LOS ANGELES, CA — Thirty-one games through the 2022-23 NBA season, the Los Angeles Clippers still have more questions than answers. And now, frustration is mounting on the team as they continue to play shorthanded without Kawhi Leonard and Paul George.

Thursday night's game between the Clippers and Phoenix Suns marked the ninth game this season that Leonard and George played together. Through 31 games, that mark simply isn't enough. Add in the fact that Luke Kennard (calf) has missed 12 games, Norman Powell (groin) has missed nine, and John Wall (back-to-back management) has missed seven, and it's a wonder this team is sitting at 17-14.

The Clippers have won no more than three games in a row all season, but they've done it on three separate occasions. The inability to string together multiple healthy games has certainly frustrated members of the team.

“Oh, 100 percent,” Terance Mann said when asked if its frustrating to not be able to play fully healthy. “It’s definitely real frustrating when we have a good thing going, have a nice little rhythm, figuring stuff out. We were about to start a nice little win streak, I thought, and this happens, but we just gotta figure it out from here now.”

Multiple players have expressed their frustrations this season, with most of them relating to availability. Paul George recently had his minutes limit lifted after missing seven games with a right hamstring tendon strain. It's a weight lifted off his shoulders, and something that's affected the way head coach Tyronn Lue used him.

“It just lets you play more free.” George explained following the win over the Timberwolves on Wednesday. “It takes away wondering like, ‘am I doing enough?' Or like, ‘I know that time is coming up soon; am I impacting the game? Am I doing enough?' And then just in general looking over at the sideline to see if someone's coming in for me, so it just allowed me to play freely, let the game come to me when it comes and just do what I do best.”

Paul George was initially expected to play Thursday, but was dealing with knee soreness following Wednesday's game. With him playing in all six games since the return from injury, including 36-point performance in 41 minutes against the Wizards, the Clippers elected to play it safe with a 1:00PM tipoff coming up Saturday.

While George had his minutes restriction recently lifted, Leonard has not. On numerous occasions, Kawhi Leonard has expressed his frustrations after the game, and sometimes even in the game, with having to be benched due to a workload limit.

“They’re just trying to protect, I guess, us as players,” Kawhi Leonard told Andrew Greif of the LA Times last week in Orlando. “You know, at times I feel like we should be in to close quarters out like the end of that third, but like I said, I guess medical staff is just trying to protect us as players, I mean, at least me, because it’s my second game back.

“Hopefully we can get beyond this and we can just play basketball.”

Ultimately, it's up to the medical staff to determine how much he can play and when, but Leonard says the thing he needs more than anything is just to play.

“That’s all you need, is to play more games and be consistent,” Leonard said following the Clippers win over the Celtics. “I played two games to start. Went out. Played three, got hurt again, went out. And I’m able to build, what is this, four games. Three games in a row. It’s only my ninth game of the season. And that’s after going through a whole ACL year. So can’t rush it. Yeah, just got to keep moving.”

The ones who ultimately has to manage all of this is head coach Tyronn Lue and his coaching staff. Lue is someone who coaches off of, ‘feel.' His feel for the game is among the best in the league, and that's been displayed on a number of occasions. Sure, things don't always work out like he hopes, but with his staff behind him, Lue enters each game with a confident game plan.

“I've become the minutes monitor throughout the last couple of years,” Lue said. “The last few games, I've been able to coach off a card. I've never done it before, with minutes, when to get guys in & get guys out. It's something new to me.

“It‘s disappointing because we can't stay healthy. It's not something where we're actually just resting guys. Like guys are banged up. You hate to see it but if it's gonna happen, I'd rather it happen early than late. Seems like every time we get something good going, get a good rhythm, good flow, winning three games in a row, something like this always happens and it gets frustrating at times, but it's nothing we can control. It's something that's part of the game and next man up mentality and no matter who we have on the floor, we always say we have a chance to win in. That's gotta be our approach.”

Paul George, Reggie Jackson, and Ivica Zubac missed Thursday's game against the Suns with a legitimate injuries. Although none of the injuries are expected to hold them out long, they haven't been held out simply due to rest purposes.

With the Clippers having three days off between Saturday's game against the Wizards and Wednesday's game against the Hornets, Zubac will not play this weekend. Zubac left Wednesday's game against the Wolves with left knee discomfort, and there were concerns that he may have suffered an MCL-related injury. An MRI Thursday revealed that he was only dealing with a contusion, thus avoiding a significant injury.

For what it's worth, they're not the only team dealing with injuries to their stars. According to Krishna Narsu of The Bball Index, only 22 percent of the league's games this season have seen both teams' top three players playing in the game.

But again, the season is now 38 percent complete. The Clippers have played 31-of-82 games already. Leonard and George have played in 10 of those, and the team has been fully healthy for just two. And those two saw Kawhi Leonard off the bench, an experiment that both Lue and Leonard called a disaster. The team is currently waiting on Norman Powell to return from his groin injury, which could come as early as next week against the Hornets.

“I think [I have to] stay in the moment,” explained Lue on why he can't look ahead to a February or March. “For me, on a night to night basis, things can change and so you can't look forward because if you do that, the way my mind works now, I think we're so far behind, especially offensively. But when guys are in and out, you have to have a lot of different offensive packages because guys play different. Like something for Luke, something for Norm, something for PG and Kawhi is different. Something for John is different than PG and Kawhi, and Reggie's different.

“So having to have a lot when you're not sure if guys are gonna be healthy or not [is tough]. As a coach you always think you're behind and I think we're really behind offensively, especially how we need to play. And so until we get that continuity, until we get everyone back and everyone healthy, when we get a two or three week sample size of how we want to play offensively, that'll make me feel a lot better.”

So how many games in a row does Tyronn Lue need to see his team healthy in order to really evaluate?

“Oh, man. Let’s try 15 games together whole as a team. Let’s see if we can do that.”

Through 31 games, the team hasn't been able to do that for even two consecutive games, so 15 might be asking for too much. But if they want to have any shot at developing a rapport and momentum on the court, especially entering the playoffs, this trend that we've seen simply cannot continue. A lot of it is out of their control, but they'll need health and a lot of luck on their side, for once. It starts with Kawhi Leonard and Paul George.