The Los Angeles Clippers open their 2025-26 home slate on Friday, welcoming their Western Conference counterpart Phoenix Suns to Inglewood, Calif.
The Clippers finished 30-11 in their first season at Intuit Dome, though they lost both matchups with Phoenix.
A third home loss to the Suns could be nigh if the Clippers repeat their flat opener in Salt Lake City. The Utah Jazz outscored Los Angeles 43-19 in the first quarter, which set the tone for a 129-108 blowout on Wednesday.
James Harden finished with 15 points and 11 assists, but Kawhi Leonard managed only 10 points on 3-of-9 shooting on the way to a team-worst plus-minus rating of minus-25.
Clippers coach Tyronn Lue lamented the team lacking the right “defensive mindset” while giving up 78 first-half points, but Los Angeles also struggled offensively with 39-of-88 shooting from the floor while committing 15 turnovers.
“Try to understand what we do (offensively), what teams are trying to take away from us, understand when teams blitz us where we’ve got to do our spacing,” Lue said.
Another of Los Angeles’ offensive issues was offseason acquisition Bradley Beal, who signed with the Clippers after forging a buyout agreement with the Suns. Beal started alongside Harden in the backcourt, but he managed just five points on five shots in 20 minutes.
The Clippers will look for more from Beal against his former team, which opened its campaign Wednesday with a 120-116 home win over Sacramento.
The new-look Suns also moved Kevin Durant during the offseason, which leaves Devin Booker as the remaining member of the Big Three. He ignited Phoenix, which trailed by as much as 20, with 31 points in Wednesday’s win.
Dillon Brooks, added to the Suns’ roster in the seven-team deal that sent Durant to the Houston Rockets, scored 22 points despite shooting 1-of-8 from 3-point range.
“This whole preseason and training camp, we were making everything,” Booker said in his postgame interview with Suns TV. “So this was a good test for us.”
Booker, a career 24.5-points per game scorer, comes off a 33.2% 3-point shooting campaign in 2024-25 — the second-lowest percentage of his career.
He shot 1-of-3 from deep on Wednesday, but made up for it with a 9-of-16 effort inside the arc.
In last season’s four matchups with the Clippers, Booker scored 15, 17, 26 and 40 points. He made at least four 3-pointers in three of the four contests.
Grayson Allen led Phoenix’s 3-point shooting in the season opener, going 3-of-7 on the way to 18 points. Allen’s 18 points against Los Angeles last January were his most against a Clippers team since going for 40 in a 2019 matchup while a member of the Jazz.
Harden paced Los Angeles in last year’s four games against Phoenix, putting up a double-double in each. He produced a 25-point, 13-assist, 10-rebound stat line in a 125-119 Suns win on Halloween.
Harden averaged 22.8 points, 8.7 assists and 5.8 rebounds last year in 79 games — his most since playing 81 games as the NBA Most Valuable Player runner-up in 2016-17.
–Field Level Media
