Darius Garland had 24 points and 10 assists, Brook Lopez added 20 points and the Clippers ended a seven-game losing streak with a 139-123 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans on Sunday night.
Gradey Dick and rookie Keaton Wagler each scored 15 points and Rui Hachimura added 14 as the Clippers won for the first time since getting past the Sacramento Kings in the season opener.
The Clippers went on a 15-6 run to open the fourth quarter to take control with a 117-101 lead and finished off the victory after failing to hold on to double-digit fourth-quarter leads in their previous two games.
Trey Murphy III scored 26 points, while Zion Williamson and Jeremiah Fears each added 25 as the Pelicans lost their second consecutive game after a four-game winning streak. Saddiq Bey had 13 points for New Orleans, which was playing the opener of a two-game California trip.
The Pelicans shot 50.6% from the floor while getting held to 52 points in the paint after entering the with 61.6 per game in that department to lead the NBA.
The Clippers took a 124-107 lead with 4:56 remaining on three free throws from Garland and cruised to the victory from there with a season high in points. They shot a season-best 54.8% from the field.
The Clippers led 67-60 at halftime after shooting 52.3% from the field and getting 14 points from Garland, while Williamson had 17 points for the Pelicans. New Orleans opened the second half on an 18-10 run to take their first lead since the opening minute at 78-77.
The Clippers were without center Isaiah Jackson (groin), as well as former Pelicans star Brandon Ingram (heel), who is close to his debut for his new team.
It began as something merely conceptual, a tantalizing possibility.
Last June, immediately after the Rams traded for star edge rusher Myles Garrett, the NFL grapevine began buzzing:
Would Aaron Donald, a three-time NFL defensive player of the year, consider coming out of retirement to play with Garrett, a two-time winner of the award?
After a summer of rampant speculation, Donald signed on to join what was already regarded as a Super Bowl-favorite team.
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Gary Klein breaks down what to watch for Sunday when the Rams face the Washington Commanders.
But Donald’s ramp-up to achieve football shape precluded him from playing in the season opener against the San Francisco 49ers. And Garrett underwent knee surgery after that loss, so the two stars were unable to play together for seven games.
On Sunday, it will finally happen.
Barring an unexpected setback, Garrett and Donald will line up together for the first time when the Rams play the Washington Commanders at Northwest Field in Landover, Md.
Two players accustomed to being double- or triple-teamed — two players with a combined 236½ sacks — are eager for opportunities.
“The offenses are really going to have to pick their poison,” said Garrett, who amassed an NFL season-record 23 sacks last season. “‘Who’s going to be freed-up this play?’
“I think either of us are pretty good at winning one-on-ones, so we’ll have some fun.”
Said Donald, one of the most dominant interior linemen in NFL history: “It’s always good when you’ve got all the pieces to the puzzles out there.”
The Rams (4-4) aim to build on their modest two-game winning streak and get over .500 for the first time this season.
Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald tackles New York Giants running back Najee Harris for a loss during a Rams win on Sept. 21 at SoFi Stadium.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
But Garrett’s return should energize a team that still intends to play in Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium.
The Rams have only 12 sacks, which is tied for 26th among 32 teams. Edge rusher Byron Young has a team-best 4½ sacks. Donald is still looking for his first.
The attention the Commanders and future opponents must pay to Garrett and Donald will open play-making opportunities for others, Young said.
“I always call it art,” he said of Garrett’s and Donald’s ability to excel despite double teams. “Because it’s not easy when you’ve got four hands on you 90% of the time. And they still make it work.
“So it’s going to be fun. I can’t wait.”
Defensive lineman Braden Fiske said players are acclimating to Garrett’s skill set and play style.
“I’m sure there will be some kinks to work out early on, but it’s still pretty early in the season,” Fiske said. “He’s been playing for 10 years, so it shouldn’t be too hard to catch his stride.
“But he looks damn good out there.”
Rams left tackle Alaric Jackson played against Garrett in 2023, when the Rams defeated the Cleveland Browns at SoFi Stadium. The 6-foot-4, 272-pound Garrett’s size, speed and burst at the snap is “amazing,” Jackson said.
“He’s like a running back with skill but like a D-lineman with his power,” Jackson said. “He’s good at change of direction — like on a dime…
“He’s kind of like a do-everything kind of guy who’s seen everything as far as looks.”
Coach Sean McVay wants Garrett to “play within himself” Sunday.
“He doesn’t have to do anything other than be Myles and play one-eleventh of what the rest were asking to do for the defense,” McVay said.
Garrett said he won’t fight the excitement, the joy and all the emotions of finally getting to play again.
