There is little secret about the Los Angeles Clippers’ strategy when they travel to San Antonio to square off against the Spurs on Tuesday.
Los Angeles’ focus will be on trying to limit the damage done by San Antonio star center Victor Wembanyama, who continues to take the NBA by storm.
The Clippers fly into the Alamo City for the second game of a back-to-back set that began with a 116-113 win in New Orleans on Monday. James Harden hit four free throws in the final 18 seconds to provide the winning points on a night when Los Angeles trailed by as many as 14 points late in the second quarter.
Norman Powell led the Clippers with 35 points and Harden finished with 27 as Los Angeles won for the fifth time in its past six outings.
The Tuesday contest is the middle game of a three-game Clippers road trip that ends in Oklahoma City on Thursday.
Los Angeles won the first clash against the Spurs this season 113-104 at home on Nov. 4 as Powell scored 23 points.
Harden understands the task Los Angeles will have in slowing down the dynamic (and improving) Wembanyama, who racked up 24 points, grabbed 13 rebounds and swatted away nine shots in the Nov. 4 contest.
“Beast — on both ends,” Harden said about the second-year French phenom. “And his shot looks way more confident, he’s shooting it with confidence. Defensively, he’s active, blocking shots. He’s doing it all. Guys like us are leaving and guys like Wemby are coming in. We thought we’ve never seen certain players before, and then Wemby comes in. Like, come on.”
The Spurs head home for a brief stop after a four-game road trip that ended with a 112-110 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday. San Antonio dropped three of the four contests on the trip by a combined 10 points, losing at Philadelphia by five and to the Knicks in New York by three before beating the Brooklyn Nets by nine.
“I think we felt what road NBA basketball looks like against good teams,” San Antonio acting coach Mitch Johnson said. “There is some takeaways that we should feel really good about, and some takeaways that’ll give us much to do, to get back to work when we get back home.”
Wembanyama led San Antonio with 34 points in Minneapolis, marking the eighth time this season that he reached the 30-point barrier. The Sunday game was the ninth straight (and 21st time in his 27 games this season) that Wembanyama led the team in scoring.
The Spurs rallied from a 16-point third-quarter deficit on Sunday to take a 101-98 lead on a Harrison Barnes layup with 6:35 to play, but they couldn’t hold on.
“Our late-game execution is an area of (needed) improvement for us,” said Barnes, who wound up with 24 points on Sunday. “We put ourselves in position. We battled for 44, 46 minutes, to give ourselves a chance to win, and then just finishing out games is something that we can get better at.”
The Tuesday contest is one of just two at home for the Spurs over the next two weeks. After an away-and-home back-to-back with Denver on Friday and Saturday, San Antonio hits the road for Chicago, Milwaukee and a then pair of games against the Lakers in Los Angeles.
