After a 0-4 start on their home floor, the Los Angeles Clippers finally picked up their first win in their new arena the ‘Intuit Dome’ on Monday night against San Antonio 113-104.
Head coach Ty Lue said after the win, “It finally felt good to get the gorilla off our back.”
After the first quarter, it didn’t seem it was heading in that direction for the Los Angeles Clippers, as they trailed by 26, 40-14.
Their top two scorers James Harden and Norman Powell were a combined 0-5 from the field with just two free throws after the first quarter and they had 7 turnovers as a team.
The 2nd unit, which it has done in the two wins this season (at Denver and at Golden State) came in and completely changed the trajectory of the game by going on an 18-2 run spanning over 6 minutes. This run came without Harden and Powell on the floor and the glaring stat that stood out was that the bench unit did not turn the ball over once in their time on the floor, and LA collectively did not turn it over in the 2nd quarter.
2nd Unit Turns It Around For Los Angeles Clippers
“Our bench came in and gave us a huge lift. Coming in off the bench playing hard, competing, and scraping to get us back in the game,” Lue said about the bench unit.
It was LA’s largest comeback when trailing at the end of the first quarter and tied for the third largest when trailing by any deficit since 1996, according to Sportradar.
They got 41 bench points led by 21 from Amir Coffey who made 5-6 from deep. “Tonight, he was a big reason why we won that game,” Lue said.
Big Ivica Zubac, who had the challenge of trying to contain the second-year phenom from France Victor Wembanyama all night, had his fourth double-double of the season with 17 points and 13 rebounds (10 offensive) and challenged the league leader in blocks at the rim throughout the game. A couple of times Victor got the best of Zubac, but with 5:15 left in the game with the Los Angeles Clippers up 99-93 Zubac threw down a two-handed slam and got fouled to get the best of him.
“I learned today that’s the only way you can, when he’s in the paint, that’s the only thing you can do against him. You got to hit body and try to go dunk everything,” Zubac said of Wembanyama who had nine blocks. “He’s just so tall and he’s got the longest wingspan I’ve ever seen. He’s going to block everything if you try to go float [over] him, or hook him. So, you just got to try to go through his chest.”
Their first win in the $2-billion building that owner Steve Ballmer built even had him joking with his players in the locker room after the game.
“He said basically the same thing I said, like, he was going to have to tear it down and build a new one,” Harden said, laughing after finishing with 17 points and eight rebounds. “That tells you how much money he got.”
Powell, the team’s leading scorer so far finished with a game-high 23 points and made five threes.
The Los Angeles Clippers will welcome back Paul George tomorrow when they take on Philadelphia on ESPN.
Chrys Henderson is a writer for LAFB. You can follow him on X @ChrysNBA.