LOS ANGELES — This game was to serve as a test, a barometer of how well the Clippers measured up to one of the league’s top teams two months before the playoffs begin.
“I mean it’s not going to end our season one way or another, but we just get a chance to play against one of the elite teams in the West, the best team in the West,” Coach Tyronn Lue said.
After getting a close look at the competition, the Clippers finished Monday night’s trial run pretty much in the same place they started, a step below the first-place Minnesota Timberwolves after losing, 121-100, at Crypto.com Arena.
Make that a big step.
The Clippers (35-17), who started the night a half-game behind Minnesota (37-16), finished the evening tied for third place with the defending NBA champion Denver Nuggets (36-18), who lost to the Milwaukee Bucks in an earlier game Monday. Second-place Oklahoma City (36-17) was idle.
“It’s just good to have (a game like this) and see, going into April and May, when you play these elite teams and seeing how they want to attack you and how they want to try to exploit you,” Lue said. “It’s good for us to see and learn from it.”
If the Clippers – who are 27-7 since the start of December – hope to take over the top spot in what is expected to be an ever-changing conference race, they need to learn how to combat the Timberwolves’ inside game and stop the triple threat of Karl-Anthony Towns, Rudy Gobert and Anthony Edwards.
After rallying twice from 10-point deficits in the first half, the Clippers couldn’t match that intensity in the second half. They fell behind by as many as 19 points in the third quarter as Towns went to work as part of a 27-8 run to close the period. He scored 10 of his game-high 24 points in the third quarter to help the Timberwolves open an 89-72 lead and then sat out for much of the final quarter.
Minnesota shot 12 for 19 from the field and made all 13 of its free throws in the third, while the Clippers…
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