By Don Wanlass
Contributing Writer
It’s crunch time in the NBA. With 5½ weeks to go in the season, it is time the Lakers and Clippers got serious and played hard every night to put themselves in the best position possible for the playoffs, which begin with the play-in tournament April 16.
The Clippers’ main goal at this point of the season should be to maintain their playoff position. At 39-21, the Clippers are fourth in the NBA Western Conference, two games behind the Denver Nuggets.
As the fourth-place seed, they would open the playoffs against the fifth-place team, which figures to be the New Orleans Pelicans, the Phoenix Suns or possibly the Sacramento Kings.
None of those matchups would be walkovers for the Clippers. In fact, the NBA Western Conference playoffs figure to be extremely competitive this season no matter who finishes where. That’s because the Golden State Warriors, two years removed from their last championship; and the Los Angeles Lakers sit at ninth and 10th in the standings.
Both are destined right now for the play-in tournament and no one in the conference — including the conference leading Minnesota Timberwolves and the defending NBA champion Denver Nuggets — wants any part of the Warriors or the Lakers in the opening round.
The Clippers are facing two immediate challenges. They have a brutal schedule in March with 17 games in 31 days. Of their last 22 games, only 10 are against teams with records below .500.
They have upcoming games March 10 against the Milwaukee Bucks, the second best team in the NBA East; and March 12 against the Minnesota Timberwolves, the top team in the NBA West. Those are sandwiched between two games against the Chicago Bulls who are struggling to get into the play-in tournament.
The Clippers’ other major challenge is the broken hand suffered by Russell Westbrook last week. Westbrook had surgery on the hand March 4 and is expected to miss four to six weeks, which will get him back just in time for the playoffs. How effective he will be coming off an injury layoff remains to be seen.
Westbrook is not the best player coming off the bench for the Clippers. That would be Norman Powell, who averages 13.6 points a game and can shoot outside jump shots or drive to the basket and pick up fouls.
But Westbrook provides energy off the bench, runs the offense when James Harden is off the floor and also plays good off-the-ball defense. He is one of only four Clippers averaging over a steal per game.
The Clippers have spun their wheels in the last week, going 2-2 with losses to the Lakers and Bucks and wins over the lowly Washington Wizards and the conference-leading Timberwolves.
The loss to the Bucks March 4 came after the Clippers led by 15 points in the third quarter. But, playing their third game in four nights after beating the Timberwolves March 3, the Clippers ran out of gas in the fourth quarter and were outscored 40-25 in the final 12 minutes, despite Bucks’ star Giannis Antetokounmpo missing the game with Achille’s tendonitis. Those kind of losses get magnified as the playoffs get closer.
With only 19 games remaining, the Lakers have fewer games left than the Clippers, but the Lakers play more formidable opponents. Only five of the last 19 games come against teams with records under .500 and three of those come at the end of a six-game road trip that runs from March 26 to April 3.
The Lakers were 3-1 in the last week, losing only to the Denver Nuggets, 124-114 March 2, while beating the Clippers, the Washington Wizards and the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The loss to the Nuggets hurt because the Lakers led, 110-108 with four minutes left in the game, but were outscored 16-4 down the stretch.
Head coach Darvin Ham has solidified his rotation, with guard Spencer Dinwiddie, forward Taurean Prince and center Jaxson Hayes being the first players of the bench.
Point guard D’Angelo Russell continues to show he’s the team’s third best scorer (he led the team in scoring with 26 March 4 against the Thunder), which puts less pressure on Austin Reaves.
The Lakers will be a threat to anyone in the playoffs as long as LeBron James and Anthony Davis are healthy. Even if Jarred Vanderbilt and Gabe Vincent don’t return from injuries, the Lakers will be hard to handle in the playoffs.
With 5½ games between them and the 11th-place Utah Jazz the Lakers are assured of at least making the play-in tournament again. With only 2½ games between them and the sixth-place Phoenix Suns, the Lakers have an outside chance of avoiding the play-in tournament, but they will have to pass the Sacramento Kings and Dallas Mavericks to do that.
With James and Anthony, though, anything is possible. The next five weeks will be interesting.
TOURNAMENT TIME: A long time ago, the college basketball season was almost as exciting as college football. The big teams played each other in non-conference games and the regular season record mattered because only 16 teams made the NCAA Tournament.
