Don’t Talk About It, Be About It: Clippers face plant to 5-13
More of the same.
LOS ANGELES -- Truth be told, for three quarters on Tuesday night, it looked like the LA Clippers, at least offensively, had found something.
But three-quarters of something is not anything, especially in basketball.
The same problems rose to the top -- the atrocious defense, which the Clippers now rank 28th in defensive rating; the turnover bug, which the Clippers now rank 28th in turnover rate; and the lack of functional rebounding, which the Clippers now rank 26th in defensive rebound rate.
All of it, every single bit of it, was on display en route to a 135-118 NBA Cup Group B loss to the Los Angeles Lakers (13-4). The win clinched the group for the Lakers.
“The first three quarters we played, I thought, was really solid basketball,” Clippers’ coach Tyronn Lue said following his team’s 11th defeat in their last 13 games.
But that’s where the positive thoughts would end.
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