Short-handed Clippers close historic 2021 with a loss in Toronto

The annals will show 2021 as the year the Clippers added heft to the franchise’s otherwise light history, authoring new chapters whose storylines will remain vivid in the years to come.

It was when they followed a collapse with grit and little quit; received Kawhi Leonard’s Game 6 heroics in Dallas, then mourned his season-ending knee injury in Los Angeles; watched as a weight lifted from Paul George’s shoulders following Game 5 in Salt Lake City; and celebrated after Terance Mann’s 39 points in a series-clinching win. They became the first team to win consecutive playoff series trailing 0-2. By exorcising postseason demons, they appeared in their first conference finals.

Appropriate then that on the calendar’s last day, more unprecedented events were still happening Friday.

Hours before tipoff in Toronto, where the Clippers eventually lost 116-108, Tyronn Lue became the 10th NBA coach this season to enter the league’s COVID-related protocols. The absence further whittled down a staff that for three weeks had already been operating without associate head coach Dan Craig, because of knee surgery, at a time when Lue’s gifts of adjusting on the fly had become even more important.

That was to say nothing of their eight unavailable players, four because of their own protocol stays. Ivica Zubac was the latest Thursday, leaving the Clippers with just one center and prompting the signing of 6-foot-9 Wenyen Gabriel to a 10-day contract. Gabriel arrived Friday after playing the previous night in Brooklyn with the Nets. On Saturday, he will return to Brooklyn to face his old team — and it’s barely the oddest circumstance of a hardship signing on the roster after James Ennis III played against the Clippers on Monday, only to join their layup line Wednesday.

The constant compensation for missing pieces would have felt strange if it hadn’t felt so familiar. In recent days, Lue shook his head when discussing his roster juggling act. Friday, that tradition fell to Brian Shaw, the acting coach.

“Everybody was kind of surprised, but at the same time not surprised,” Shaw said, adding Lue was feeling fine. “You just never know with this virus and this situation what’s going to happen.”

Reggie Jackson, in his first game since Dec. 20 after exiting COVID protocols, scored 17 points, with Marcus Morris Sr. adding 20 and Mann 18. The Clippers fell to 18-18 despite making 15 of their 34 three-pointers because they allowed Toronto 18 more shot attempts and 17 more rebounds.

When Shaw added that “I don’t think anything is weird anymore” before tipoff, he was referencing playing in front of only a handful of fans because of a new Ontario rule seeking to curb COVID-19 transmission, but the sentiment covered much of the last month for the Clippers, the NBA — and their final game of 2021.

Huffing and puffing for breath in his return Jackson, who played 31 minutes, watched Toronto sprint ahead by 15 only halfway through the first quarter after scoring 18 unanswered points. Then Jackson’s four three-pointers, Amir Coffey’s season-high 11 points off the bench and Justise Winslow’s blocks on consecutive possessions all in the first half that sparked a comeback to outscore Toronto by 21 over its last 18 minutes and grab a six-point halftime lead.

Coffey finished with 15 points.

The Clippers held onto their lead for the second half’s first 15 minutes, leading to a final nine when the lead changed hands three times. Unlike one game earlier, when Marcus Morris Sr. and Eric Bledsoe combined to score 17 consecutive fourth-quarter points, seven Clippers scored in the final quarter Friday to tie the score at 105 with 2:27 to play. But over the last 1:52, the Raptors outscored the Clippers 11-3.

It was, in the end, more about the players the Raptors had than who the Clippers did not. Fred VanVleet, who had not played since Dec. 18, scored on a layup to push Toronto’s lead to three with 62 seconds to play, then drilled a three-pointer with 25 seconds left for a six-point cushion. He finished with 31 points, closing the door on the Clippers’ year, and their night.

UP NEXT

AT BROOKLYN

When: Saturday, 4:30 p.m. PST

On the air: TV: Bally Sports SoCal; Radio: 570, 1330

Update: The Clippers will face Brooklyn in the second game on back-to-back nights for the second time in a week but this time the Nets will have Kevin Durant available, after he cleared health and safety protocols.

Andrew Greif reported from Boston.