LA Clippers star Kawhi Leonard believes the effort is there, but the execution is not
The LA Clippers have lost seven of their last eight games, and currently sit at 22-22 over midway through the season. It has been a disastrous year for a team who was widely selected to win the Western Conference before the season began.
Star forward Kawhi Leonard has been playing much better lately, but it often has not been enough. After Friday night’s loss to a Denver Nuggets team missing Nikola Jokic, Leonard got honest about LA’s struggles, and said they are much more centered on poor execution than poor effort right now.
“I think the effort is there, the execution part wasn’t in that second half,” Leonard said. “Just coming out of
timeouts, having the turnovers, I think we had 9 or 10 turnovers in the second half. Just making sure
we don’t have those careless turnovers and we take care of the ball and have a chance to shoot it at the rim.”
After the Clippers beat the Dallas Mavericks, Leonard spoke openly about his frustration with minutes restrictions, and how those have contributed to losses throughout the year. While Leonard believes the Clippers have failed to execute properly in some of these losses, he also recognizes how a lack of availability, often compounded by minutes restrictions, has contributed to the season-long struggles this team has experienced.
“When it’s a minutes restriction it’s frustrating,” Leonard said after the victory over Dallas. “Cuz I’m not going in there jacking shots, I’m tryna play team basketball. It was frustrating. We were losing games at that point from minutes restrictions.”
Head coach Ty Lue was asked on Friday night if Leonard is still limited from a minutes standpoint, and was not ready to say that his star forward is a full go. While Leonard’s increased minutes over the last several games would suggest he might be, the team is still monitoring his workload to some extent.
While there are understandable frustrations with minutes limits, injuries, and other outside factors that have complicated things for the Clippers this season, Kawhi Leonard was very clear on Friday night that poor execution is the team’s primary issue right now. Leonard agreed with his head coach’s assessment that the Clippers are getting closer to where they need to be, but acknowledged that there are still areas where the team experiences too much slippage.
At 22-22, it would be a historic turnaround if the Clippers were to end this season the way many projected them to in the summer. That is not to say it cannot be done, but as Kawhi Leonard emphasized, the execution needs to improve.
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