WHEN CLIPS ARE DOWN
It must be playoff time, which rarely fails to bring out their worst, along with that annual lament: ‘Same Old Clippers’
The raucous Staples Center was filled by roaring fans wearing T-shirts that read, “It Takes Everything.”
These being the Clippers, and this being the playoffs, even that wasn’t enough.
In their postseason opener against the Utah Jazz on Saturday night at Staples Center, the Clippers were given everything and lost.
They were handed the game in the first 10 seconds, and spent the next two hours giving it back.
They benefited from a major Utah injury, a powerful home crowd, a game-tying tying bank shot by Chris Paul in the final seconds, and still didn’t get it done.
They were given everything and wound up with nothing, in the shape of a 97-95 loss on a buzzer-beating floater by Joe Johnson.
“It was kind of a struggle to find our footing,” a quiet Jamal Crawford said after being beaten by Johnson’s drive down the lane for the winner.
No, sadly, this is their exact footing. This is how they stand. This is what they do. For the last five
springs, this is how this team has rolled — and been rolled — with three of the most exciting players in the game producing some of this town’s most disappointing sports moments.
We’ve seen this against Houston. We’ve seen this against Oklahoma City. We’ve seen this so often that the team has become defined by the sight, which reappeared Saturday with Paul screaming, and Blake Griffin muttering, and DeAndre Jordan trudging.
This being probably the last ride for that trio — and with the Clippers ending the regular season on a sevengame winning streak — some thought this spring might be different.
At first-game glance, think again.
“We didn’t play great,” said coach Doc Rivers, a regular-season orator who has become the master of the postseason understatement.
You know who literally struggled to find footing Saturday? Rudy Gobert, the Jazz’s leading rebounder and third-leading scorer who has missed only one game all season. He crumpled to the court in the first 10 seconds after knocking knees with Clippers forward Luc Mbah a Moute.
Gobert, one of the best shot blockers in the game, required teammates to drag him to the bench. He was initially diagnosed with a sprained knee, he was placed in an MRI machine sometime during the second half, and it would be surprising to see him on the court again in the next couple of weeks.
“We took a hit,” said Utah’s ancient Boris Diaw.
But somehow, instead of being deflated by Gobert’s departure, the Jazz were inspired. In other words, they were everything the Clippers were not.
“We felt and knew a lot of people probably were counting us out when he went down, but man, we stuck together, fought hard for 48 minutes,” Johnson said.
And man, once again, the Clippers didn’t stick together, and didn’t fight hard enough.
“We’ve got to be better,” said Paul, who scored 25 points, including a dozen in the fourth quarter. “You know, they played harder. They were more physical.”
How could that be? Knowing what is at stake for the future of a team that could lose Paul, Griffin and J.J. Redick to free agency, how could the Clippers not play harder than everyone during what could be their last spring together?
“It ain’t great, obviously,” Paul said. “Now we’ve got to see what we’re made of.”
Just watching Saturday’s meltdown, during which the 15-turnover Clippers sloppily fell behind late in the third quarter and never led again, one could only surmise that they are still entirely composed of the worst three words in the team’s dictionary. Same Old Clippers. Start with Jordan, who didn’t see the ball nearly enough after Gobert’s injury, taking only seven shots, and doesn’t this team always seem to have trouble finding him when he’s most needed?
Compounding Jordan’s offensive inaction was his complaining that led to a damaging technical foul with 4:20 left in the fourth quarter and the Clippers trailing by six. Of course Gordon Hayward made the free throw; the Clippers’ bad behavior never seems to go unpunished.
“We have a rule, no fourth-quarter techs, and he got one,” Rivers said. “It makes a difference, they really do. Like our emotions and our frustration, that’s got to be something we have to control.”
Then there was Griffin, whose game-high 26 points were overshadowed by another playoff fourth quarter in which he completely disappeared. He missed both of his shots from the field and continued making turnovers; he finished the game with six of those, several when losing the ball on drives to the basket.
“Turnovers, mainly myself,” Griffin said when asked what went wrong. “It’s tough to win a game when you turn the ball over so much.”
Then there was the Clippers’ defense, which made the Jazz look like the San Antonio Spurs with play after perfectly executed play. Where was the help? This is going to sound like something from a youthleague handbook, but where was the teamwork?
“I just thought they scored easier than I would like, and that’s just my visual watching the game,” said Rivers.
That was surely everyone’s visual who watched the game, visions that grow truly terrifying when realizing exactly what this loss could mean for the Clippers’ immediate future.
Without having to face Gobert, the Clippers still should be favored to win the series. There are, potentially, six more games beginning Tuesday night at Staples Center, and the Clippers should still be expected to win four of them. But what does the lengthening of what should have been a short series do for their health and energy in the next round against the Golden State Warriors? That is, of course, if they even advance that far.
Before Saturday’s final sequence, the Staples Center video board juiced up the crowd by showing Kurt Russell’s pep-talk scene from “Miracle.”
Then, somehow, the short-handed, outmanned, overwhelmed Jazz raced down the court and won the game.
These being the Clippers, and this being the playoffs, it was no miracle.