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Tyronn Lue didn't waste any time in waving the white flag as the Los Angeles Clippers got walloped by the Denver Nuggets on Thursday. Kawhi Leonard's beliefs, at least in that instance, didn't align with his coach's.
The Clippers were down a whopping 34 points at halftime in Denver and would have needed a Herculean effort to climb that mountain in the Mile High City. Lue decided that it wasn't worth the risk of trying, opting to bench his starter for the rest of the way. It didn't exactly sit well with Kawhi Leonard, who spoke out on wanting to get a chance to right the ship had he been given the choice, via Law Murray of The Athletic:
“I mean, obviously nobody wants to lose by that amount of points,” Leonard said. “You want to get it back, pretty much. You want to get back out there on the floor and do what you can to either get a win or even the same night, rather than sit and watch. Just coming from me.”
To Leonard, there's value in allowing the team to battle through adversity instead of simply rolling over and setting their sights on the next game.
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“I feel like these are the times where we need to be in there and dig ourselves out those holes and learn what we’re doing, instead of flipping the page and going to the next game,” Leonard said. “But yeah, that’s just from my perspective.”
The Clippers have had injuries derail their last two seasons with Kawhi Leonard still working his way back into game shape. Tyronn Lue likely was just minimizing any potential risk in what mathematically was a nearly impossible hole to dig out of.
The benching, however, did snap Leonard's streak of consecutive games played with 30+ minutes as he continues to make progress. The precarious Clippers season seems to be a balancing act that's hoping to get it perfectly right once the playoffs roll around.
