In April, Clippers trainer Tyronn Lue insisted on reporters that he had no problem finding out what she or someone was saying about his team.
« Because I don’t have social media, I don’t really bother with it, » Lue said. “I watch basketball a lot and when they talk about us I mute it. If we win 10 games in a row or lose 10 games in a row, I’ll just try to fly straight ahead and take care of ourselves internally. Just be the same every day and don’t worry about what the outside people are saying and just keep going We’re working on what we as a team, as an organization, need to do to win a championship. »
That’s probably as good this week as Lue is preparing for his fourth playoffs as a coach, but his first lead at the Clippers. He’s, of course, pursuing his second NBA title and fourth appearance in the NBA finals – both of which would mark franchise history for the Clippers, who haven’t reached the conference finals in 50 seasons.
When his team began training for the first-round series of best-of-seven against the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday (Game 1 is Saturday at 1:30 p.m. PT, the league announced), the league was raging outside of the Building a debate over the decisions of Clippers Bank so many players in lackluster efforts in their final two games of the season. L.A. lost to Houston and Oklahoma City, the two teams with the worst records in the Western Conference that season.
These defeats guaranteed the Clippers fourth place. A fourth place means they may not meet the defending champions Lakers in the playoffs until the conference finals – although the Lakers could lose their warm-up to the Warriors on Wednesday but then beat the warm-up game between the ninth and tenth seeds and appear on the clippers side of the bracket, tuned to the top seed jazz in the first round.
In the last few days the popular story has been – both on the social media platforms, which the coach claims to avoid, as well as among the television heads repeating what Lue called « Insta-Twit » on Tuesday – that the Clippers wanted this to duck the Lakers (who they are 3-0 and 5-2 this season since All-Stars Kawhi Leonard and Paul George joined the team).
https://embed.sendtonews.com/oembed/?fk=XOBj4afj&cid=8130&sound=off&format=json&offsetx=0&offsety=0&floatwidth
For example, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith yelled, “The Los Angeles Clippers should be ashamed. They know if it brought shame to this franchise it would be big … but this weekend the Clippers did it. You managed to bring new shame. Because they purposely lost to the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder – two of the saddest teams in the NBA last season! »
« I don’t care what the outside world thinks, » he said. « I don’t listen to this anyway, so we finally decided on the team. We decided to go above everything else with health. We finally made our team healthy and that’s what we focused on.
On the subject of matching items
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Clippers play reserves, dropping the regular season final against Thunder
Clippers play it safe in the regular season finale
« If you look at our Cleveland Days, none of our starters played the last two games of the season, » added Lue, nodding at the games that featured LeBron James, the former Cavs star who is now the linchpin who is the Lakers, played frugally down the track in the three seasons Lue trained there.
In 2016, James played 32 minutes in the penultimate regular season game and not in the final game at all. In 2017 he was not represented in any of the last two regular season competitions of the Cavs. And in 2018 he played 38 minutes in the penultimate game, but not at all in the regular season final. Of these, Cleveland won the games it played and lost the games it didn’t win.
Neither Leonard nor George, both plagued by foot problems this season, played one of the Clippers’ last games this season.
« We took health and that is the most important thing to me, » Lue concluded. « Whatever the people outside say, I don’t care. I don’t read Twitter or Twitter or InstaTwit or anything. I’m not interested in any of that. I’m my own man, I do what I want. That’s how I live my life. »
I’m actually going to throw a bone at Lue – it is highly competitive and probably didn’t make that decision myself.
It’s not even about resting. They had Kennard, Ibaka, RJ and Pat Bev against OKC. That’s enough to beat this team. That’s how they played. Super lazy, fouling without maintenance. They didn’t want to win this game and it really showed in the end. We were just so lazy.
Ty Lue thinks we were born yesterday. Nobody accuses you of sitting out your stars, but giving Daniel Oturu 21 shots in this game and running ISOs down the track in the clutch when you had Luke Kennard out there is clear and obvious.
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