The Clippers departed Chicago late Thursday with almost half their roster missing from that night’s overtime loss to the Bulls.
Paul George, Marcus Morris Sr., Reggie Jackson and Nicolas Batum didn’t make the trip north Friday to Milwaukee.
The Clippers’ offense did, anyway.
Led by Robert Covington’s career-best 43 points and franchise record-setting 11 3-pointers as well as Amir Coffey’s career-high 32 points, the Clippers crushed equally short-handed Milwaukee, 153-119, at Fiserv Forum, breaking a 24-year-old franchise record for most points.
As they had Thursday, the Clippers took a 16-point, third-quarter lead behind Terance Mann’s unapologetic right-handed dunk over Serge Ibaka, the backup center the Clippers shipped to Milwaukee in February. But unlike the loss 24 hours earlier, it wasn’t the high-water mark of their control on the game.
The lead swelled to 24 on Covington’s season-high-tying fifth 3-pointer with 19 minutes still to play, giving the Clippers 100 points before the fourth quarter.
Covington wasn’t done, tying J.J. Redick’s and Caron Butler’s shared 3-point record of nine made 3-pointers with 10:26 to play in the fourth quarter, before sinking his record-setting 10th from 29 feet to push the lead to 31 with 7:34 left as the Clippers’ spartan three-man bench howled.
Informed he’d broken the team record in a huddle, Covington kept firing, making his 11th before spending the final minutes of the rout trying to tie Klay Thompson’s NBA record of 14 3-pointers to no avail.
Batum, who like the rest of the Clippers’ 30-and-older crowd was sent home to jump-start their recovery ahead of Sunday’s key matchup with New Orleans, tweeted for Covington to set his sights on Thompson.
Covington’s backdoor layup with one minute to play broke the franchise’s previous single-game high of 152 points set in 1998 against Toronto.
Their 73 points before halftime tied for their second-most points scored in any half this season with their 73 in the second half of Tuesday’s 25-point comeback against Utah, and behind the 81 piled up during the second half of January’s 35-point comeback in Washington.
Then they scored 80 in the second half on the way to shooting 23 of 43 from 3-point range and 60.9% overall.
The win lowered the Clippers’ (38-40) magic number to clinch the Western Conference’s eighth-best record at two. The result, and the four starters’ rest, was notable given their next opponent: New Orleans on Sunday.
The eighth-place Clippers and ninth-place Pelicans entered Friday with a 3 1/2-game gap between them. Locking in that berth is important under the rules of the play-in tournament, which allow the loser of the play-in game between the seventh- and eighth-place teams a second chance to make the first round of the playoffs by playing the winner of the ninth- and 10th-place teams. A postseason contender’s margin for error, essentially, is increased by finishing in eighth.
Eight was also the number of Clippers available against the Bucks, meeting the league minimum. But with Milwaukee, which had played its own overtime game Thursday in Brooklyn, giving five of its own stars, including Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton, the night off as well, it produced a longer look than normal with two familiar faces: Ibaka and point guard Xavier Moon.
Ibaka, traded by the Clippers to Milwaukee just before the Feb. 10 trade deadline, was dealt because he had no foothold within the Clippers’ rotation and was on an expiring contract, specifically, because the Clippers worked to find Ibaka a situation on a contender where the veteran and former NBA champion could be of more use. In 17 games with the Bucks entering Friday, Ibaka had averaged 17 minutes, just two more than with the Clippers, but had been used much more consistently, at one point appearing in 16 consecutive games before not appearing in two of the team’s last three games.
Moon, freshly signed to a two-way contract, made his first appearance in an NBA game since Jan. 13 and played 19 minutes, finishing with seven points.
