Clippers continue to struggle, lose again
LOS ANGELES >> Whatever the Clippers had seemingly is gone.
The focus. The intensity. The defensive grit. The consistency. The winning.
The Clippers lost for the fourth time in their past five games, this time to a team that is fighting for a playoff spot. The struggling Atlanta Hawks handed them a dispirited 110-93 loss late Sunday at Crypto.com Arena.
Coach Tyronn Lue said again Sunday that his focus in the final stretch before the playoffs is: one, health; two, develop the right habits, and three improve on everything else, such as rebounding, transition defense and spacing.
“It’s the same thing we say every single night,” Lue said.
His message, however, isn’t getting through, evidenced by the turnovers (16), defensive breakdowns, especially in transition and the overall what-me-worry attitude they displayed against the lowly Hawks (30-37). “They hear it,” Lue said. But getting the players to follow through, Lue said, requires a full 48 minutes of focus, intensity, grit
and consistency, qualities that put them in championship conversations just a few weeks ago. The Clippers briefly sat at the top the Western Conference standings.
Now, the Clippers (42-25) are clinging to the fourth spot in the Western Conference, they’ve dipped to five games out of first and just one game ahead of the New Orleans Pelicans.
“I mean that’s what we’re appearing to look like, which is not good,” George said. “We want to be a team that’s consistent and we want to establish an identity. I’ve always spoken about having an identity and I think it’s extremely important. When you’re a team that has an identity, teams know what they’re going up against.
“Right now, I don’t think we have an identity.”
Lue said the Clippers have shown flashes of the type of basketball they played earlier this year, but it’s been inconsistent.
“They do it in spurts and when they do it, it works,” Lue said. “Just when you have so much talent and you have guys who can do it so easily, they don’t understand that talent is great, but you have to do it for the team as well.
“Just because you work out hard individually, do things hard individually, you have to do it for the team.”
When the Clippers were stringing together winning streaks of nine and five games before the Allstar break, they displayed a grittiness and willingness to grind out tough victories. On Sunday, they fell behind by 21 points in the first half, 27 in the third and didn’t come close to slowing Atlanta’s deep attack the rest of the way.
Of the 11 Atlanta players who logged minutes, 10 scored, led by Dejounte Murray’s 21 points.
“I just kind of felt like we were in mud tonight,” Kawhi Leonard said. “Really, that we didn’t really give all the effort that we could have given. I felt like they pretty much won in transition, you know what I mean?
“And offense, we were in mud a little bit, kind of slowfooted. I mean I think that was pretty much the game. Like I said, just not the effort wasn’t 100 percent there and just being a little slow footed on the offensive end.”
The Clippers have just 15 regular-season games to figure it out.