Clippers 'in a bad place right now,' and have to quickly get out of it
This is the time of year that NBA teams want to be rounding into form and finding their stride, but just four weeks away from the start of the 2017 playoffs, the Los Angeles Clippers are stumbling. They’ve lost three straight, coming off an at-the-buzzer heartbreaker against the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday and a blowout defeat at the hands of the eighth-seeded Denver Nuggets, who cruised thanks to 35 points off the bench from ace Nuggets reserve Will Barton and another huge playmaking performance by Serbian center Nikola Jokic, who notched the fifth triple-double of his sterling sophomore season:
That the Clips trailed by as many as 25 in Thursday’s loss wasn’t totally unexpected or tragic, given that Doc Rivers left star big men Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan in Los Angeles to rest rather than having them make the trek to the altitude of the Mile High City on the second half of a back-to-back set. Still, the loss — another loss, to another playoff-caliber team — hurt an L.A. team that is now 5-8 since the All-Star break, and has seemingly misplaced its best self over the past month or so.
Before Wednesday’s loss to the Bucks, Rivers struck a calm note, according to Dan Woike of the Los Angeles Times:
“To me, I like where we’re at,” Rivers said. “I would like to be playing better, but I think we will. I have a lot of confidence in where we’re headed. So, I don’t look at it as negative as the outside world looks at it.” […]
“I don’t think we are struggling. I think we’re playing OK. We’re not playing great. I just think there are times, and I’m just being honest, we’re looked at in a different lens,” Rivers said. “I don’t think Golden State is worried about struggling right now. It’s part of the season. Cleveland has lost four out of five, but for whatever reason, if we don’t play great, it’s a different lens. I don’t get that.”
(For what it’s worth, Doc, people definitely did notice that the Warriors and Cavs had been struggling. You, like Quincy Acy, are not alone.)
Despite Rivers’ brake-pumping, though, shooting guard J.J. Redick forwarded a diametrically opposed view after Thursday’s loss in Denver, according to Broderick Turner of the Times:
“I don’t know what to expect from this team anymore,” J.J. Redick said after scoring 22 points at the Pepsi Center. “It’s just — we’re in a bad place right now. We’re losing games. We’ve been [a mess] since the All-Star break.” […]
Every game, the Clippers say their defense has to get better, but nothing changes.
So, going into this game without Griffin and Jordan and playing on a second consecutive night, Redick already had his expectations.
“I expect that we’re going to play horrible defense. I expect that,” he said. “That seems pretty consistent with where we’re at right now and other than that I have no other predictions.”
Rather than “a mess,” Bill Oram of the Orange County Register renders Redick’s quote as, “We’ve been [garbage] since the All-Star break.” I’m thinking J.J. might have chosen a more colorful, pungent and disgusting — and decidedly less printable — noun … which would’ve been right on the money.
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The Clippers own the NBA’s second-worst defense since the All-Star break. Only their fellow Staples Center tenants, the Los Angeles Lakers, have had a harder time getting stops over the past month. But the Lakers are clearly tanking, while the Clippers are trying to get ramped up for a playoff push that could very well determine the direction of a franchise heading into a summer full of major decisions.
Before the All-Star break, the Clippers ranked fifth in both opponents’ field goal percentage and 3-point percentage. They’re 25th in both categories since.
Clippers’ opponents have been significantly more successful at the rim (up from 62.4 percent on attempts in the restricted area pre-All-Star to 66.8 percent over the last month) and on 3-point attempts from both the short corners (from 38.9 percent on 6.2 attempts per game to 41.4 percent on 6.7 tries a night) and above the break (to 33.4 percent on 19.5 attempts per game to 39.6 percent on 21.5 tries a night).
Before the break, Clippers opponents shot about 1 percent worse from 3-point range than their season averages; since, they’ve shot about 3.5 percent better than average. It’s basically the polar opposite of the long-distance turnaround that had propelled the Minnesota Timberwolves toward contention for the West’s No. 8 seed.
In the Clippers’ case, it has helped drop them from pushing for home-court advantage in the first round to needing to fend off spirited charges from the Oklahoma City Thunder and Memphis Grizzlies for the conference’s No. 5 spot. And while Doc might’ve been able to point to injuries to Griffin and Chris Paul as the source of swoons earlier in the season, this recent downturn has come despite the Clips boasting their full complement of contributors.
L.A. now sits at 40-29, three games behind the Utah Jazz for the No. 4 seed, and just a half-game up on sixth-place OKC and one game ahead of Memphis. Both the Thunder and Grizz have righted their previously listing ships over the past week, taking advantage while the Clippers take on water.
If Rivers and company can’t plug the leaks and get back to getting stops, they could face first-round matchups with either the San Antonio Spurs, led by MVP candidate Kawhi Leonard and with vengeance likely on their mind after CP3 knocked them out in Round 1 two years back, or — gulp — the Golden State Warriors, who over the past few years have made crushing the Clippers’ dreams into something of a favorite hobby. Getting back on the good foot won’t get easier on Saturday, as the Clips welcome LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, the just-returned Kevin Love and the rest of the full-strength defending NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers to Staples Center for a prime-time, nationally televised matchup.
The good news: once the Clips get past the Cavs, their schedule softens considerably. Eight of their final 12 games will come against sub-.500 teams, including two matchups apiece with the lottery-bound Lakers and Sacramento Kings. They’ll also get one more crack at the Jazz at Staples on March 25, with a win clinching a 3-1 edge in their head-to-head season series and the tiebreaker for the 4-vs.-5 matchup should the two teams wind up with the same record at season’s end.
For that to matter, though, the Clippers have to tighten up and turn it around. It’s certainly possible that a team whose core has so much experience together can get locked in over a few short weeks, but it might be easier said than done. Quiet as it’s kept, they’ve lost more games than they’ve won and had a negative point differential since late November, and even their longtime floor general doesn’t really seem to know who they really are.
“Still trying to figure it out,” Paul said after Thursday’s loss, according to Turner of the Times. “Yeah, you would hope to not be trying to figure that out at this point of the season.”
If they can’t find some answers soon, the Clippers could have much, much more to figure out come the end of April — and a very long offseason in which to do it.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
