The LA Clippers were already facing a brutal back-to-back set. Now, they'll have to do it without Tyronn Lue.

The team announced that Lue entered health and safety protocols on New Year's Eve/ New Year's Day. The Clippers will now play the Toronto Raptors on Friday night, the 31st, before flying to Brooklyn to take on the Nets on Saturday, the 1st of January. Both games will be without Lue.

The Clippers are already without Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Nicolas Batum, Isaiah Hartenstein, and Jason Preston due to injury. They're also without Ivica Zubac, Brandon Boston, Moses Wright, and Jay Scrubb due to health and safety protocols, and Reggie Jackson is working his back — from a conditioning standpoint — from COVID-19.

All season, head coach Tyronn Lue has talked about adaptability and being able to take hits in stride and play well. Tonight will be no different.

“You can get [COVID-19] doing anything, so you're really not sure, not aware,” Lue said back on December 18th. “The biggest thing is wearing your mask, trying to be as safe as possible, and this has been going on the last two years, so you gotta be able to adapt. A lot of teams are going through it.”

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This week, Lue added that just because a team might be the best at ‘adapting,' it doesn't always result in winning games, which is what it all comes down to at the end of the day. Given the Clippers current personnel, which includes about $100 million in salary on the sidelines,

“You can adapt and still not win, so I wouldn't say that would be the best, but I mean you gotta be able to adapt.” Lue said before the Clippers' loss to the Brooklyn Nets. “It's crazy times right now, we understand that, so we gotta adapt the best we can, and like you said just put together the best guys we can get on the floor at the same time, that mesh well together until guys get back and get healthy.

“If we play hard, we compete, we have a chance to win.”

The NBA recently adopted the CDC's guidelines for returning to play following a positive COVID-19 test. According to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski, the NBA and NBPA have agreed on new protocols that would allow Covid-positive players to clear isolation after five days if “CT values” are above 30. That lowers threshold from seven days and CT values above 35.

The same will likely apply to NBA head coaches, of which there have been 10 in health and safety protocols this season.