Clippers hope preseason success translates when real season begins next week

LOS ANGELES — A win is a win, if you’re winning.

Entering their final preseason tuneup Thursday – and, as Coach Doc Rivers noted, the last ever for play-by-play man Ralph Lawler, who’ll retire at season’s end – the Clippers were one of just two undefeated NBA teams in the exhibition season before the season.

Going into their (non-televised) game against Israel’s Maccabi Haifa, the Clippers were 4-0, with victories against the Denver Nuggets, the Minnesota Timberwolves (minus the disgruntled Jimmy Butler), the Lakers (sans LeBron James and Lonzo Ball) and Australia’s Sydney Kings.

The Utah Jazz, which played at Sacramento on Thursday, was the only other team without an exhibition loss, at 4-0.

But none of those games count, so does it matter?

“It doesn’t,” said Rivers, making an exception for a team such as his. “I guess you can say, for a team that hasn’t been together, any time you see a win is a good thing, relative to seeing losses. But it doesn’t mean much, it just means that you can win a game.”

And if you’re a professional competitor, that’s an appealing enough carrot.

“Even if you play with your friends, you always want to win,” forward Danilo Gallinari said. “So we want to win every game, (whether) it’s preseason or regular season. We want to get better, so the next day, when you look at videos and you do meetings, you want to see something you’re progressing the right way. First of all, we want to win the game and to get better.”

In three preseason appearances going into Thursday’s game, Gallinari was averaging 19 points. Tobias Harris was averaging a team-high 20.3 points, also in three games of work.

The rookies also got some healthy early run: No. 11 pick Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had played in four games and started three; he was averaging 9.8 points per game. Fellow lottery pick Jerome Robinson, selected 13th, also had appearances of some length in all four games before Thursday and had chipped in with six points per contest.

“The rookies we got are very good players,” Gallinari said. “They’re great guys, they love to spend time in the gym. That’s what you need from them, to love the game of basketball and work hard. They’re gonna have a very good career in the NBA.”

Starting early, before it even counts.

“We’ll take preseason as the start of our regular season and take those wins early,” said rookie Jerome Robinson, who played in all four preseason contests, each one an education. “Every time you got out and compete you want to win, just building that mindset. You learn what’s really going for us.”

THE REAL VICTORY

The real win for the Clippers is that they’re in relatively good shape entering their season opener against the Denver Nuggets Wednesday at Staples Center.

After being so decimated by injuries a season ago that they had to use a league-high 37 starting lineups, the fact that only Milos Teodosic (hamstring) and Luc Mbah a Moute (calf) missed time with relatively minor ailments was a positive sign.

“I don’t want to talk about it too much,” said Rivers, perhaps still traumatized by surviving a season in which the Clippers had 11 players miss a combined 264 games because of injuries.

“But no doubt,” Rivers added. “We’ve gone pretty hard too, which has been good. We’ve been able to get a lot of practice in and guys have stayed relatively healthy. That’s good.”

Gallinari missed 61 games last season with hand and glute injuries.

He, too, is back to full strength.

“Good, good, ready to go,” he said. “It’s time to get the party started.”

Source link