The first sign that things were different for the Clippers wasn’t seen so much as it was heard, some 90 minutes before Wednesday’s tipoff. It was the sound of sneakers on cement flooring reaching full speed down a hallway leading from the court to the team’s Crypto.com Arena locker rooms.
The feet belonged to Norman Powell, the backup guard playing for the first time since injuring his groin on Nov. 29, who slowed only to make a hard left turn through the entrance of the locker room’s door, chopping his steps as if closing out on a shooter left wide open.
“I see how he feels tonight,” said a team official as the blur blew past.
For seven injury-strewn weeks, as their lineups resembled a revolving door of the healthy and hurt, the Clippers measured progress in how many steps forward they could take before another injury eventually set them back. They had played just twice at full strength — once in the season opener, and the other instance in game No. 3.
The third and long-awaited game featuring a fully healthy roster arrived Wednesday, after Powell and starters Paul George (knee), point guard Reggie Jackson (Achilles’ tendon) and center Ivica Zubac (knee) all returned from ailments of various lengths. The rout that followed was at times uneven and overpowering. The title pursuit this franchise hopes can now resume again in earnest will not resemble Powell’s run, an unbroken burst toward June. But Wednesday found the Clippers finally moving in the right direction in a game still in progress at press time.
Leading by 18 after one quarter and as many as 36 before halftime, the Clippers (19-14) seemed to score on nearly every possession that didn’t end in a turnover, from the fifth and sixth dunks of Kawhi Leonard’s season, to Nicolas Batum’s deadly three-point shooting. The differential between their three-point shooting and Charlotte’s created a math problem that ended any suspense after the opening minutes.
The Clippers’ aspirations, of course, have nothing to do with razing a team such as Charlotte, which fell to 8-24, and everything to do with raising a first championship banner.
And at full health for the time being, they now face a rare but critical opportunity to turn their continuity into the form of a conference-title contender as they face stiffer competition in the form of an upcoming five-game trip.
“Now with PG and Kawhi back and getting Norm back, now we can start kind of adding more plays and more of our stuff that we was trying to add before those guys got hurt,” coach Tyronn Lue said before tipoff. “I felt good the last couple days seeing them go through it [in practice] with some pace and kind understand what we’re looking for and what we’re trying to run. So hopefully tonight can be a starting point for that.”
Turnovers ended the first two possessions, and 22 by only the third quarter’s end, many of the careless variety that frustrate Lue the most — an errant behind-the-back pass by George, a cross-court look from John Wall that bounced into the first row immediately after.
Charlotte’s pestering defense made even dribbling an adventure at times. Overrun for most of the first half, the Hornets scored off assists from former Chino Hills star LaMelo Ball on crisp cuts to win the third quarter.
But when Leonard set screens, it created ripples of problems for Charlotte’s defense. As George made a contested shot while being fouled, he extended a 15-2 first-quarter run. Then, as he crossed the three-point line, George threw an under-handed lob to Leonard for an alley-oop dunk to push their lead to 25-10.
When both Leonard and George checked out with four minutes to play in the first quarter, Powell checked in for his first minutes of the month and promptly turned the corner after taking a handoff and burst into the land to try a dunk. It didn’t land, to Powell’s screaming chagrin, but he was fouled, and when he dribbled to the rim going to his right hand unimpeded on his next two trips, as well, it was a notable stretch for a guard whose ability to draw fouls is unmatched on the roster, and seemed to answer any questions about his explosiveness following the groin injury that ended Powell’s strong three-week run of scoring in November.
The Clippers needed less than a half to answer any questions about their readiness to put away the Hornets. At one point in the first half the Clippers had scored 28 points off of the bench —one more than the entire Hornets roster, starters and all.
In the fourth quarter, nursing a 23-point lead, Lue turned to Wall, Kennard, Mann and Powell again, but this time paired with Zubac for rebounding help.
_____
