GOLDEN STAKE
This Clippers collapse will sting as more space is seen between them and rivals
The Golden State Warriors are still undefeated.
The Clippers are still unbelievable.
In their most anticipated Staples Center game since they blew a 19-point lead to the Houston Rockets in the playoffs last spring, the Clippers collapsed again. In their first game against their most disliked rivals since they lost a 10-point lead in the final eight minutes in a loss this month, the Clippers crumbled again.
With Derek Jeter watching courtside, they whiffed. With Jay Z sitting a few seats down and exchanging hand-slaps with them early in the game, they bombed.
Yeah, somehow, the Clippers outdid even their own exasperation Thursday night by blowing a 23-point lead to the Warriors in a 124-117 loss.
They did that. Again. They used a gritty start by Chris Paul to streak to a lead, rumbling play by Blake Griffin to hold most of that lead until the middle of the
third quarter and then … pssst ... slow deflation.
Without injured shooter J.J. Redick, they ran out of focus. With new supposed sparkplug Lance Stephenson rooted to the bench in a coach’s decision, they ran out of gas. With the Warriors sprinting around them from Olympic to Pico, they ran out of game.
In a span of about two hours, Staples Center was transformed from a rollicking Clippers house to Oracle South, and the Clippers were left wondering about the seemingly growing distance between them and their Western Conference rivals.
“We know we’re close, but close isn’t good enough,” said Clippers Coach Doc Rivers afterward, shaking his head. “You have to finish the game.”
The Warriors are now 13-0, three wins shy of the NBA record for consecutive wins at the start of the season. And as if Southern California basketball fans weren’t beleaguered enough by this group, the Warriors 16th game this season — the potential record-setter — is against the Lakers.
It was almost as if Warriors interim Coach Luke Walton predicted it before the game.
“You’re the champions, you feel like you can win any game, you never feel like you’re out of anything,” said Walton. “Our guys have that right now.”
And the Clippers still have whatever is the opposite of that unbeatable feeling. Despite the off-season changes and renewed intensity, they still played tentatively when they should have taken control.
With 9:22 left in the second quarter, after an incredible start, the Clippers led, 50-27.
With 5:05 remaining in the game, with a nice push back against the Warriors surge, the Clippers had a 10-point lead.
With 2:18 remaining, they still led by a deuce.
But then, as their fans have seen before down the stretch, they fell apart.
Curry missed a three-point shot but the Warriors got the rebound and Curry redeemed himself with a swished three to give the Warriors the lead. Chris Paul missed a jumper, then Draymond Green responded with an open layup on an inbounds play — a huge defensive mistake — to give the Warriors a three-point lead.
Paul then missed a layup and Curry countered with two free throws to give the Warriors a fivepoint lead with 40 seconds left. The Clippers never threatened again.
In the final 5:54, they were outscored, 25-8, with a Warriors offense that joyously moved the ball while the Clippers offense hesitantly held it. Paul scored 35 points and Griffin added 27, but no other Clipper scored more than 15 and the Clippers had 10 fewer assists than the Warriors, who were led by Curry’s 40.
“The difference right now for them is they kept trusting, their ball found everyone, they kept finding the open guy,” said Rivers. “We had empty possession after empty possession.”
On one particularly heinous possession, the entire Clippers offense consisted of Griffin passing to Jamal Crawford, back and forth, before Crawford finally threw up an awful corner threepoint attempt at the shot clock buzzer that bounced off the top of the backboard.
“That’s how we played from the second quarter on,” said Rivers. “I said it 50 times in timeouts, trust, move it, side to side. That’s an area we still have to improve on.”
Most troubling of all, perhaps, was that even when the ball was loose, the Clippers at times were a step slow in chasing it down.
“One of our things before the game was that the team that played the hardest the longest was going to win the game,” said Rivers. “They made every big shot. We’ve got to keep working on it.”
For Clippers fans, that sounds as familiar as the Warriors cheers heard floating through the darkened corner of Staples Center, the rising dust of another collapse.