For the past two days, the L.A. Clippers have been practicing in their Playa Vista facility while also watching film from their 17-point loss to the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday night.
The poor overall effort was clearly magnified due to the nature of the matchup and the rivalry between the teams. Reporters and players equally dubbed it a possible statement game for L.A., but it turned into a disappointing outing. Before Friday morning's practice, the Clippers' second of the week, backup guard Austin Rivers said the Clippers need to forget the over-analyzing of the one game and move on to the next one.
“We just need to go play. I don't think we need to put too much into it. The fact is that we haven't played well as of late, even the ones we have won. Except for that Cleveland game, that game in New Orleans wasn't a good game for us. We really just haven't played that well. I think we need to stop caring about outside voices, we just need to focus on what we do as a team and just keep pushing forward. It's such a long season, we don't want to get hung up on this. I want us to continue to get better.
Rivers isn't wrong when he says the Clippers haven't played well. In the first 11 games of the season, L.A. averaged 108.8 points per game on 46% shooting from the field while allowing just 92.2 points to their opponents on 40.9% shooting. The Clippers went 10-1 with a 16.6 point differential. Over the last 12 games, however, the offense has played relatively well while defense has certainly suffered.
L.A. has scored 107.8 points per game on 46% shooting, but has allowed an unacceptable 106.8 points per game on 46.2% shooting, which ranks 11th worst in the league since November 15th. They've lost to teams they should've beaten like Detroit, Brooklyn, and Indiana twice. L.A.'s league-leading defensive rating that allowed just 93 points per possession has plummeted all the way to ninth worst at 106.7 points.
For much of Thursday's light practice, the Clippers watched and evaluated their performance against the Warriors.
“We watched (the game) the whole first half (of practice) yesterday. We watched all the film yesterday. They say that video never lies, and we saw a lot of things we were unhappy with.”
After a day to watch film and a day to practice before taking on the Pelicans tonight, Rivers says you have no choice but to move on and look ahead.
“I move on because there's no point. You can't do anything to change it. Nobody's going to help you, nobody feels bad for you. If anything, people are happy when we lose. I just want us to move forward. We have a chance to run off, looking at the schedule, 4 or 5 in a row. It's not going to be easy. New Orleans is playing better basketball, they got a lot of their guys back. Orlando plays hard.
We have a chance where we can put something together. If we do that, we'll be feeling a lot better about ourselves and get some positive momentum.”
In their next five games, the Clippers take on the Pelicans (7-16), Blazers (12-12), Magic (10-14), Heat (7-16), and Wizards (8-13). Realistically, these are teams the Clippers should beat. Whether they bring their ‘A' game to the court has yet to be determined. The Clipper have beaten the Spurs and the Cavaliers on the road, but have also lost to the Nets, Pacers (twice), and Pistons.
“We've lost 5 of our last 7. That's the only reminder we really need. At no point in this season did I think this team would lose five out of last seven games. I think we're that good of a team so this is already too much. We need to move on from here and get better.”
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