MARK FEW WANTED Ty Lue is looking to get some fresh air away from basketball during the Olympics. He repeatedly tried to persuade his fellow US team assistant coach to leave their Paris hotel this summer.

“He’s in his cozy little box,” Few told ESPN at the Summer Games earlier this month. “I’m trying to get him outside and let him grow and show him the rest of the world out there.”

But Lue broadened his horizons in basketball. When he wasn’t plotting to slow down Serbia’s Nikola Jokic or France’s Victor Wembanyama as the U.S. team’s defensive coordinator, he was also learning from some of the game’s best coaches.

During his last two summers with the U.S. team, Lue noticed head coach Steve Kerr’s movement skills and ability to command the locker room with a measured voice – qualities that helped Kerr win four NBA Finals titles with the Golden State Warriors. Lue learned about assistant coach Erik Spoelstra’s intense preparation that led to two titles with the Miami Heat. And Few brought Lue, who loves making game-to-game adjustments, to see how coaching took a tournament approach that turned Gonzaga into an NCAA stronghold.

Lue also spent more and more time with Jeff Van Gundy, who is now returning to the NBA sidelines for the first time in 17 years as Lue’s top assistant and defensive coordinator with the LA Clippers.

Lue and Van Gundy, a longtime Team USA member, spent four dinners in France studying the Clippers in depth. They reviewed plays, pick-and-roll and transition defense schemes. They crunched the numbers from Van Gundy’s research to improve the team’s rebounding.

And when they weren’t cracking baguettes and saying X’s and O’s together, Lue and Van Gundy sat side by side on several of the team’s train rides to games.

“They were obviously so keen to help us with (Basketball of the USA)“, said Few. “But then they met casually, ate or drove (together) somewhere. “Sometimes I sat there and listened to them (talk Clippers) a little bit… “They’re both just basketball fighters, man.”

After helping Team USA win gold, Lue (who led the Cleveland Cavaliers to the 2016 NBA title) says he’s as energized as ever as he heads into his fifth season as head coach of the Clippers. He’ll have to bring his A-game as All-Star forward Paul George is now with the Philadelphia 76ers and Kawhi Leonard’s late-season knee injury – which led to his replacement on Team USA’s Olympic roster – raises doubts about whether the two-time Finals MVP can stay healthy.

After building a strong team around George and Leonard over the past five years, the Clippers will now look to avoid missing the postseason for only the third time in 14 seasons.

“When you lose a man of Paul George’s caliber, (think) oh, they can’t win or they’re not going to be competitive,” Lue told ESPN last week. “But that just challenges me even more. OK, people aren’t counting us out or they don’t think we’re going to be good. That just gives me an extra dose of (motivation).

“I can’t wait to prove everyone wrong.”

WHILE TEAM USA At coaches’ meetings and dinners, Lue scribbled plays and diagrams on anything he could write on. He has about 300 plays saved in his iPhone photo album and notes, knowing the Clippers will play differently now than they did under George.

“He’s like Russell Crowe in ‘A Beautiful Mind,'” Spoelstra said in July, comparing Lue to the actor’s Oscar-winning portrayal of Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash. “There are papers, diagrams and notes lying around everywhere.”

“He never stops. He’s always thinking about how to do something better.”

After George signed a four-year, $212 million contract with the Sixers on July 1, Lue began to strategize how he could play without the All-Star swingman.

Since replacing Doc Rivers in the 2020-21 season, Lue has tried to crack the code that will lead the Clippers to their first NBA Finals, but now he must do so without George’s 22.6 points per game and 41.3% 3-point shooting.

“My head is spinning all the time,” Lue told ESPN at the U.S. team’s training camp in July. “When you lose a player as important as Paul, you have to do it as a team. He’s a very important defensive player for us, he handles the ball, scores the balls and makes plays. So losing him is going to be tough.”

Although the Clippers didn’t want to give George a fourth year or a no-trade clause on a three-year deal like he wanted, the franchise showed how much it believed in Lue by giving him a five-year contract extension in the offseason. With George gone, the Clippers signed defensive-minded players like Derrick Jones Jr., Nicolas Batum and Kris Dunn.

They also signed guard Kevin Porter Jr., who last played for the Houston Rockets before being charged with assault and strangulation of his ex-girlfriend last September.

Once again, Lue may have to do more with less, as he did in the 2021-22 season when the Clippers reached the play-in tournament despite George only being able to play 31 games due to injury and Leonard missing the entire season after undergoing ACL surgery.

