After injuries, load management and new additions, Clippers are gearing up for stretch run

After dealing with injuries, load management and integrating two new bench pieces, the LA Clippers look like they’re finally ready to ignite.

To this point in the season, the LA Clippers have mostly dabbled in build-up and potential. They’ve been like the first few seasons of Game of Thrones: A mostly great and occasionally stellar watch, but one with promises of greater things like dragons and White Walkers on the horizon.

Two confident wins over sub-.500 teams may not be the Clippers’ Battle of Winterfell, or even their Red Wedding episode, but after slogging through months of injuries, load management and implementing new faces, this title contender is starting to look like one again.

At 39-19, the Clippers are currently one game behind the Denver Nuggets for the 2-seed in the Western Conference. They’re still a whopping six games behind the West-leading Los Angeles Lakers, which speaks both to the Clippers’ starting lineup merry-go-round and the Lakers’ brilliance, but even if catching their Staples Center rival for the 1-seed may be a long shot now, the Clippers have their eyes set on bigger goals.

Step one to achieving them was simply getting everyone back on the court.

“Health is the most important part, but also just having some rhythm is important as well,” head coach Doc Rivers said Wednesday night before a road tilt with the Phoenix Suns. “We’ve had a lot of injuries. There’s not a lot you can do about it, but that’s what helped us as well is we’ve been very deep. We have a very deep basketball deep, and we keep getting deeper in some ways by adding a couple guys. So it feels like we’re just getting everybody integrated to our team.”

On Monday, L.A. used a 40-14 first quarter to smoke the banged up Memphis Grizzlies at home. Two nights later in Phoenix, they outlasted a pesky Suns squad that was coming off an impressive 20-point rout in Utah. They weren’t the best of opponents, but the Clippers’ quality of play in both contests provided more glimpses of what this team could be at full strength.

“I think we’re just trying to be more consistent,” Kawhi Leonard said. “We’re healthy, we’ve got veterans bringing that experience and the camaraderie has been good.”

L.A.’s roster may as well have comprised Game of Thrones characters with how many fan favorites keeled over this season; in 58 games, the Clippers have only been fully healthy for six. In those six games, however, they’re 6-0 with a point differential of plus-12.3. Even more alarming, they just added two capable, experienced scorers to pad what was already the NBA’s deepest roster.

Marcus Morris, who was acquired from the New York Knicks before the trade deadline, was averaging a career-high 19.6 points per game on 43.6 percent shooting from 3-point range in the Big Apple. Sure, his team was terrible, but he’s been a nearly seamless fit so far in L.A., posting 11.7 points per game in his first six appearances.

“We’ve got great players, it’s kinda easy to fit in,” Morris said. “There are a lot of veteran guys on this team and we all know how to play in a big game. So when we play the right way, get the ball moving and talk on defense, the game comes a lot easier.”

Aside from a few big playoff moments with the Boston Celtics, Mook’s experience with hitting contested shots — something he was forced to do as the Knicks’ main scoring threat — could quickly pay dividends in the postseason when defenses key in on Kawhi Leonard, Paul George or Lou Williams.

As for Reggie Jackson, the Clippers’ most recent addition on the buyout market, he’s put up 7.0 points and 3.7 assists in just 20.3 minutes per game through his first three appearances, shooting 38.5 percent from 3.

“I’m not a GM, [team president Lawrence Frank] is,” Patrick Beverley said. “But he’s the best in the biz, and the reason why he’s the best in the biz is he gets players like that to add to our team — guys that know how to play basketball the right way, guys that know how to put the ball in the hole.”

While Jackson won’t be in a starting role like Morris, his impact off the bench could be huge in a pinch.

“As I said the other day, they’re both gonna win at least one playoff game each for us,” Rivers stated bluntly. “You just know that. You know how the games are gonna go: We’re gonna need a big shot here and there, and one of ‘em or both of ‘em will make one.”

Integrating good, new players on a legitimate contender in order to weave a coherent final result is usually a difficult process — just ask Benioff and Weiss. But Rivers believes both Morris and Jackson are taking it upon themselves to fit in.

