After winning three games in a row for the first time since January, the Los Angeles Clippers dropped a close contest against the San Antonio Spurs on Friday night. LA built a lead as large as 25 points, but couldn't close it out after San Antonio surged in the second half. 

The game came down to one crucial sequence in the closing moments of the contest. With the Clippers down by one, Nic Batum inbounded the ball to Brook Lopez. Unfortunately, Lopez passed the ball right back to Batum before he was able to get fully in bounds. 

It was a head-scratching moment that unfortunately sealed LA's fate in this one. After the game ended, Ty Lue spoke to the media at the podium, and he detailed what went into the frustrating ending. 

Lue was asked if the ball was supposed to go back to Batum after it was inbounded to Lopez. "No, it was supposed to go to DJ," he said. "He was wide open over the top with a lob." 

I think every Clippers fan who was watching knew this to be the case. Even if you didn't spot it on the initial watch of the play, the replay very clearly showed that Derrick Jones Jr. was hovering around the rim and appeared ready to catch a lob. 

"Nico said he thought Wemby was just kind of playing in between," Lue said. "It happens ... They played really well in the second half. And then defensively, went zone, and kind of made us stagnant, and we didn't execute well against the zone." 

It makes sense that Lue said this, because as much as Jones appeared to be open on the play, the skill and athleticism of Victor Wembanyama are not to be taken lightly. There's no guarantee he wouldn't have been able to break up a lob attempt. 

The implementation of the zone certainly changed this game. The Clippers struggled to generate clean looks against it down the stretch, and that led to execution errors like the one Lopez committed in the closing seconds. 

This loss stings because LA basically had this game won. A 25-point lead is one any team should be able to hold on to, but the Spurs showed enough resilience to make the Clippers pay for every lapse down the stretch.

Wembanyama's presence alone changes the calculus on late-game possessions even when he isn't directly making the play. His ability to alter plays and contest at the rim forces opponents into hesitation.

Following the loss, the Clippers are now two games back of the Warriors for the eighth seed in the West. It's unclear exactly what the end of this season will hold, but LA unquestionably has to clean up its late-game execution.