Nipsey Hussle had the lyric, resonant and on the ball: “Never let a hard time humble us.”
“The game will test you, its ups and downs,” the late L.A. rap great explained in an interview once. “You gotta be who you are at all times, you know what I mean? Just a principle to live by.”
The sentiment, Hussle said in that conversation with Tidal’s Rap Radar, posted online in late 2018, served as something of a pep talk to himself as he worked through obstacles in pursuit of his goals.
Leave it to Clippers guard Lou Williams to reference – during a socially distanced, walk-off TV interview on Fox Sports West – the philosophy embedded in Hussle’s 2018 track “Double Up,” as a way of explaining his recent breakthrough.
“At this point in my career, I know who I am,” Williams said. “I know what I bring to the table, I’m confident in my abilities. So a hard time never humbled me, man. I just keep playing.”
🔥 Lou Will 🔥
His 27 points off the pine were huge in the W tonight!@LAClippers | @TeamLou23 pic.twitter.com/u1UHcsttxX
— FOX Sports West (@FoxSportsWest) February 11, 2021
In the past four games, Williams has been playing a lot like the Lou Will, the three-time Sixth Man of the Year awardee.
The slight, slippery 34-year-old guard is moving more freely, seemingly healthier after being hampered early this season by pain in his hip – though he declines to point to that as a reason for his recent stretch of off-the-mark shooting, preferring instead to chalk it up to, well, life.
“When you’re a shooter, you’re a scorer, sometimes you go through a lapse where you just can’t make the ball go in the rim,” Williams said. “I always say if you gonna go out on the floor, get inside the lines, you make no excuses for yourself, so I never make excuses for myself. If I’ma play, I’ma play, whatever injuries I’m dealing with. I’m happy I’m starting to get it going.”
A 19.5 points-per-game scorer in his three-plus seasons as a Clipper, Williams was contributing a mere 9.1 points and shooting just 37.9% in his first 20 games. In his past four, he’s averaging 20.8 points and shooting 55.1%.
That offensive uptick is necessitated and accommodated by Paul George’s absence; the star – and his 24.4 points per game – is out, with no known timetable to return, dealing with swelling in a bone in a right toe.
Without George in the lineup the past two games, Williams averaged 25 minutes of action, five more than before. And he’s used his time productively, scoring a season-high 23 points on Sunday against Sacramento and then raising that high-water mark with 27 in Wednesday’s 119-112 win in Minnesota.
Coach Tyronn Lue said he thinks Williams – a recording artist himself – has found a good flow, one that the Clippers hope to sustain.
“I think his health, getting a rhythm, getting in a flow, kind of knowing what his plays are going to be now, has kind of helped him out a lot,” Lue said. “And then coming into the game a little earlier has really kind of let him get going. We want to stay with that as much as we can. Some games are going to be a little different, for the most part, we want to keep that same flow and momentum.”
UNDER WRAPS
Lue meant it when he said, in his introductory news conference this past October, that he intends to “take a little bit from each person, each coach” he’s experienced.
For instance, when a question arose not so long ago regarding the return of Patrick Beverley, the Clippers’ emotional leader who’d missed time with an injury, the response was: “Honestly, I didn’t even ask Pat. I was with Pat for 20 minutes today and I never asked him.”
More recently, a similar question was posed about Beverley’s status as he worked his way back from injury. The reply this time: “You know, I don’t ask those questions, I just check on him every other day, just to make sure he’s OK.”
The first instance was in August, before a game in the bubble against Brooklyn, and it was Doc Rivers answering.
Attribute the second quote to Lue, doing a good Rivers impression before the Clippers met the Nets in Brooklyn on Feb. 2.
Under Lue, the Clippers’ ball movement is better, rotations are defined differently and their stars have expanded their playmaking, but the team remains guarded when it comes to information about players’ health – something that seemed to tickle Beverley after he made his return from an eight-game absence Wednesday.
“We like to withhold a lot of information from y’all so y’all don’t run with it,” Beverley said in his postgame Zoom comments Wednesday. “We kind of knew I was going to play a long time ago. It was just, it came out to you guys today, so yeah, we knew back in L.A. I was going to play. We just didn’t want anything to get out and try to keep everything in house.”
Beverley should be available to play Friday in his hometown of Chicago.
CLIPPERS (18-8) at BULLS (10-14)
When: Friday, 5 p.m.
Where: United Center, Chicago
TV: Fox Sports Prime Ticket
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