For a stretch of games before the All-Star break, the Clippers looked every bit a contender and the biggest threat to Denver in the West. From Dec. 1 through the All-Star Game the Clippers were 28-7 with a 122.8 offensive rating (best in the NBA over that stretch) and a +6.6 net rating. Kawhi Leonard was playing at a level that could get him on the MVP ballot and Paul George looked like an All-NBA player, with James Harden and Russell Westbrook finding their lanes.
“All four of us are at sort of the same place in our career, we’re seeing things the same way,” George told NBC Sports about All-Star weekend about that core. “We’ve made money, we’ve gotten the accolades and awards, now we’re focused on one thing, the same thing.
“We all just want to win.”
Except they haven’t been focused out of the break. Los Angeles is 6-8 since the All-Star Game with a 114.9 offensive rating and a -2.1 net rating.
Sunday night was a new low — a blowout loss to the Atlanta Hawks at home. After the game, George gave an honest assessment of where the team is — they are acting like a team that can flip the switch and in doing so lost its identity, via Tomer Azarly of Clutch Points.
Me: “Do you feel like this team feels like it can kind of just turn it on whenever it needs to right now?”
— Tomer Azarly (@TomerAzarly) March 18, 2024
Paul George: “I mean, that's what we're appearing to look like, which is not good. Not good. We want to be a team that's consistent and we want to establish an identity.… pic.twitter.com/6vjtLELnGc
Tyronn Lue echoed that point, focusing on effort and execution.
“We definitely can play harder for a 48-minute stretch. It can’t be 32 minutes or it can’t be when you get down. That comes with a veteran team. They think we can turn it on, but these teams are young, they’re fast, they’re turning it on from jump ball, so we got to be able to keep up and we got to be able to match that. Nothing to overreact to like the guys in the locker room, they understand what we need to do...
“I told you we have things we got to do consistently every single night. And if you don’t do that, you can consistently get beat by anybody.”
Lue said the Clippers’ key issues were turnovers, transition defense, defensive rebounding, and spacing.
Lue rightfully sounds frustrated — he’s been saying this for weeks but can’t seem to get his players to take it seriously. With these losses the Clippers are just a game up on the Pelicans in the No. 5 seed — Los Angeles could lose home court in the first round if they keep sliding. The Clippers have a 3.5-game lead over the Kings (the current No. 7 seed), but if they or the Suns or Mavericks get hot over the remaining weeks of the season (and Dallas has the easiest remaining schedule in the West), then the Clippers falling into the play-in is not totally out of the question if they don’t turn things around.
The Clippers need to worry about getting their ship right because they no longer pose a threat to Denver.
