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LOS ANGELES — No, of course they weren’t surprised.
The Clippers kept hearing that question Friday night after Lou Williams scored a season-high 36 points to lift his team to a 118-107 victory over the Lakers at a sold-out Staples Center.
It was a vintage performance by the slight, 6-foot-1 scoring savant, but even in his 14th year in the NBA, even after a pair of Sixth Man of the Year awards and 12,371 career points, Williams’ ability to weave around and through defenders who are larger, huskier and who all should know better – it’s something that must be seen to be believed. And even then …
“Are you ever surprised by what Lou Williams can do out there?”
“No,” said Danilo Gallinari, who finished with 19 points and 10 rebounds. “I’ve been playing against and with Lou for many years and it doesn’t surprise me. I know what he can bring to the table.”
“He didn’t surprise,” responded Tobias Harris, whom the Lakers held to nine points. “I mean, he just came out and he carried us.”
“He’s a professional scorer. He knows how to score. You know?” Clippers coach Doc Rivers said. “We’re running a set where if you force him to the right, he gets the layup. If you force him to the left, well, you can’t force him to the left.
Professional scorer … and scoring professor?
Second-year guard Sindarius Thornwell – who gave the Clippers nine minutes of stout defense, as well as seven points, two rebounds and a steal – said he’s picking up as much as he can from watching Williams at work.
“Oh, it’s fun,” Thornwell said. “I look forward to every game. Before every game, I ask him how he feels, stuff like that, because I like watching him score, because he does it so easy.”
And Williams does it, Thornwell points out, within the Clippers’ offense.
“He’s not like most sixth men,” Thornwell said. “They want to play ISO, hold the ball – he scores in our system without breaking plays. And that’s the best scorer to me, when a guy can score within the offense, you know?
“I’m fascinated by watching him score so much because I’m trying to learn where he gets his shots at.”
On Friday, Williams – who is averaging 18.2 points per game – got shots from anywhere he wanted, including from deep: He was 3 for 3 from 3-point range, a performance that included his 226th trey, which moved him past Baron Davis and into 16th on the Clippers’ all-time 3-point leaderboard.
Williams’ effort Friday also was the third-highest scoring output by a reserve this season, behind only Brooklyn’s Spencer Dinwiddie, who has dropped 39 and 37. And it marked Williams’ third consecutive game with more than 20 points, the NBA’s longest active streak among reserves.
None of that should be surprising, the Clippers will tell you: Last season, Williams had 30-plus points off the bench 11 times, the most by a player in a single season since Ricky Pierce did it for the Milwaukee Bucks in 1989-90.
“It’s funny, one of our coaches said, ‘I think this is gonna be a Lou night tonight,’ ” Rivers said. “Because you could see, we just didn’t have it offensively. Give the Lakers some credit, they prepared for us pretty well, their switching affected us a little bit, but Lou has pretty much seen every defense that anyone can throw at him, and he was fantastic.”
So it’s no wonder, either, that the Clippers’ bench is far and away the highest scoring such contingent in the league. Clippers reserves are contributing 51.8 points per game, more than six points more per contest than the Nets, whose reserves average 45.6.
“We’re a deep basketball team,” Williams said. “We have a lot of guys that can come in at the drop of a hat and give us positive minutes.”
One guy in particular.
“He’s a good player. He’s a very good player,” Lakers center Tyson Chandler said. “(He) shoots the ball well, keeps you on your heels, a really good player in our league.”
@TeamLou23 pours in a season-high 36 PTS off the bench, helping the @LAClippers earn the win at Staples Center! #ClipperNation pic.twitter.com/dPSpq1skQR
— NBA (@NBA) December 29, 2018
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