Jordan is troubled by team’s lapses on defense
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The Clippers are searching for a defense that has been lost somewhere along the way during the first 65 games of the season.
They played suffocating defense early in the season. Now it comes and goes, and lately it has gone to a place they can’t find.
And this is troubling to center DeAndre Jordan, the team’s defensive standout.
“It’s like, if we ain’t got it figured out now, we’re in trouble,” Jordan said. “And that’s just me being honest. Ain’t no other team searching for, like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to be able to do this for 48 minutes.’ You know what you’ve got to do and that’s it. We’ve got to man up and guard individually and guard as a team and cover for each other.”
The Clippers entered Thursday night’s game against the Memphis Grizzlies allowing 105.8 points per game since the All-Star break, which ranked 17th for most points allowed over the eight-game stretch.
L.A. held the Grizzlies to 98 points and won the game.
“We’re just inconsistent, man,” Jordan said. “That pisses me off because I’m supposed to be in charge of that.… We just got to do it.
“We’ve shown that we can do it, so we’ve got to be able to do it all the time. We can’t do it in spurts in a game for like 25 minutes. We’ve got to it for 48 minutes, man.”
Poor rebounders As soon as the question about the Clippers’ poor rebounding was broached with Coach Doc Rivers ,he said his team ranked 29th in the NBA in rebounds since the All-Star break.
And he was right. The Clippers were ranked next to last in rebounds since the break, averaging 39.4 before the Memphis game.
“It’s tough to go lower,” Rivers said, half jokingly. “We can, but we’re working on it.”
His team put in a better effort against the Grizzlies, outrebounding Memphis 4734.
“We have to rebound better as a group,” Rivers said. “I think when most people hear rebounding, they just assume you’re talking about the bigs, and I think it’s everybody. And I still think that when our defense struggles, our rebounding struggles.”