Clippers' Tyronn Lue: Our Approach is to 'Do Everything We Can in the Regular Season'
Los Angeles Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue again clarified his comments from earlier in the summer, when he appeared on the All The Smoke podcast and said he told Kawhi Leonard and Paul George they needed to take the regular season more seriously.
Lue told reporters on Tuesday that his main point was that in the past, his focus was about winning a title and getting the team into the postseason as healthy as possible. This year, however, a greater emphasis would be placed on having the best possible regular season.
Here were Lue's original comments:
One of the major storylines for the Clippers in recent seasons has been the slew of injuries to both Leonard and George. That put the pair front and center in the load management conversation, as the Clippers often tried to preserve their health.
So Leonard was left to question whether the NBA's new rules regarding load management, which were created to prevent teams from resting more than one healthy star player per game, were targeted at him.
"When I was with the Raptors, it was different, I was coming from an injury," Leonard told reporters, referencing the right quadriceps tendinopathy he was playing through the 2018-19 season and Toronto's decision give him regular nights off. "You have to know the details of a doctor. If the league is seeing or trying to mock what I did with the Raptors, then they should stop, because I was injured during that whole year."
"If I'm able to play, I'll play basketball," he added. "I work out every day in the summertime to play the game, not to sit and watch people play. No league policy is helping me to play more games."
President of basketball operations Lawrence Frank, meanwhile, noted that the star pair were feeling good heading into the upcoming season.
"Both are fully healthy," he told reporters last week. "I think both have had extremely productive offseasons, and obviously our two best players are totally invested in doing special things for the Clippers. They show it with their actions, so I think we're really excited that they're both fully healthy and will be full participants in camp."
Health issues or not, Leonard and George haven't lived up to the lofty expectations placed upon them since they chose to team up ahead of the 2019-20 season. Perhaps a renewed focus on success in the regular season will help buck that trend.
