PLAYA VISTA — Before he was one of the select 450 men who compose the NBA, Ivica Zubac said he would watch Steph Curry play basketball on TV and marvel: “Crazy.”
Now that Zubac finds himself a competing colleague of Curry’s, his estimation of Golden State’s audacious shooting guard has expanded: “Watching it first hand, it’s even crazier.”
“I mean, sometimes the shots he takes, you’re thinking, ‘Why would anyone take this shot?’” Zubac said Saturday morning before practice, rare between-game preparation at which the Clippers were readying themselves for Curry’s surging Golden State Warriors the following afternoon.
“And then you remember that’s Steph. You just see it goes so high up and it just drops and it’s crazy.”
The Clippers’ assignment this weekend is a whiplash-inducing afternoon pairing: They’ll follow Friday’s wire-to-wire win over the NBA’s worst offensive team with a test against the league’s top offense.
Even with some garbage time slippage, Friday’s 107-96 victory over the Detroit Pistons – who are 4-15 and average just 98.6 points per game – was never in question. Now the Clippers (11-8) hope Sunday’s matinee with the Warriors (17-2) will prove more interesting.
“Steve definitely has those guys playing the right way,” said Tyronn Lue, who, as the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, faced Steve Kerr and his Warriors in three consecutive NBA Finals between 2016-18, winning the first one.
“They know how they wanna play on both sides of the basketball,” Lue added. “It’s like they’re in mid-form right now in the season.”
Even without the services of Klay Thompson, who is nearing a return after a pair of debilitating leg injuries, Golden State has been in top gear all season, including dealing the Clippers a 115-113 loss in their season opener.
The Warriors are averaging 114.5 points per game, knocking down 15.1 3-pointers and dishing 29.5 assists per game – leading the league in all those categories.
But what’s impressed Clippers wing Terance Mann is how well they’re defending, allowing the fewest points per game (100.9) in the NBA and boasting a defensive rating of 99.9 (how many points an opponent scores per 100 possessions) that’s better than everyone else’s, including the Clippers’ second-best 102.0 rating.
“It seems like they’re on a string out there,” said Mann, noting how integral the contributions of veterans Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala have been defensively. “And most of them have been playing together for a while, so they know what they’re doing.”
And then there’s Curry, the 33-year-old, perfection-seeking sniper whom everyone again is chasing – over every inch of the court and up the leaderboards, too.
The seven-time All-Star and two-time NBA scoring champ comes into Sunday’s game averaging a league-high 28.4 points and 5.4 3-pointers per game. On Oct. 21, he gave the Clippers a most inhospitable welcome to 2021-22 with 45 points – 25 of which came on a 9-for-9 spree in the first quarter at Chase Center.
“You never know what he’s gonna do,” said Mann, a basketball tucked beneath his arm before practice. “You never know how good he’s feeling that day – and a lot of days he’s feeling good. So it’s just about trying to stack up empty possessions for them, get good contests and rebound the ball as best we can with Steph.
“I can’t see anybody,” Mann added, “more of a lethal weapon than Steph Curry.”
But expect the Clippers to deploy their own newfangled weapon Sunday – when Curry is off the court, anyway.
Lue said the Clippers’ two-center lineup – featuring 7-foot Isaiah Hartenstein and 6-10 Serge Ibaka – will get more run after its 11-minute debut Friday against the Pistons.
“We just going to keep working on it, keep trying it out,” Lue said. “Serge has definitely deserved to play more minutes, but Isaiah has definitely deserved to play, as well. So just getting those two guys on the floor together, it didn’t look bad until they went zone against it in the fourth quarter. And they haven’t really had a chance to work on that, so I wasn’t too mad and disappointed about that. We just got to keep working on it …
“When Steph’s off the floor, we can get a chance to use that unit,” added Lue, knowing how difficult it is to try to keep pace with Curry with even one big man on the court. “When he’s on the floor, it’s, it’s – no. I don’t think it’ll work too well.”
WARRIORS (17-2) at CLIPPERS (11-8)
When: Sunday, 12:30 p.m.
Where: Staples Center
TV: Bally Sports SoCal
Back at it again on Sunday. pic.twitter.com/nkTeOQ85V2
— LA Clippers (@LAClippers) November 26, 2021