Westbrook presents a tough task

Twice last week, Clippers Coach Doc Rivers was glued to his television to watch what is becoming the artistic masterpiece of work by Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook.

Rivers viewed what the entire NBA has witnessed this season.

“Westbrook is like a force of nature,” Rivers said.

On Monday night, during a game on TNT that’s a part of its Martin Luther King Jr. Day coverage, Rivers and the Clippers will be presented with the supreme challenge of trying to slow down Westbrook.

“You can’t invest all your time trying to stop him, because you’re not anyway,” Rivers said Saturday afternoon. “And you have to try to slow him down. But you’ve got to try to not allow all the others that he gets involved to play well.”

Westbrook is averaging double figures in points, rebounds and assists, placing him in position to join Oscar Robertson (1961-62) as the only players in league history to achieve that feat.

Westbrook had 19 tripledoubles before the Thunder played at Sacramento on Sunday night.

He was averaging a league-best 30.8 points per game, 10.5 assists (second in the NBA) and 10.7 rebounds (11th).

Clippers winning

Winning games is all the Clippers have done since the calendar turned to 2017.

They have won six games in a row, doing all they can to move past the six games in a row they lost to end 2016.

“We’re just trying to pile up wins, seriously,” Chris Paul said. “I don’t even know what place we are in the West right now.”

The Clippers are the fourth-seeded team in the Western Conference, holding a two-game lead over the fifth-seeded Utah Jazz.

“But we know we’ve got to keep piling up wins,” Paul said after the Clippers defeated the Lakers, 113-97, on Saturday afternoon to keep their winning streak forward moving.

“So, for us, I think that’s our singular focus, just to keep winning games, winning games.”

Etc.

Clippers forward Wesley Johnson’s third child, son Robert, was born Saturday. Johnson played in the game against the Lakers earlier that day, had his car pulled up to Staples Center during the affair and immediately left for the hospital after the Clippers won. Johnson also has twins, son Wesley II and daughter Santana.