Los Angeles Clippers coach Tyronn Lue is more than the former player that Allen Iverson disrespectfully stepped over on the hardwood; he also makes extreme personal sacrifices. Lue, who won the 2016 NBA Finals with the Cleveland Cavaliers, is looking to bring a spark to the Clippers and continue to rival the Lakers fan market share in the City of Angels.
However, the fans need to learn that it comes at a cost to their family when competing at the highest level.
“Sometimes it can come at a fault,” Lue said recently on “The Pivot” podcast. “Since December, I lost seven family members from Mexico (a city in Missiouri), but we lost six games in a row so I can’t leave my team behind and I know I should be there for my family. It’s been tough times. My family want me there, we’re going through some tough times right now, but people don’t even know this, but seven family members since December, and I didn’t go to one funeral, but we lost five games in a row.”
Hard Decisions
From Dec. 29, 2022, to Jan. 8, 2023, the Clippers lost six games, with two on their home court. In the life of an NBA coach, consecutive losses are akin to a death sentence to your re-hire ability and could reverberate across your career. For Lue, pulling the team out of the doldrums took priority, and he decided to forgo dealing with the pain of his loss to get the team out of the losing column.
The team eventually rebounded on Jan. 10 at home against the Dallas Mavericks, but the season remained a rocky road. Still, they won 19 out of the last 34 games and even went on four- and five-game win streaks. For Lue, it was tantamount to reviving the team over his healing from the family loss.
“I can take the easy way out and say, ‘I’m going to go home for a week,’ but I just felt I couldn’t do that. Sometimes you can give the game too much, where like family and real-life stuff matters, it’s important, but I’m just built different. If we would have won five in a row, hell yeah, I would have gone home for three of the funerals, three or four of them.
“But when you’re going through tough times, people want to see how you react and kind of look at are you going to take the easy way out, but my thing is for these young kids is make sure you give the game back what it has given to you.”
The Game Comes At A Cost
Lue is instilling that work ethic into his players with the understanding that the game making them millionaires requires them to also pour back into it.
“I respect the game too much, so my thing is just giving the game back what the game has given you. So respect for the game. Put your work in every single day; don’t cheat the game, don’t cheat the process, and things will work out. And the last thing is just being a good person; it doesn’t hurt to be a good person. It don’t matter how many tough days you have. We all have bad days, but you can always be a good person.”
Next time your favorite team is doing poorly, remember they are people with real problems that they might put on the back burner for your competitive enjoyment.
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