Los Angeles Clippers: Familiar Themes Prevalent In Game 5 Loss
The Los Angeles Clippers earned new life with a huge road win on Sunday. After it seemed like the San Antonio Spurs had taken permanent control of their first-round series with a 2-1 lead, the Clippers answered the bell and then some in Game 4. The only thing that couldn’t happen was a letdown in Game 5.
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While the Clippers definitely showed up to play in Game 5, they ultimately fell short. You can point to several reasons why, and many of them are familiar.
Fans are no doubt tired of hearing about the Clippers’ bench production, or lack thereof, but it was once again a huge factor in Game 5. San Antonio’s bench outscored Los Angeles’ 48-17.
Obviously, the basket interference call at the end of the game played a big role in the outcome too. But when your bench gets outplayed to the tune of a 31-point difference, it doesn’t take an analytics guru to figure out what the main issue is for the Clippers in this series.
On top of bench woes for Los Angeles, missed free throws also contributed to the painful Game 5 defeat. The Hack-a-Jordan was in full effect, with DeAndre Jordan only being able to knock down six of 17 attempts.
You can cry about the strategy all you want, but as of now it’s 100 percent within the rules. Gregg Popovich is simply playing the odds, and on Tuesday night his strategy worked to a tee. Every point matters in the postseason, and Jordan was simply unable to get the job done.
The only way to truly end the hack strategy is to shoot it to death. Jordan has flat out failed to do so, mustering only a 36 percent clip from the stripe in the series. There’s no reason to think he won’t be put to the test again in Game 6.
So with many of the same things going wrong for the Clippers, it’s hard to come up with a reason for fans to be excited about the rest of the series. If their bench plays like it did on Tuesday night, you can pretty much eliminate them, barring over-the-top performances from Chris Paul and Blake Griffin. Los Angeles needs the balance it had in Game 4 to stand a chance of forcing a Game 7.
It’s hard to like the Clippers’ chances of winning two straight with the way the played inconsistently over the first five games, but stranger things have happened. However, it cannot be overstated how important Game 5 outcomes are when a series is tied at 2-2.
According to ESPN‘s stats and information research, the winner of Game 5 in a tied series ultimately goes on to win the series 82 percent of the time.
Giving Los Angeles an 18 percent chance of winning this opening-round series even seems like a stretch at this point. If the bench scoring continues to be lopsided in favor of San Antonio and DeAndre Jordan can’t at least hit half of his free throws, you might as well drop that chance down to about 5 percent.
Next: Spurs Need Consistency From Green
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