The Los Angeles Clippers have suffered what could easily be their two most embarrassing losses of the season, prompting J.J. Redick to comment about the team’s need to “fight more”.
The Los Angeles Clippers are coming off what can easily be considered as their worst two-game spell of the season, suffering back-to-back losses from two inferior teams dealing with multiple injuries. First, they fell to the Memphis Grizzlies who were without Mike Conley, Matt Barnes, Marc Gasol. Then, to make the weekend even more embarrassing, the Clippers lost to a New Orleans Pelicans team without Eric Gordon, Tyreke Evans, Ryan Anderson and Anthony Davis.
As if everything wasn’t bad enough, they really couldn’t surpass an Anthony-Davis-less Pelicans team, who reside at the depths of the West at 26-43.
It gave the Clippers their worst back-to-back of the season, emphasizing just how badly they need Blake Griffin‘s interior presence to return and how much their intensity can fade at times. Specifically, when it comes to rebounding, the team has been useless this season.
Clippers need to get used to back-to-backs. Their last 4 games were 2 sets of back-to-backs. Next 6 games are 3 sets of back-to-backs
— Rowan Kavner (@RowanKavner) March 21, 2016
Now, they rank 24th in the NBA in rebounds per game (41.9), which somehow looks good next to their rebounding effort in the last two losses. They were out-rebounded 30-44 against the Grizzlies and 35-54 against the Pelicans, causing some of the Clippers players to comment on their overall lack of “spirit” and competitiveness.
Rowan Kavner of Clippers.com reported what they had to say, with J.J. Redick saying the team needs to fight more:
"“I just think our spirit isn’t great right now. We’ve just got to be more together and fight more. You can talk about Xs and Os all you want, but as a player you can feel it when your spirit isn’t right.”"
Austin Rivers had a similar sentiment, saying the Clippers can’t reduce their focus against weaker teams:
"“We’ve got to stop playing with these teams that we should beat. I think sometimes our focus is less when we play a team like we did tonight. We’re not in any position to judge anybody. We’re trying to get a good playoff seed and so forth and build good habits going into the playoffs.”"
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After the kind of performances they’ve just put together, the comments Redick and Rivers made are perfectly justified, even if they’re worrying problems to admit so close to the playoffs. Of course, everyone has off shooting nights, especially streaky players like Rivers, Jamal Crawford and even Wesley Johnson recently.
But their recent outings go beyond that, stemming largely from a lack of intensity and urgency that should be needed to close out against weaker teams who both lacked so many of their star players due to injury. Rebounding is essentially all about effort and incredibly basic IQ to box out and it’s something the Clippers need to get right, along with their overall mindset, defense and approach to such games.
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Now that they’re five wins behind the Oklahoma City Thunder (48-22), it no longer looks like they have a shot to claim the 3rd seed in the West. The Clippers just need to shake themselves off and rediscover the kind of composure they’ve had since losing Griffin. If they can do that, they can look forward to his return with far more certainty among the rest of the team.