“You don’t try to push them back,” he said. “You open yourself to them. You accept it.
“After acknowledging it, you go out there and do what you’ve always done.”
Since coming out of retirement before this season, Rams defensive lineman Aaron Donald adopted a humble approach, always allowing younger, less-accomplished players to go ahead of him during drills.
But on Thursday, the future Hall of Famer enthusiastically moved to the front of the line.
The Rams practiced scooping fumbled footballs off the turf.
“I needed that,” Donald said Thursday, chuckling. “Learn bending and getting down.”
Last Sunday against the Chargers, Donald missed the opportunity to score his first NFL touchdown when, with a clear shot to the end zone, he failed to come up with a fumble, albeit in hilarious fashion.
“I saw what he was thinking because it’s going right in front of you and he’s thinking, ‘I’m going to scoop and score,’” coach Sean McVay said after the game. “Then he knocks that … out of bounds. I mean, what the hell?
“His face, he couldn’t even look at me and make eye contact after that. But at least we can laugh about it right now.”
Donald was still laughing about it Thursday.
“I should have slowed down, but I felt people behind me and I’m like, ‘I’m going to get hit in my back. That’s going to hurt,’” he said. “So I tried to go full speed and scoop it. I thought the ball was going to bounce this way but it bounced that way, and it just looked all damn silly.
“Then I hit the ball out. I just laid down. ‘I can’t believe I just did that.’”
Donald was grinning throughout his session with reporters while replaying the missed opportunity — and the new opportunity on the horizon with edge rusher Myles Garrett back at practice.
McVay has not said whether Garrett will be activated from injured reserve and play for the first time since undergoing knee surgery after the season opener.
But Donald sounded as if that could happen Sunday when the Rams play the Washington Commanders in Landover, Md.
Donald did not play in the opener, so whenever Garrett returns would mark the first time the future Hall of Famers will play together.
“If Myles is 100% ready to go, and plays this week, that’s going to be amazing for us,” Donald said. “It’s always good when you have all the pieces of the puzzle.”
Donald, a three-time NFL defensive player of the year, and Garrett, a two-time winner, have a combined 236½ sacks. Last season with the Cleveland Browns, Garrett set an NFL season record with 23 sacks.
Donald has played in six games for a team that opened the season as the Super Bowl favorite but is 4-4 after its win over the Chargers.
Donald does not have a sack, but he has 12 tackles, three for losses.
Will Garrett’s return free Donald from double teams and other schemes?
“I’m pretty sure,” Donald said. “The guy did have 20-something sacks last year.”
Donald said the season has not gone as expected, but he is enjoying it.
“I’m enjoying the process, I’m enjoying myself week in and week out getting better, enjoying being out there with the guys,” he said. “And just playing this game.”
Etc.
The Rams activated kicker Joshua Karty to the roster from the practice squad and signed cornerback David Long to the practice squad. The Rams selected Long in the third round of the 2019 draft and he played three-plus seasons before stints with four other teams. … For the second day in a row, cornerback Trent McDuffie (back), tight end Colby Parkinson (ribs) and safety Kam Curl (foot) did not practice.
A look at two of this week’s top high school football games in the Southland:
Friday
Gardena Serra (5-5) at Palos Verdes (9-1), 7 p.m. Somehow Serra upset Sherman Oaks Notre Dame last week, then won a coin flip to finish in third place in the Mission League. The reward is a rematch against a Palos Verdes team it lost to 17-14 in the season opener on Aug. 14. All eyes will be on AJ McBean, the star Serra running who played sparingly in league play because of a hamstring injury. Will he play? Serra will be doing everything possible to make sure the duo of Ryan Rakowski and Jalen Flowers stays quiet. The pick: Palos Verdes.
Sun Valley Poly (9-1) at Marshall (10-0), 2 p.m. Two league champions meet in a City Section Division 1 opener. Marshall quarterback Nathaniel Cadet left its win over Eagle Rock with a shoulder injury and will try to get back into the lineup. Poly won the East Valley League title, and coach Boo Williams is hoping his team’s speed advantage helps. The pick: Marshall.
Angel City and “Ted Lasso” both came to life in the summer of 2020 when the rest of the world was preoccupied with something far more serious, the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Angel City, meanwhile, would play its first NWSL game two years later, by which time “Lasso” and Jason Sudeikis, the title character of the Apple TV series about a fictional Premier League team and its manager, had already won multiple Emmys.
Hollywood is a small town, so it wasn’t long before Sudeikis reached out to Kara Nortman, a venture capitalist who co-founded Angel City in 2020, and asked to talk about women’s soccer.
