago Bulls.<\/p>\n
He finished the game with 41 points, 16 rebounds and his double-double of 10 points and 10 rebounds arrived just 8min 31sec after he stepped on court, a new NBA record. REUTERS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2013 The Los Angeles Clippers ride a five-game NBA winning streak into a potential play-in round…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3789],"tags":[7,559,4034,192,4032,251,135,4033,4031,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-689487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-clippers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-clippers","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-clippers","12":"tag-laclippers","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","15":"tag-losangeles","16":"tag-losangelesclippers","17":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116322618137146154","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689487","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=689487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}