“Marcus and Reggie are both coming here to support what we have, they’re not coming here to change it or anything like that,” he said. “They’re coming from programs where they basically got the ball, shot the ball and whatever, but now they’re part of a role.”

Given the amount of games key Clippers have missed, it’s easy to see how crucial it will be to build the proper chemistry down the stretch of the regular season:

• Patrick Patterson: 11 games missed
• Kawhi Leonard: 13 games missed
• Patrick Beverley: 16 games missed
• Landry Shamet: 17 games missed
• Paul George: 22 games missed

And yet, because the Clippers have had so many key players miss games at overlapping times, they’re almost used to developing chemistry on the fly in a myriad of lineups. If anything, that could help them build momentum in these last 24 games, since they’ve grown accustomed to improvising with the league’s highest number of different starting lineups.

What’s two more new faces who can actually help?

“They’ve been perfect for us,” Paul George said. “I see both of ‘em getting more comfortable each game. Morris is gonna be a big weapon for us. He’s not a guy that’s trying to find himself; we want him to be himself. And Reggie’s the same, we’re talking to him to be aggressive and look to score. If everybody’s aggressive and everybody’s locked in, we’re really hard to beat.”

In all honesty, the Clippers would still be contenders even without Morris and Jackson. Just getting Leonard, PG-13, Beverley, Shamet, Lou Will and Montrezl Harrell all on the floor together has been a struggle in its own right, but any team with two of the game’s premier two-way wings — let alone all six of those solid rotation guys — will pose serious problems come April.

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Remember, Leonard and George have only played 26 games together, with George working through injury rust in many of them. Even so, over the 614 minutes they’ve shared the court, the star duo boasts a Net Rating of plus-9.3.

With their four biggest offensive weapons — Leonard, George, Williams and Harrell — on the floor together, the Clippers have posted a Net Rating of plus-19.0 (in 112 minutes). Sub in Beverley for Williams for more of a defensive touch and it’s still a plus-18.1 (96 minutes). Take out Harrell and put Williams back in and it’s still a plus-17.0 (70 minutes).

And when you include the first two games of Beverley, George, Leonard, Morris and Ivica Zubac, the Clippers’ healthy starting lineup? They’ve posted a plus-11.8 Net Rating in those 34 minutes. It’s a small sample size against mediocre competition, to be fair, but still a very encouraging sign considering how brief Morris’ tenure with the team has been.

In any case, the Clippers have enough good players and enough positive results to suggest they’ll be dangerous on both ends whenever their core players are out there.

“Our IQ is very high around the board,” Morris said. “We’re very versatile and everybody can do a lot of things. Guys are just getting more comfortable in their roles and trying to fit in.”

Rivers said depending on the scenario, he won’t hesitate to drop a plot twist in the form of a previously unused lineup, which — like George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series — would make the Clippers impossible to prepare for.

With less than two months to go in the regular season, however, now it’s all about developing a rapport and getting more comfortable with each other.

“I mean, we know who we are,” George said. “I think now it’s just building — building toward something great going down the last 25-26 games, toward what we wanna be when it’s winning time.”

Over the next five games, the Clippers will take on four aspiring contenders and one certified playoff team: the Denver Nuggets, Philadelphia 76ers, Oklahoma City Thunder, Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers.

“We’re preparing ourselves for a long run in the playoffs, so we’re trying to get things right,” Morris said. “We’ve got a stretch of games coming up against a lot of good teams, so we’re just trying to prepare for that. It’s starting to look more and more like our self, our guys being in rhythm and guys are healthy, and we’re trying to play together.”

Between injuries, resting their star players and now adding two new faces into the mix, the LA Clippers don’t have the conference-leading record some figured they might. Instead, they’ve opted to take a page out of the Toronto Raptors’ book and keep their eyes on the ultimate prize.

Now that their core pieces are healthy and the NBA season is entering its stretch run, we may see more of the world-beating flashes this team has displayed all season but never fully embodied. The dragons and White Walkers are finally here, but unlike Game of Thrones, the ending to this story will be worth watching.

“It’s no secret this group and this organization is all in,” George said. “We want to win, we’ve got the pieces to win. We added two guys that’s ready to win. Again, it just goes with this unit, this group — we’re ready to win.”