Angel City co-founders Natalie Portman, left, Kara Nortman and Julie Uhrman speak during the team’s equity summit in Australia during the 2023 Women’s World Cup.
(Hanna Lassen / Getty Images)
“And I was like, ‘You had me at hello,’” Nortman said.
What was supposed to be an hour-long phone call turned into four-hour meeting in person, Nortman said.
“The most fun conversation I’ve had in a long time,” she remembered last month. “It really started as a shared passion and interest in women’s sports and building communities and new leadership models and all the things that ‘Ted Lasso’ is about that are far beyond football.”
What the conversation led to was the foundation for the just-completed fourth season of “Ted Lasso,” which focused on the unique challenges faced by women’s soccer teams and players — challenges Nortman knows only too well as the co-owner of a team. That’s why she was credited as a consultant on the series.
And the collaboration comes at a time when the soccer team and the soccer TV series are both at the top of their game, with “Lasso” drawing record audience numbers this summer and Angel City advancing to this weekend’s NWSL playoff quarterfinals after the most successful season in its history.
“They could have continued writing about the men’s team,” Nortman said. “They chose to write about women’s football.
“I’m super proud that we were part of what helped them really understand how to write a beautiful script that was really representative of a lot of challenges we went through.”
The challenges go beyond just salaries, media attention and funding to things as serious as child care and the rash of ACL injuries in the women’s game and as frustrating as hand-me-down uniforms and locker rooms. In “Ted Lasso,” the women’s team Sudeikis coaches — a man coaching women? That topic is addressed, too — uses a dressing room abandoned by a men’s team, one with urinals but without enough working showers.
Angel City captain Sarah Gorden dribbles the ball in front of Boston Legacy’s Sarah Schupansky at Dignity Health Sports Park on Sunday.
(Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty Images)
One player nearly misses a game because she can’t find a babysitter, something that really happened to Angel City captain Sarah Gorden. Another player is recognized by a fan while working for a food-delivery company to supplement her tiny soccer salary, something that really happened to English star Lucy Bronze in her early playing days.
For many viewers, the “Ted Lasso” plot lines were their introduction to those real-life issues.
“The vibe of authenticity,” Nortman calls it.
“They got right the ACLs, they got right the locker-room dynamic, they got right the training facility,” she said. “I think they got all those things right.”
Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt, the creative geniuses behind “Ted Lasso,” declined to be interviewed for this story, as did everyone involved with the series. But Sudeikis has long denied the show is about soccer.
“This show is as much about soccer as ‘Rocky’ is about boxing,” said Sudeikis, who described the eponymous title character as a cross between John Wooden and Mister Rogers.
Actors Jason Sudeikis, center, and Tanya Reynolds, right, lead a professional women’s soccer team through authentic challenges during the fourth season of “Ted Lasso.”
(Colin Hutton / Apple TV)
But the series has always had soccer in it. So it was natural that Sudeikis and Hunt, who both have long supported women’s sports, would turn their massive spotlight on women’s soccer and bring attention to the glaring inequalities that had slowed the development of the game.
And Nortman wasn’t the only one from NWSL to join that cause. The “Lasso” season opener, shot largely in Kansas City, Mo., was a paean to that city’s women’s soccer team, the Current, and its stadium, where the team has sold out every game over the last three seasons and is unbeaten in its last 32 matches there. (Angel City opens the playoffs in Kansas City on Saturday.)
The synergy helped both sides, with “Lasso” shattering viewership records, trailing only Amazon Prime Video’s “Reacher” as the most-streamed series overall in September, while NWSL’s viewership numbers through the first half of the season jumped 61% on ABC and ESPN. The average season attendance of 11,032 was the second-highest in history.
“Once we knew that Jason and the cast were going to feature a season about women’s soccer and start that season at one of our stadiums with one of our teams, the authenticity with that just lent itself to doing an integration,” said Jennifer Levine, the league’s vice president for public relations and communications.
Kansas City Current fans cheer during the team’s first match at CPKC Stadium in 2024. It is the first stadium built solely for a pro women’s soccer team and was featured in the latest season of “Ted Lasso.”
(Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
“There was a lot of crossover between what they were doing and what we’re doing. So it kind of created a perfect storm for us. Being a part of the cultural conversation as part of ‘Ted Lasso’ will only add to the excitement around the NWSL.”
But will it solve the problems and level the inequities that continue to plague women’s soccer?
“I like to hope it helps,” Levine said. “They have been honest. … I think the writing team and the cast did an incredible job portraying what it’s like to be a women’s footballer.
“Everything that we’re doing at the league with investing in infrastructure and building more purpose-built stadiums and building training facilities, it’s all to improve the experience that viewers are seeing in ‘Ted Lasso.’”
