Frustrations Crack Through Surface as Clippers Fall to Grizzlies

The Clippers are still winless in the System Era.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — After arriving in the “New World” in 1519, Hernán Cortés instructed for the ships to be burned, stranding him and the 600 men he brought with him on the shores. It was done as a sign to show that there was no going back. You either fought or you died. No other outcome.

The LA Clippers fell to 3-6 after a disastrous loss on Sunday at home to the Memphis Grizzlies (2-8), and in the process might have to partake in their own ship-burning endeavor to exercise whatever demons surround them at the moment.

If there is a way out of this freefall, it would be one that they get to by clawing together as a group or else they’re going to suffer an exorbitant amount of individual basketball deaths along the way.

James Harden, the star guard that the Clippers traded for nearly two weeks ago, has yet to enjoy his first win with the franchise. In the span, Harden has waffled between roles as an on-ball engine and an off-ball spectator, bypassing time by watching others do the heavy lifting.

On Sunday, as the Clippers looked up at a 15-point deficit late in the third quarter, Harden was relegated to bench spectator. What transpired over the next 12 minutes of basketball was close to salvaging the quickly dying remnants of the Clippers’ season: the Clippers played basketball. They didn’t act like they wanted to play basketball; they did it.

Behind a lineup featuring Russell Westbrook as the lead ball-handler and decision-maker, the Clippers stormed back to draw even with Memphis at one point in the fourth.

Harden would eventually come back into the game late and did make a game-tying three-pointer before eventually missing another game-tying attempt with 37 seconds to go.

In his 29 minutes, Harden put up 11 points on 4-for-12 shooting, supplying four rebounds and three assists along the way. But Harden was a minus-28 during that time. The Clippers outscored the Grizzlies by 24 points in the 19 minutes Harden was off the floor.

The Clippers have now reached the point in a season where it becomes apparent that no small tweak is going to fix what ails them. They’re old, slow, and plodding.

“I think playing too slow,” Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said postgame about what he thinks has ailed the starting lineup. “Playing too slow.”

That starting lineup is now minus-21 in 64 minutes together.

“[When] we get rebounds, we get stops, we got to push it. On makes, we got to push it, get it up quick, and attack early. We can’t just f— … We can’t just walk around offensively. You got to get to the next actions, things that we’ve worked on for the last three years. We just got to do a better job of doing that and if you don’t do that, you don’t do it hard, you’ll get beat every night. And we’re seeing those results.”

Those results have come home to roost for a team that was once 3-1 and looked like they had figured out who they were supposed to be.

“Until we want to play hard on both ends of the floor, if we want to do things hard, cuts, screens, running to screen, sprinting the floor, then it’s going to be tough nights every single night,” said Lue. “It’s up to our guys to change their mentality in that regard because we’re teaching it, we’re showing it, we’re telling it, so now we got to perform.”

When they’re not pounding the ball mercilessly into the floor, they’re pointing at the floor to show fellow teammates what they did wrong.

At one point late in Sunday’s third quarter, Kawhi Leonard could be seen walking to center court after the Clippers called a timeout, taking his time walking back to the bench but not before demonstrably pointing out to center Ivica Zubac where he wanted Zubac to be on that previous offensive possession.

Leonard and Zubac then had a brief exchange on the bench, each still pointing to the area of the floor they were seemingly at odds over. Russell Westbrook walked over to where Zubac was sitting and patted the center on the head in an effort to calm things down. To their credit, it does appear that things did smooth over after the game.

“That goes with anything, that’s nothing to look into,” Paul George said postgame about the on-court and bench incident between Leonard and Zubac.

“We should be frustrated. We’re not winning games and we’re trying to figure out, and at times — we’re all brothers in this locker room, and at times a message has to be delivered and we got to figure out how to get over the hump. So, that’s all it is. That’s healthy. That incident is healthy for us. I wouldn’t look too much into that.”

George finished with a team-high 26 points, plus seven rebounds and seven assists, in 37 minutes. George made eight of his 16 field goal attempts but did turn the ball over seven times as the team racked up 16 miscues that resulted in 19 Memphis points.

When asked about the incident after the game, Leonard classified it as “team stuff” and didn’t elaborate further.

Leonard finished with 14 points on 6-for-16 shooting while also chipping in with five rebounds, three assists, two blocks, and a steal in 37 minutes.

George’s two best stints in the game — early second quarter and the fourth — featured Harden off the floor and George playing alongside his good friend Westbrook.

Westbrook turned 35 on Sunday and while his 5-for-13 shooting was nothing to write home about, the guard added nine rebounds, five assists, and three steals in 31 minutes. Curiously, Westbrook was demoted to bench duty for the final couple minutes of the fourth as the Clippers nearly completed their furious rally.

Norman Powell came alive in the fourth, scoring 12 of his 20 with the added benefit of spacing as the Clippers broke out their small-small pick-and-roll looks to draw them back into a game that was scurrying away from them.

“That was positive,” Lue mentioned after the game. “I mean, just whenever we put two on the ball and get T-Mann (Terance Mann) and Russ and Norm playing that short roll and being able to make decisions is good for us.”

The main player who was hurt by the Clippers’ rotation flux on Sunday was Bones Hyland, who received a DNP-CD (Coach’s Decision) for his troubles. Moussa Diabate was the first rotation big man off the bench for the Clippers in this one, and PJ Tucker got plenty of time operating as the small-ball center when the Clippers made their run in the fourth.

The Clippers are stuck in a rut — losers of five straight, and they have not been competitive for large swathes of time during those games.

They now have to travel to Denver to take on the reigning champions in an in-season tournament affair on Tuesday. The Clippers have not won in Denver since Christmas Day 2020.

We’ll see if any ships remain in the process.