Now, with every conference holding a post-season tournament to determine its top representative in March Madness, the regular season doesn’t matter and even horribly inconsistent teams — like UCLA and USC this season — have a chance to make the NCAA Tournament if they can win their conference tournament.
That being said, the Pac 12 will hold its last basketball tournaments starting March 6 for the women and March 13 for the men.
The UCLA and USC women have better chances of making the NCAA Tournament this year than the men’s teams do. Actually, both women’s teams are shoe-in for the tournament. The Lady Trojans are 23-5 on the season and ranked fifth in the nation. The Lady Bruins are 24-5 and ranked seventh.
The USC women open Pac 12 Tournament play at 6 p.m. March 7 against the winner of the Arizona-Washington game March 6. UCLA follows at 8:30 p.m. against the winner of the Arizona State-Utah game.
The Trojans enter the tournament having won nine of their last 10 games. They are led by fabulous freshman JuJu Watkins, who is averaging 27.8 points a game. The second-leading scorer, McKenzie Forbes, is averaging 13.1 points a game.
On the other hand, UCLA is led by fifth-year guard Charisma Osborne, who was a three-time player of the year at Windward High School as a high school player. Osborne only averages 14.1 points a game, second on the team to Lauren Betts, who averages 14.9.
But the Lady Bruins have much more balanced scoring than the Lady Trojans, with four players averaging more than 10 points a game and a fifth, Gabriela Jacquez — Jaime Jacquez’s little sister — knocking on the door at 9.9 a game.
With six teams ranked in the nation’s top 25 (three in the top 10) the Pac 12 Women’s Tournament figures to be a battle royale.
Both USC and UCLA hope to be cutting down the nets March 10.
The men’s teams can only hope to be that lucky. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. USC’s men were ranked 21 in the preseason Associated Press top 25. UCLA was 28th. Both teams, however, never jelled this year.
With two games remaining on the Pac 12 schedule, the Bruins are 14-15, the Trojans are 12-17.
The Bruins have been plagued by inexperience all season. Only three players had much playing time last season and the newcomers haven’t mixed well.
Sophomore center Adem Bona was supposed to be the focal point of the team this year. He is averaging 12.2 points a game — second on the team — and 5.8 rebounds. But he plays only 26 minutes a game because he is in constant foul trouble.
Freshman guard Sebastian Mack leads the team with 12.8 points a game and point guard Dylan Andrews and Utah transfer Lazar Stefanovic average more than 11, but it is a huge drop after that.
Freshman recruits Berke Buyuktuncel from Turkey and Aday Mara from Spain weren’t as developed as originally thought and head coach Mitch Cronin has been frustrated by his team’s performance all year.
If the Bruins can sweep their two remaining Pac 12 games against Arizona and Arizona State, they can finish fourth in the conference and avoid the opening round of the conference tournament.
Otherwise, they open the tournament March 13 and must win four games in four days to win the conference tournament and the automatic bid to March madness that comes with it.
The Bruins don’t usually settle for the NIT, so unless they have a major turnaround in Las Vegas next week, their season will come to an end March 16 or earlier.
At 6-12 in the conference, USC is stuck in the opening round of the Pac 12 Tournament and must win four straight games in the tournament to advance to the NCAA Tournament.
That isn’t going to happen.
With three top freshman — included two with NBA pedigrees, Bronny James and DJ Rodman — added to a roster that included returning Boogie Ellis, Kobe Johnson and Joshua Morgan, the Trojans were expected to contend for the conference title this year.
Instead, James had a heart issue in the summer that delayed the start of his season, Ellis and freshman guard Isaiah Collier both missed early games with injuries and the Trojans ended up spinning their wheels.
Collier, a freshman out of Georgia, who will probably reach the NBA before James or Rodman, missed six games with an injury. He leads the team in scoring with 17 points a game. Ellis, who sat out four games with an injury, is second with 16.6 points and Johnson is the only other player averaging more than 10 points a game.
Rodman is at 8.1 points a game in 26.6 minutes and James averages 19.5 minutes and scores 5 points a game. He is a good college freshman, but he is not his father by any stretch of the imagination.
The Trojans will be lucky to win a game in the conference tournament, a sour end to what has been a sour — and disappointing — season.
