LOS ANGELES — Maybe this should be considered a warning.
Kawhi Leonard had been saying it for a while, during the recent Grammy trip: His Clippers have been letting their talent carry them along on their journey in pursuit of the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference. Monday night they ran into another contender, and the Minnesota Timberwolves bruised them, winning 121-100 and outscoring the home team 59-36 over the last 18½ minutes of the game.
The Clippers could have moved back into first place in the West, but instead dropped to third, 1½ games behind the Timberwolves, a half-game behind Oklahoma City and six percentage points ahead of Denver. There are still 30 games left in the regular season – heck, the Clippers still have one more game, Wednesday night against the Golden State Warriors in San Francisco, before the All-Star break – so it’s still too soon to jump to any sort of conclusions.
But when there are trends, it’s best to confront them quickly and directly.
“We’ve been kind of winning off talent, you know,” Leonard said. “When you’re playing better teams, (defenders) are in the passing lanes. Those isolation shots, those misses get louder.
“So, like Coach was saying, we’ve got to do a better job of listening to him and trying to execute.”
Ty Lue, the aforementioned coach, noted that while the Clippers led 53-50 at halftime, that was due to a 20-6 run at the end of the half and particularly back-to-back 3-pointers by Paul George and James Harden in the final 25.2 seconds. The flaws were there. The Clippers were having difficulty at both ends against Minnesota bigs Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert – a 64-42 edge in points in the paint on the night spoke volumes – and the ball wasn’t moving on the offensive end the way it does when they’re playing well.
“Just physicality and attention to detail, they were better,” Lue said.
“You know, if we’re not making quick decisions, playing the game the right…
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