A rare regular-season practice helps Clippers prepare for Warriors

The Clippers are talking about practice.

Not a game. Practice.

An unrelenting early schedule made it impossible for the Clippers to practice in the first six weeks of the season. Before Monday and Tuesday of this week, the Clippers hadn’t had back-to-back off days since late October. That left time for, by the team’s calculations, one “real practice” since their season-opening win in Portland on Oct. 27.

But the Clippers (16-6) finally got to shake off some rust with a real, full practice in Playa Vista on Tuesday. It came at a good time, as the Warriors and their NBA-best 18-3 record are visiting Staples Center for a 7:30 p.m. tip on Wednesday.

Warriors guard Klay Thompson is coming off a 60-point game (it took him just 29 minutes to get there). The Warriors have scored more than 135 points in back-to-back games, and more than 100 in all but one game this season. They are, for all intents and purposes, looking how everyone expected them to look when they added superstar forward Kevin Durant to their championship-caliber core this summer.

The Clippers, on the other hand, have lost four of six after starting 14-2. The defense, once allowing the fewest points per game, has slipped to sixth in that category. A chance to regroup on Tuesday was much needed.

“When you’re playing every day, or every other day, you just don’t really get a chance to go over things,” Clippers point guard Chris Paul said. “Like a lot of plays, a lot of times you’re looking at film from the last game and looking at film for the next game. You never really get to address some of your stuff.”

The Clippers did watch some film on Tuesday, but spent most of the day going over small details on both ends of the floor. They also went up and down against one another, which is something forward Blake Griffin said he was looking forward to after the Clippers fell to the Pacers on Sunday night.

Before the practice, Clippers Coach Doc Rivers was asked if he would keep it light with the Warriors coming to town. The matchup, at least in the bigger picture, could show whether the Clippers can truly contend in the Western Conference down the line. But Rivers balked at the game being more important than other regular-season games, and also underlined how important a rare regular-season practice is.

“We’re going to have a good practice,” Rivers said on Tuesday. “Listen, the game’s big tomorrow, but we need to practice more. So if we’re tired tomorrow, we’re tired tomorrow. In my opinion, sometimes practices override the game and I think we need a good practice.

“So we’re going to practice hard today, and hopefully we have something for tomorrow. But in the long run, it will be better for us.”

As for Wednesday, the Clippers will hope they ironed out recent defensive lapses and can at least bother the Warriors’ dynamic offense. The Warriors average a league-high 120.2 points per game, and the next team is nine points behind them. They are also averaging 32 assists per game, and play faster than any other team.

The Clippers, well-rested or coming off a tough practice (or both), will need to be sharper to keep up.

“It went a while,” Paul said of Tuesday’s practice. “We got some good stuff in. We got to go up and down, go against each other. That was, what, our second practice of the year?”

Paul, smirking, already knew the answer to that one.

jesse.dougherty@latimes.com

Twitter: @dougherty_jesse