INGLEWOOD, Calif. — After the starting lineups were introduced at Intuit Dome for the 2025 home opener, Kawhi Leonard grabbed the microphone to address the crowd. This wasn’t 2019, when the Clippers played their home opener in downtown Los Angeles against the Lakers and Leonard had to quell a split crowd with a “Hey, hey, hey!” But Leonard was an interesting choice to address the crowd nonetheless.
A year ago, Leonard wasn’t in the right place for the roster introduction, so he missed his cue to be announced. He also didn’t play that night, against the Suns in October 2024. Leonard has been at the center of the Aspiration scandal that has the Clippers organization under investigation entering this season. And to focus on basketball, Leonard was coming off arguably his worst season opener of his career on both ends of the floor two nights earlier on the road in a blowout loss to the Utah Jazz.
But here Leonard was on a Friday night at center court.
“Thanks for coming out, and let’s have a great season,” Leonard bellowed. “Go Clips go!”
Leonard went from scoring only 10 points in Utah to making a game-high 11 field goals against the Phoenix Suns, scoring 27 points to help lead the Clippers to a 129-102 win against the Suns. As discouraging as Leonard’s engagement and effort level were against the Jazz, he looked remarkably different, outscoring the Suns on the fast break by himself 11-7. In the second quarter, following a corner 3 by Kris Dunn, Leonard matched up with Suns backup point guard Collin Gillespie, refused to be screened by backup center Nick Richards and stole the ball from Gillespie. Three dribbles later, Leonard was soaring in for his first dunk of the season.
“I think we took care of the ball as a unit,” Leonard said Friday night after the Clippers had only seven first-half turnovers compared to having nine turnovers in the first quarter at Utah. “If we take care of the ball, we get stops, we’re able to get out and get easy baskets. Everybody just looked up the court and just got easy shots.”
When Leonard got going in the second quarter, he was on the floor with a lineup of Clippers reserves Dunn, John Collins, Chris Paul, and Brook Lopez. It wound up being LA’s second-most used lineup on the night, outscoring the Suns 23-19 in 10 minutes and never relinquishing the lead. That second quarter saw Leonard make four of his five field goal attempts. When Leonard was on the floor in the fourth quarter with that second unit, he ran hard and continued to get easy buckets.
“Just a different dynamic on the floor,” Leonard said of playing with the Clippers’ second unit. “You got Brook spacing out the floor a lot more, he can shoot 3s. Chris Paul is just cerebral, trying to find guys. Everybody can see where their spots are. We didn’t get a lot to it in practice or training camp. But as the games go on, you might see me in that unit a lot. And we’re just gonna keep moving forward, trying to get better.”
It wasn’t just Leonard who helped anchor a key bench lineup, as James Harden spent four minutes with a lineup that included Dunn, Collins, Lopez and Nicolas Batum. That five-man group outscored the Suns 16-9 in their time on the floor, highlighted by an 11-0 first-quarter run. Harden scored 14 of his game-high 30 points in the first quarter.
Those bench lineups anchored by Leonard and Harden were critical. Unlike the season opener in Utah that saw the full five-man bench lineup of Paul, Dunn, Batum, Collins, and Lopez get nine minutes together and get outscored 20-11, Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue only let the all-bench five-man group get six possessions together, keeping at least one of Harden or Leonard on the floor for the rest of the game until the Clippers were up 121-95 with 4:46 left to play.
The star-led bench lineups also needed to be good because the first unit of Leonard, Harden, Ivica Zubac, Bradley Beal and Derrick Jones Jr. got off to a poor start once again. After the starters were outscored 46-31 in 14 minutes together in Utah, the Clippers’ starters allowed the Suns to score on 10 of the first 13 possessions of Friday night’s game, putting the Clippers in a 23-14 deficit before the first subs were made.
But in what was perhaps the most important development of all Friday night, the Clippers’ first unit finally looked good together for the first time in the second half. The Clippers forced a Suns timeout by blitzing them with a 10-0 run that expanded the lead from 16 at halftime to 26. Ultimately, the Clippers starters outscored the Suns 14-2 in the first 3:36 of the third quarter, which included LA’s defense holding the Suns offense scoreless for the first seven possessions of the second half. And when the Clippers got stops, they were outrunning the Suns.
“Just seeing how a team plays, how fast they run, how fast they cut, and then what they’re trying to do and how they’re trying to exploit us,” Lue said when discussing the improved defense from the starters. “Once we were able to lock into that and understand what they were doing, I thought our guys did a really good job of adjusting. I thought JVG (Clippers defensive coordinator Jeff Van Gundy) did a good job adjusting our defense as well to keep them off balance, and we was able to do that really well as well. Every night’s gotta be a defensive mindset if we wanna win games. Like I said, we’ll be able to score, but we gotta be able to stop people.”
“It starts with me on the defensive end, just getting into the ball,” Jones said. “I felt like I wasn’t into the ball a lot in the Utah game. Me and JVG had a conversation, figured out where I can be impactful, picking up the ball on the floor. So yes, I feel like that was a big part. But also, all my teammates having their job, getting their job done.”
Beal, who played with the Suns the previous two seasons, has had a quiet start while dealing with a minutes restriction and not getting any preseason run with Leonard or Harden. But Lue called the first play of the second half for Beal, allowing him to get to the free-throw line after a first half in which the Clippers were outscored by eight points in Beal’s minutes while outscoring the Suns by 24 points with Beal off the floor. Beal being able to participate in LA’s third-quarter success with the rest of the starters was a needed breakthrough.
“That’s who we are,” said Beal, who scored six points in just over 20 minutes. “First half, I think they got up like 27 3s or something like that. They were kind of getting a lot of shots that they wanted. We wanted to try to eliminate that as much as possible. I think we still were doing a good job of helping. We just gave them too many open ones. Second half, we did a real better job, a lot better job of just closing down on that, being close to our man, not helping off of our guy unnecessarily.”
There is still work for the Clippers to do. They have to show that they can begin games while defending early; that did not happen against the Suns. They can only play the team in front of them, but these Suns do not qualify as a statement win, especially given their shorthanded state (Jalen Green was out due to a hamstring injury) and the logistics (the Suns were on the front end of a road back-to-back). The Clippers need time, especially the starters. But they earned some credit with what they showed Friday night.
“Hard to tell,” Harden said of what he likes about the Clippers’ starting lineup. “I just know we’re very, very talented. We pose a lot of different mismatches depending on who we’re playing against. So certain games, we’re gonna, Zu’s gonna get more post-ups and have opportunities. It just depends on who you’re playing. So one thing about us as we go further in the season, we learn who we are, we learn what works against different teams, and then we go from there.”
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