LA Clippers: Predicting final 2021-22 record and playoff seeding

The LA Clippers‘ 2021-22 schedule has been released, and the season couldn’t get here soon enough.

My early prediction for the season, after just taking a look at the schedule, is a 59-23 season, which would be a nice improvement over last year.

That may seem like a high win total considering Kawhi Leonard may be out for a significant portion of this season, but here’s how it can happen.

The LA Clippers’ schedule starts out easy for the team.

October and November are the two easiest months for the LA Clippers.

These are the months that we are almost positive Leonard is going to miss. To get these months early is crucial. They are playing 15 home games in those first two months, and just six road games.

I don’t know how we got so lucky to the point where we can get a ton of home games like that at the time we won’t have our franchise player, but you won’t see me complaining.

Four of those six road games are against non-playoff teams from 2020-21 too. It’s very possible that the Clippers could get through this stretch of the season with as little as two losses. None of the teams in this portion of the schedule had a higher seed in either conference than the Clips last year, and none of them got as far as the Clips in the playoffs of course.

December through February is a different story, however. The Clips play 25 playoff teams from last year out of the 42 games in those three months. That’s brutal, especially because there’s a decent chance Kawhi won’t be back by then either.

26 out of the 42 games are on the road. This portion of the schedule feels like the exact opposite of the beginning.

Also, look at February specifically. They have the Lakers twice, the 2021 NBA Champion Milwaukee Bucks, an up-and-coming solid Memphis team, and the Western Conference Champion Phoenix Suns. They even have the Mavericks twice, a team that tends to give up some trouble in both regular season and postseason play.

I like getting Houston twice, but Golden State should be much improved next year, and they show up on the schedule in February.

If Kawhi can come back for March and April, however, I see us finishing the year really well. That’s especially because in April, we have four home games, and three of the five games in the month are against teams with losing records from last year.

If we can take advantage of an easy start to the schedule, stay competitive in February, and get Kawhi Leonard back for March and April, I really do think we will be able to finish with that 59-23 record. Last year, the 72-game equivalent to a 59-23 record would have been the second seed in the West.

Therefore, I can only assume it would earn us a No. 2 seed again. There’s going to be a ridiculous amount of competition in the Western Conference, so I don’t see us snagging a one seed if we’re not going to have Leonard for the whole year.

We will, however, come into the postseason hot after hopefully getting Kawhi back, and have home court for at least the first two rounds of the postseason.

We were a fourth seed last year, and would have been better if we didn’t have to deal with so many injuries. We’ll be a bit healthier this season, even without Kawhi, and brought back a very similar squad for this year. Ty Lue’s going to get us playing at an elite level, and we’re going to approach 60 wins and grab a top two seed.