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Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert fouls Clippers center Ivica Zubac during the second half on Wednesday night at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer)

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INGLEWOOD — After losing to the Minnesota Timberwolves by one point six days ago, Clippers center Ivica Zubac said, “We’re mad. We think we should have won this game. We thought we played well enough to win it. And we can’t wait to see them again.”

It turns out the Clippers could have waited. Maybe another week or month. Or at least until some of their players return to the lineup.

Without Norman Powell and four other rotation players, the Clippers had little to offer in the second game of a back-to-back and were crushed by the Timberwolves, 108-80, on Wednesday night at Intuit Dome. The 28-point loss snapped the Clippers’ nine-game home winning streak.

Powell sat out to rest his left hamstring after scoring 30 points in a victory over Portland on Tuesday.

Terance Mann, who fractured the middle finger on his left hand in Tuesday’s game, will have surgery Thursday and will miss at least three weeks.

Kobe Brown was diagnosed with a herniated disk and will be re-evaluated in two weeks. Kevin Porter Jr., who scored 17 points against the Timberwolves on Nov. 30 before spraining his right ankle, missed his third game and All-Star forward Kawhi Leonard has yet to play this season as he deals with his surgically repaired knee.

With so many players out, Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said nothing really changes except the faces.

“No matter who’s on the floor every night, we want to play hard, compete on the defensive end,” Lue said.

Only the Clippers failed to do any of those things against the younger, more athletic Timberwolves on Wednesday.

This was not a game Lue wants to remember.

“I’m flushing it,” Lue said after watching the Timberwolves completely unravel all of the good things the Clippers had done over the past month.

“We just didn’t have a lot of pop,” Lue said. “We were missing three of our four rotation guys and they just came out and played well. Julius (Randle) got ’em going, got ’em off to a good early start and we couldn’t score the basketball.

“So, it’s kind of hard when you’re playing from behind, you can’t score, you can’t make a shot, you don’t have a lot of pop and they came out and took advantage of it from the start. … They came and punched us in our mouth, and we weren’t ready to go.”

The short-handed Clippers (14-10) could only do so much after playing three games in four nights. None of the main players stuck around to talk about the lopsided loss, leaving Lue to explain why the Clippers lacked the same intensity they had six nights ago in Minnesota when the game came down to the final minute. This game was lost quickly.

“I think playing everyday or every other day for the whole month of November was a hard schedule, but our guys fought through it,” Lue said, pointing out that they played 24 games in 43 days.

The Clippers couldn’t fight through this time, though.

James Harden was scoreless in the first half until making two free throws with seven-tenths of a second left. He failed to connect on seven shots, including four from 3-point range. After scoring 23 points on Tuesday, he finished with five points, three rebounds and three assists.

Little-used Bones Hyland came off the bench and posted 18 points to lead the Clippers. Derrick Jones Jr. had 14 points, as did Amir Coffey (four rebounds). Zubac had four points and 10 rebounds.

The Clippers shot 28.6% in the first half. And when they weren’t missing shots, they were turning the ball over (13).


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