Clippers play it safe with heavy rest in regular-season finale

Ahead of their regular-season finale Sunday in Oklahoma City, the Clippers’ injury report Saturday was relatively spare: Only Amir Coffey was listed as out (health and safety protocols) and DeMarcus Cousins (left foot soreness) and Terance Mann (personal reasons) were considered questionable.

That outlook changed drastically closer to tip-off.

Tyronn Lue announced before Sunday’s game that the Clippers would play without stars Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, as well as Marcus Marcus Sr., Nicolas Batum and Rajon Rondo.

Furthermore, although starting center Ivica Zubac would keep his 72-game perfect attendance record intact for the second consecutive season, he also wouldn’t play much Sunday, Lue said: “Zu’s only gonna play the first minute of the game and then he’ll be out as well.”

The Clippers’ 25th and final starting lineup of the regular season: Patrick Beverley, Reggie Jackson, Luke Kennard, Patrick Patterson and Zubac — who played all of six seconds.

It’s always harder to win with fewer good players available, of course, and a Clippers loss Sunday would ensure they finish with the fourth seed in the Western Conference. Because even if Denver lost to Portland on Sunday night and finished the regular season with the same record as L.A., the Nuggets would be seeded third because they own the tiebreaker between the teams.

A conceivable byproduct of finishing fourth: The Clippers and Lakers potentially would not meet in the playoffs until the conference finals, whether the Lakers finished seeded sixth or seventh at night’s end.

Of course, if the Lakers finished as the seventh seed and lost a play-in game to the Warriors but then beat the winner of the play-in game between the ninth and 10th seeds, they also could emerge on the Clippers’ side of the bracket, matched up with the top seed in the first round.

Another wrinkle in the Clippers’ game at OKC: The Thunder entered play with a 21-50 record after having succeeded at losing 26 of their previous 28 games, in the process giving themselves a shot at finishing in the bottom three in the NBA, record-wise. That’s important because the three teams with the worst record all have an equal 14% chance of winning the top pick in the NBA draft. But with Orlando’s loss to Philadelphia on Sunday, a Thunder victory would cost them a place in that coveted bottom three instead of forcing a coin toss with the Magic, who finished 21-51.

For the Clippers, Lue said the decision to rest so many players Sunday was driven by a desire to keep his team healthy when it matters most.

“My biggest thing with the luck we’ve had all season, we’re just try to get our eight or nine guys out and just make sure we’re healthy,” Lue said. “I’ll take health over rust any day. That was our main thought.”

Lue noted that with the first round of the playoffs not scheduled to start until May 22, he didn’t see much value in trying to establish rhythm in a game almost a full week before.

“When I played, playoffs started in two or three days,” Lue said. “With everybody getting about a week off anyway, one game’s not gonna change or you’re not gonna get better chemistry in one game and being off seven days anyway.

“So we talked about it as a staff and as an organization, so the best thing for us is now that we have everyone pretty much healthy, we want to go into the playoffs with our guys as healthy as possible.”

PLAYOFF TICKETS

The Clippers informed fans Sunday that single-game playoff tickets would go on sale Monday, and that the NBA and L.A. County Health Department approved vaccinated sections, which will enable the team to “significantly increase our capacity.”

Vaccinated sections — which won’t require fans to be socially distanced — require proof that two weeks have elapsed since the second shot of either the second shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines or that two weeks elapsed since they received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Children older than 2 and younger than 16 may sit in vaccinated sections if they’re accompanied by a guardian and if they present a negative PCR COVID-19 test sampled within two days of the game.

There also will continue to be socially distanced seating, for which fans are required to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test (PCR or Antigen) taken within 72 hours of the event date.