The Clippers’ success this season depends on the health of Leonard, who started 68 of the first 74 games of the 2023-24 season, including 27 in a row at the start of the regular season, helping the Clippers win 51 games, their most since 2016-17. However, inflammation in his surgically operated right knee prevented him from playing in the final eight games of last season.

This injury also limited Leonard to two games in the first round of the postseason for the second consecutive year, this time resulting in a six-game elimination against the Dallas Mavericks.

The last time Leonard was seen on the court was in July at the U.S. team’s training camp in Las Vegas before he was eventually replaced on the roster by Boston Celtics guard Derrick White. Lue said Leonard will be ready for the Clippers’ training camp in October.

“I talk to him all the time,” Lue told ESPN last week. “He will be ready for (Hair clipper) Training camp. He’s feeling good and I know he’ll be ready for training camp.”

Lue is also looking forward to a full training camp with point guard James Harden, who was traded to the Clippers in late October. The Clippers immediately lost six straight games, five of them with Harden in the lineup. But once Harden and Lue were on the same page, the Clippers went 26-5 during a hot streak.

“It’s going to make a huge difference,” Lue said of the entire training camp with Harden.

“We must learn (how to best use it) “The passing was tough… He showed us we can play a pick-and-roll… we can score points, get each other going and make it easy for everyone to play.”

Although the Leonard George era saw only one Western Conference finals appearance in five years, Lue told ESPN in July that he “doesn’t consider that time a failure.”

“We never put our best team out there in the playoffs,” Lue said. “That’s when Kawhi is at his best, PG is at his best. That’s when I’m at my best. When you get to a seven-game series and can pick teams apart offensively and defensively, we’ve never been able to do that.”

“These guys have worked hard. We’ve tried different approaches to help the guys stay healthy and it just hasn’t worked. We’ve tried everything.”

LUES TWO SUMMER His time with USA Basketball allowed him to sharpen his focus as a coach earlier than usual when he arrived at a Clippers training camp.

But while the Team USA coaches have grown closer and shared laughs in their group chats and happy hours, their competitive spirit has meant they haven’t always shared all of their secrets.

“I’ve been trying to get Spo’s zone out of him for two years now,” Lue said with a smile. Lue now has Van Gundy’s defensive expertise, however. The 62-year-old hasn’t been on the NBA bench since the 2006-07 season after spending 16 years as a television analyst for ESPN and in various roles with USA Basketball. But he could be the Clippers’ biggest addition this summer.

In the nine full seasons he coached the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets, his teams ranked in the top six in defensive efficiency, according to an ESPN Stats study. & Information. He will look to improve the Clippers’ defense, which ranked 8th in 2020-21 and 2021-22 but slipped to 17th and 16th in the last two seasons, respectively.

“Jeff is not afraid to speak his mind,” Few said. “What you need as a head coach is someone who is strong as an assistant and will give you a different opinion when you need it, who will try to change a coverage, an approach or how you’re dealing with a player. It’s just so healthy to have someone who has as much experience as Jeff.”

“It was just a great move. It was brilliant.”

Lue’s relationship with Van Gundy dates back to his playing days, when he played under Van Gundy in Houston during the 2004-05 season. When Lue was coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, he tried to convince Van Gundy to join his team. Lue is very familiar with Van Gundy’s philosophy, having also played for Jeff’s brother Stan and worked with Tom Thibodeau, a longtime Van Gundy student, as an assistant with the Celtics.

“I’m a little nervous and anxious,” Van Gundy told ESPN, “because I want to do my part and mingle with the other coaches and help Ty because I’m really grateful for this opportunity.”

That fear led Van Gundy to treat his time in Paris like a study abroad trip. Between his Team USA duties and dinners and train rides with Lue, Van Gundy sat transfixed in front of his laptop, watching Clippers games from last season.

“He’s a basketball film fanatic,” Lue said. “He calls me, asks me questions, offensively, defensively, all kinds of things about Game 17. (last season). I don’t remember that shit.

“But he’s involved in all this.”

And so does Lue. Both trainers are known for not getting much sleep, and there will be countless long nights trying to navigate life without George.

“That’s what we need,” Lue said of him and Van Gundy trying to get more rest. “Losing PG, starting over with a younger team and doing things right — we’re going to need both of them to really get our guys on track. Signing Jeff is going to be huge for us.”

“The players we’ve acquired this year allow us to play a different style of game. But we’re going to play winning basketball and I know we have a chance to be pretty good. It’s going to be my job to make sure we get to that point – whatever I have to do.”