lost to the Portland Trail Blazers<\/a> on Friday, 116-97, in the battle for the No. 8 seed, leaving both teams at 41-40. Portland\u2019s two victories against the Clippers evened the regular-season series and the Trail Blazers\u2019 better conference record gives them the edge for the No. 8 seed.<\/p>\nThe Clippers, currently the No. 9 seed, now must beat 10th-seeded Golden State Warriors on Sunday at Intuit Dome and hope for a Portland loss against the Sacramento Kings (22-59) to avoid the longer route to the NBA playoffs.<\/p>\n
If the Trail Blazers win and the Clippers lose, Portland will secure the No. 8 seed and the Clippers will need to win two Play-In games to earn a first-round matchup against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the best team in the NBA.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s currently trending toward a Warriors-Clippers do-or-die game Wednesday at Intuit Dome.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, we just got to do it the Clippers\u2019 way, the hard way every time. Never easy,\u201d Clippers coach Tyronn Lue told reporters in Portland. \u201cWe are still in it and we\u2019re OK. And like I said, they (Trail Blazers) beat us. They\u2019re a good team and Tiago (Splitter, Portland\u2019s interim coach) has done a hell of a job this season filling in. They played better than us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Clippers overcame a 20-point deficit against Portland and took a brief two-point lead before running out of steam. The Trail Blazers used a 25-3 run in the fourth quarter to finish them off.<\/p>\n
Despite the finish, Lue said the Clippers showed resilience and character against Portland, traits they need against the Warriors, who could have four-time NBA champion Steph Curry back in the lineup. Curry recently returned after missing 27 games because of a knee injury but seemingly twisted his ankle in a loss to the Kings on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just got to go back to the drawing board, get ready for Sunday and then into the Play-In knowing we have to win two games,\u201d Lue said of the regular-season finale and their first postseason game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been worse, trust me. We\u2019ve been worse. Starting 6-21 and getting to the place where we\u2019re at right now, we can\u2019t hang our head,\u201d Lue added. \u201cI thought we gave the fight we needed to give. We just can\u2019t dig ourselves into those bigger holes, especially against a good team on the road.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lue played his starters heavy minutes against Portland. Kawhi Leonard scored 24 points in 38 minutes, Darius Garland played 41 minutes and Brook Lopez was on the floor for 37 minutes. Yet, the coach doesn\u2019t play to rest any of them against the Warriors and save them for their first Play-in game Tuesday or Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you fight back, take the lead by two, like you said, you\u2019re probably exhausted at that point, just trying to get back in the game. But it\u2019s nothing to hang our heads about. They kicked our butt and now we got to be ready to go on Sunday,\u201d Lue said.<\/p>\n
Golden State at Clippers<\/p>\n
When: 5:30 p.m. Sunday<\/p>\n
Where: Intuit Dome<\/p>\n
TV\/radio: FDSN SoCal, KTLA (Ch. 5)\/AM 570<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After blowing their first chance at securing their playoff future, the Clippers are down to their last chance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3784],"tags":[7,601,559,6,687,471,3967,66,1617],"class_list":{"0":"post-708545","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-portland-trail-blazers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-blazers","10":"tag-clippers","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-portland","13":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","14":"tag-portlandtrailblazers","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-trail-blazers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116388861290526681","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708545","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=708545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}