Or as Sudeikis’ character once put it, “doing the right thing is never the wrong thing.”
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.
Not with superstars or championship aspirations. But with the promise of free parking, a jersey trade-in and a basketball team that is, at least, better than the Sacramento Kings, who they beat 121-96 in both teams’ season opener. Coach Tyronn Lue dedicated the win to suspended team owner Steve Ballmer: “Just want to say thank you for everything. We’re still fighting for him.”
Clippers coach Tyronn Lue directs his players during a win over the Sacramento Kings Wednesday at Intuit Dome.
(Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Associated Press)
Wednesday’s fan appreciation stuff was a swell gesture, as a start. But it wasn’t nearly far-reaching enough.
Not for embattled Clippers supporters who have stuck with the team through thick and thin, sickness and health, in spite of Donald Sterling, the former cheap, racist owner and now Ballmer, the wealthy, over-invested one whose salary cap circumvention cost his team its first-round picks in the 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032, and 2033 NBA drafts.
To fans, that was the most consequential part of the historic punishment dealt by the NBA, which commissioned a year-long investigation that determined the Clippers committed audacious levels of salary cap circumvention.
The league also fined the team $30 million, suspended team owner Ballmer and president of business operations Gillian Zucker for a year and president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank for six months.
And Leonard? He got a $700,000 slap on the wrist and got traded back to Toronto, where he signed a two-year, $115 million contract extension and on Wednesday, had Raptors coach Darko Rajaković saying he was “super excited for the chance to bring a Hall of Famer back home.”
“That’s one of the most insulting parts of it all, the way [Leonard] was able to walk away scot-free and the fans are left sort of holding the bag,” said Torrance’s Justin Ratterree, while he tried to dodge raindrops as he waited in line, four hours before tipoff, to trade in his No. 2 Leonard jersey.
Young Clippers fans watch the team play the the Sacramento Kings Wednesday at the Intuit Dome.
(Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Associated Press)
“It’s rough right now. Defending the team this past couple months has been really rough … and I’ve kind of just given up defending. How can you defend it?”
Even Ballmer stopped doing that, releasing a statement on Sept. 13 that read, in part: “This has been a very difficult time for everybody associated with the Clippers, and for that, I have sincere regrets.
“I want to apologize to our fans, employees, and my fellow NBA team owners for the distraction and distress this matter has caused, for which I accept responsibility as principal owner.
“We are,” he added, “committing to put this chapter behind us.”
Yes, let them try to scrub the memory of Leonard, the intensely skilled and private player who demanded so much of the Clippers when he signed with them as a free agent in 2019. Who made no efforts to popularize the team, missed almost as much time as he worked, and who failed to lead the Clippers to their first championship or anywhere close to it in his seven seasons.
After his trade to Toronto went through on Sept. 23, the Clippers resisted posting the “Thank You, Kawhi” graphic that pro sports teams do when they part ways with a player.
Let them also forget to play a tribute video when Leonard’s Raptors visit Intuit Dome for the only time this season on Nov. 2.
And let the Clippers expand the jersey swap beyond the first 4,000 paying customers at Game 1; there was no official figure available Wednesday night for exactly how many jerseys were traded and how many of them belonged to he-who-must-not-be-named.
The Clippers should keep it going, offer the option all season. Set it up at the Intuit Dome’s Lost and Found — invite fans to exchange the No. 2 jersey of the player whom they lost all respect for a guy they’ve found themselves newly enamored with, likely rookie Keaton Wagler if Wednesday’s exchange was any indication.
Clippers fans also deserve more than having their parking picked up until an hour before gametime, on one rainy workday, on late notice.
They should have their parking at games covered all season — or at least substantially reduced from the typical $70 price that’s already too steep. (The Dodgers didn’t start charging $65 until the National League Division Series!)
They should do more if they want to continue to draw a crowd to watch a team whose best player is now Darius Garland, whose future is compromised, whose current best-cast scenario — the play-in! — only Clippers fans could love.
Clippers forward Rui Hachimura drives past Kings guard De’andre Hunter and center Domantas Sabonis Wednesday at the Intuit Dome.
(Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Associated Press)
Several fans Wednesday also said they would appreciate improved transparency, including in terms of player injury and availability news.
It’s the least the team can do for these patient people, who will have the type of team that they usually fall hard for, actually — a group of gamers, devoid of divas, punching above their weight.
“All this stuff that’s going on,” Lue said, “you can’t take that out on our players … that’s not their fault, you know?”
It’s not fans’ fault, either. Let’s see the Clippers go above and beyond for them.
