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Los Angeles Clippers: Will They Pull Out Of Their Free Fall?

By Josh Cornelissen

Dec 28, 2016; New Orleans, LA, USA; Los Angeles Clippers head coach Doc Rivers against the New Orleans Pelicans during the second quarter of a game at the Smoothie King Center. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports
Dec 28, 2016; New Orleans, LA, USA; Los Angeles Clippers head coach Doc Rivers against the New Orleans Pelicans during the second quarter of a game at the Smoothie King Center. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports /
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A hot start for the Los Angeles Clippers has crumbled into a terrible skid leading into 2017. Will they recover, or is this team worse than we thought?

Friday night the Los Angeles Clippers lost by 24 points to the Houston Rockets, the team’s largest loss since March of 2015. With Blake Griffin and Chris Paul out due to injury, the team lost Austin Rivers in the second quarter on an ejection. Doc Rivers decided to follow him out and was ejected seconds later.

That blowout loss was the Clippers’ fifth in a row, and the only loss in that stretch to a team with a winning record. Their recent losing streak has them clinging to fourth in the Western Conference, just one game up on the seventh-place Memphis Grizzlies.

This wasn’t supposed to be the conversation revolving around the Clippers this season. With Blake Griffin, Chris Paul, and J.J. Redick all approaching free agency next summer, this was the core’s last chance to prove it could break through the second round and contend in the West. This season, things would be better than ever before.

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One month in, they were delivering on all of those promises. A 10-1 start showcased a defense not only on top of the league, but on top of the history books. They rolled that into a 14-2 start on the backs of an improved bench and an MVP-caliber season from Chris Paul.

The rub about bad habits is that they tend to go away when things are going well, and rear their ugly heads when things get difficult. After playing no more than two games in a row on the road through the first 15 games, the Clippers embarked on a six-game road trip that brought the season’s first adversity and began their descent from championship contender to fighting for their playoff lives.

The Clippers lost to the Pistons, Pacers and Nets in succession, and technicals and ejections began to sprout. The bench regressed back to a typical Doc Rivers creation, giving up the leads that the starters created, and outside of a few marquee games the Clippers showed up for their season has been dismal since.

With eight wins and 11 losses over their last 19, the Clippers are on the precipice of slipping into disaster. The recent poor play is not a result of a more difficult schedule either; only four of those 19 games were against teams currently with winning records, and Los Angeles won two of those four — beating the Cavaliers and Spurs.

It’s been the teams under .500 that have given the Clippers issues, as they have lost nine games this seasons to teams with losing records. That includes losses to the Brooklyn Nets and Dallas Mavericks — currently the last-place teams in each conference.

Bad habits, lackluster defense, poor shot selection and losing their cool – each of these are facets to the Clippers’ disastrous second quarter of the season. But the primary reason is simply health.

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Blake Griffin has missed the last seven games after “minor” knee surgery, and nine overall this season (the Clippers are 3-6 in those games). Chris Paul has been battling a hamstring injury that has kept him out of four of the last five games, and Redick returned against the Rockets after missing two games himself.

The Clippers will get healthier, and they showed last season they can exist and even thrive running a spread pick-and-roll attack in the absence of Griffin. And Doc Rivers will pursue a trade to upgrade the bench, as he does every season.

But if the Clippers don’t snap out of their nosedive soon it may not matter how well they play when healthy. The Western Conference contenders around them are all flexing muscles, as Houston and the Utah Jazz are playing their best basketball of the season. The San Antonio Spurs are already six games up on Los Angeles, and the Warriors even more so. If Los Angeles doesn’t get to at least the 2-seed their hopes of making the conference finals will be slim.

But before they think about the conference finals they have to make it into the top half of the West, and it will be a dogfight to even get back to that point. Oklahoma City and Memphis are within a game of the Clippers and each boast an All-NBA performer of their own. Russell Westbrook is lighting the league on fire and Marc Gasol is putting together a two-way tour de force for a team just getting healthy themselves.

The first proving ground will start immediately. The Clippers will face the Oklahoma City Thunder on New Year’s Eve and the Memphis Grizzlies two games later. The time to turn things around is now.

The Los Angeles Clippers have one of the best four-man lineups in the league, a championship-level coach and a bench full of veterans who want to win. Their owner is willing to pay any cost, and their fan base is desperate for success. Everything should be aligning for the Clippers to make a serious run.

But the last weeks have shown that the issues this team has faced in recent seasons are not gone, they were simply covered up for a while. Until this core – the top four plus their coach – can play basketball with maturity and consistency, they’re going to continue to squander the real opportunity they have bringing so much talent to the table.

Next: 2016-17 NBA Power Rankings: Week 10

Another failed season could shatter this team come July, a move that would send shockwaves across the league, and most likely sink this franchise back into the mire of its tortured past

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