ORLANDO, Fla. — The LA Clippers seemed encouraged entering Thursday’s game against the Orlando Magic.
Sure, Monday’s road loss against the Philadelphia 76ers was another game that came down to the end despite a double-digit Clippers lead. And the Clippers remain woefully short-handed, as they are down three starters from opening night: Kawhi Leonard, Derrick Jones Jr. and Bradley Beal, who is out for the season.
However, the Clippers practiced on Wednesday with limited participation from Leonard, who has been out for more than two weeks with ankle and foot sprains. Coach Tyronn Lue would later say it “was a really good practice, a step in the right direction.” They were playing a Magic team they swept last season, and it was missing Paolo Banchero.
Next thing you know, Orlando point guard Jalen Suggs was diving to steal a James Harden bounce pass, hustling by the entire Clippers defense and finding backup center Goga Bitadze for a timeout-inducing alley-oop.
The Magic won 129-101, the latest embarrassment for the Clippers (4-11). An Orlando team that had begun to slow things down over the last couple of weeks saw a vulnerable opponent and ratcheted up the pace. The result for the Magic: 41 fast-break points, the most any team has had in a game all season and the third-most any team has had the past two seasons.
“They played a little slower,” Suggs told The Athletic. “Just knowing that James Harden, that’s part of their identity: It’s playing slow, finding his matchups, finding his pick-and-rolls with (Ivica) Zubac and Zubac’s post-ups.
“But I just think that’s kind of hard to maintain when you got older guys and — no disrespect to the older guys — it’s just, the league is evolving at such a rapid pace. It’s being played so fast that it’s hard for those guys to keep up with it each and every night. Just with the demand on the body, on the energy.”
The Clippers used to be a good defensive team. In fact, last season, the top three defenses in the NBA were the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Magic and the Clippers, in that order. The defending champion Thunder are still the NBA’s best defense. In one night, the Magic went from 14th to seventh in defensive efficiency, an acknowledgment of the early-season sample size and the complete lockdown they executed on Thursday. And then there are the Clippers, who are now 24th in defensive efficiency.
“We didn’t think they were going to score this many points,” said Lue, who a week ago said, “I didn’t think he would score 55,” when asked about Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokić dominating his team.
LA does two things well defensively this season: Keep teams off the free-throw line (eighth in opponent free-throw attempt rate) and keep teams out of the paint (eighth in paint points allowed). Their opponent turnover rate has dropped off (from eighth last season to 21st this season), the 3s allowed per game have skyrocketed (from ninth last season to 28th), they can’t get back on defense (from 12th in fast-break points allowed last season to 29th) and they don’t end possessions with defensive rebounds (from first in defensive rebound percentage last season to 23rd).
It seems simple enough to know how to beat the Clippers: Run hard (especially if you steal the ball from them), find 3s and crash the glass if you miss. The Clippers thought they could get some offensive rebounds against the Magic, but their attempts to do so contributed to a transition defense that reached a new low.
LA is much bigger this season with centers Zubac and Brook Lopez taking up minutes, as well as 6-foot-11 John Collins at power forward, but it has plummeted to a bottom-10 rebounding team. And the point-of-attack defense, weakened by Jones’ MCL sprain in Boston, has been a big disappointment, contributing to a series of breakdowns elsewhere. On this road trip alone, the Clippers have allowed 28 points to Dallas Mavericks reserve D’Angelo Russell, 30 points to Celtics shooting guard Payton Pritchard, 39 points to Sixers point guard Tyrese Maxey and 23 points (in three quarters, with 20 at halftime) to Suggs.
“I think it starts with our guards getting into the ball,” Lue said. “We gotta hit our man before the screen hits us. And I think our bigs have to do a better job of being up. And we talk about being up all night, but Zu is 7-foot and Brook is 7-foot-2, (and) we’re asking Zu to play 30, 35 minutes a night. I think it’s hard for them to consistently do it every single time. And that’s why we have certain quarters where we’re playing good defensively, and at certain times, we don’t play good defensively, because we’re not up on the pick-and-roll as much as we need to be.
“Our guards are not getting into the ball. And then if we are doing that, then our low man is late. So it’s everything just tied together. So just having less breakdowns, I think, locking into what we’re trying to do as far as the game plan. And we’ve gotten better over the last four or five games. But tonight, I thought we took a step backward.”
Lue said that the Magic are “better than we are,” while acknowledging the obvious that Suggs alluded to: “Teams are faster than we are.” While playing through Harden and Zubac, Lue said, “We don’t have a lot of point-of-attack offensive guys that can create their own shots.”
He has made that point repeatedly in previous weeks when attempting to describe why Beal was such a pivotal part of his training camp offense. Zubac has as many turnovers as assists this season. In contrast, Collins has no assists in 158 minutes since becoming a starter two Mondays ago and has a nine-to-28 assist-turnover ratio on the season. Only the Mavericks have a worse assist-turnover ratio than the Clippers.
“It’s the same thing all season,” Harden said after scoring a game-high 31 points, his third 30-point game this month that has come in a losing effort. “We’re trying to get it right. Trying to figure out who’s available to play, what lineups work, with availability. We’re not talking about a healthy team.”
As bad as things are for the Clippers, the locker room hasn’t given up yet. And that’s primarily because Leonard is still around. He made the trip, and though he seems to be a long shot to play in Saturday’s afternoon game at Charlotte or in Cleveland because he hasn’t taken contact yet, his chances of returning after the weekend seem improved.
The Clippers are starting a two-way contract and second-round rookie Kobe Sanders at small forward, and though that’s a credit to Sanders, it illustrates how rough a spot the Clippers are in. Sanders had no assists and five turnovers Thursday.
However, even a Leonard return doesn’t cure all that ails the Clippers. After all, Leonard was on the floor when the Utah Jazz took a 37-point lead in the season opener. Leonard was on the floor a week later in Golden State, without Beal, when the Clippers failed to break 80 points. Leonard was on the floor, albeit injured by the end of the night, when the Clippers had four of five days off and blew an 11-point lead at home against a Miami Heat team that played the night before.
The Clippers have shown a harrowing inability to play well for four quarters. They turn the ball over too much, a problem Lue says has been the team’s “Achilles’ heel all season, the last three or four years.” LA ranks 27th in the possession battle, which is the combined difference of offensive rebounds and opponent turnovers. And the Clippers’ opponents know how old they are.
“Continue to keep the foot on the gas, no let up,” Suggs said when asked about Orlando’s halftime messaging on Thursday. “Knowing that, again, with them being an older team, with them being away on the road, on the East Coast, far away from home, the effects that a good run and putting them away early can have.
“Not only for them and kind of getting them out of the game, but for us and the momentum, the feel, getting everybody in the game, our two-ways, our rooks. I think all that stuff matters.”
Asked Tyronn Lue about the notable step back the Clippers defense has taken, particularly at the point of attack
T Lue mentioned it’s many factors tied together
When I asked him about how hard it seems to be to get Clippers to keep their stuff together… well, you see the reax pic.twitter.com/Uwmgj2S8yT
— Law Murray ⛲️ (@LawMurrayTheNU) November 21, 2025
It’s getting late early for the Clippers. And Lue knows that he can only say the same things enough times to a veteran team when, as Harden noted, the same recurring issues are evident.
“We gotta be better,” Lue said after a long pause to search for the correct answer.