Los Angeles Clippers (2) vs Portland Trail Blazers (2)
Staples Center
7:00 p.m. PST
April 27, 2016
Fox Prime Ticket/ NBA TV
PHOTOS: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
1. On a scale of Clippers low points where does Game 4 rank?
Aaron Williams (@aaronsmarter): Nah, Roscoe. You can’t just post a question like this without a *Trigger Warning* for the long-time Clippers fans, fam. That rabbit hole is a PTSD minefield for those of us who started in the PG* era (*Pre-Griffin). Kandi-man… All those seasons of injured Kaveman… Livingston… *shudders*. I refuse to go any further back, or I may enter a fugue state. This isn’t the worst, but… This team always finds a way to hurt me.
Ben Mesirow (@SemNeb): This is pretty bad, and that’s saying something – as we all know, the Clippers have hit a lot of low points. Shaun Livingston’s knee injury was deeply horrifying, Elton Brand’s midnight flight was a gut punch, everything related to Donald Sterling was gross and offensive, and there’s so much more. But the difference on Monday night was simple – the Clippers, more than any other time in franchise history, had hope. Not anymore.
Roscoe Whalan (@RoscoeWhalan): It was just so quick. That’s what makes this worse than Houston last year, which was a disaster that happened in slow motion and we saw it coming. But injuries to not just one but two stars in the same game is cruel. For those injuries to come just hours after the door had been cracked open by Curry’s injury just compounded things further. In an afternoon, the Clippers went from a puncher’s chance to a real one to an afterthought again. It was the like the opposite emotions to the DeAndre Dallas Day last summer.
2. Multiple choice time. What’s your overarching feeling right now:
a. The Clippers are forever doomed;
b. Even if the Clippers bounce back and win this series, what’s the point?
c. Was that the last game we’ll see with CP3, Blake & DJ all on the court together as Clippers?
d. Al-Farouq Aminu should get the max.
Williams: C., because we live in the the hyper-accelerated, social media era of overreaction. I think part of the nostalgia for the 80’s derives from being able to claim your team and your players for longer than 4 years at a time. Also, Doc Rivers wasn’t anybody’s GM, and the world was kind of a better place for it. I can absolutely see good-time Glenn pulling the trigger on a deal for Rajon Rondo and Tony Allen (y’know, complete the set) or Kevin Garnett that will decimate the remainder of the Clippers’ draft picks for the duration of his tenure. Oy.
Mesirow: Oh boy. All of the above, but also none of the above – since Monday night I’ve mostly been doing my best to avoid toppling off the ledge and into the pit of nihilism and despair of options A and B. So instead I’m locked onto the horizon like I’m trying to avoid getting seasick, thinking about C, the future, and what the Clippers should do this offseason. I haven’t figured it out just yet.
Whalan: B & C. B because the nihilist in me can’t help but think it’d be a waste to win and then enter Round 2 against the defending champs sans you’re 1A & 1B stars. The ensuing bloodbath would be similar to the 2012 Second Round against the Spurs when the Clippers got swept. So what’s the point? And then, that leads me to thinking a lot about C. Is it time to break up the band? Five straight years of Playoff disappointments, a number of sizable cracks in the glass ceiling and some great highlights but not even a Western Conference Finals appearance to show for it. Maybe the Clippers rose to power at the wrong time with Golden State? Sigh.
3. Predict the Clippers starting 5 for tomorrow night.
Williams: Rivers-Redick-Mbah a Moute-Pierce-Jordan. It’s gonna be a bloodbath. Or, at least in this quadrant of L.A. sports fandom, an average Wednesday.
Mesirow: Rivers – Redick – Mbah a Moute – Green – Jordan. It’s not glamorous, and it’s not beautiful, there isn’t much play-making and there really isn’t a lot of shooting. Oh, did you think I was going to come up with a silver lining? Because I was just going to leave it there. Well O.K., how about this: that’s not a terrible defensive group, and going small with Green or the Prince at the four won’t kill them against the Aminu-Plumlee frontcourt.
Whalan: Rivers — Redick — Turkoglu, uh, Al Thornton and DeAndre Jordan? It’s not pretty. But guys, we’ve got the Sixth Man of the Year coming off the bench and if Paul Pierce takes a drink of that Truth syrup, maybe just maybe…
This is going to be a blood bath tonight. Cant box out, cant score, cant defend. DOA
For years I’ve been wondering why we still employ Jasen Powell. Ballmer should try and poach the Suns trainers. They seem to resurrect the dead.
He was a minority hire by Donald Sterling during a time Donald Sterling was being sued for racial discrimination.
And because Jasen Powell used to play college basketball the subsequent regimes thought he was a good locker room guy to have around.
By all accounts he’s a good guy. And by all accounts he’s terrible at his job.
Like Tupac once so eloquently said, “its just me against the world,baby!”
The 1998 Clippers started the season 0-17 and their only Free Agent signing was a comically fat and comically awful Sherman Douglas.
That was a low point. Late 90’s Donald T. Sterling was a low point for humanity.
Bad luck? Try thinking we got the deal when we traded for Norm Nixon, allowing the Lakes to parlay that pick into Byron Scott? Try drafting the wrong Reggie, Wiliams at #4 overall, instead of Miller who was #10 overall, and ask yourself who ever heard of Reggie Williams, while Miller is doing Allstate commerials with the Hoopers. Here’s to tonights back-court summoning up the scrappiness of a Darrick Martin, and Eric Piakowski, out-manned every night, but fought hard to the bitter end, and it was bitter! Yep, we Clipper fans will be there, some of us date back the Randy Smith and Bob McAdoo days, but that would be Braves talk.
As has been pointed out, the Clippers were losing game 4 even with Griffin and Paul and with Lillard playing poorly, and that was after they’d lost game 3 with both Griffin and Paul playing their full minutes. So yes, the injuries were bad, but what’s really unfortunate is that Rivers is going to use the injuries as an excuse for losing to Portland, when actually Portland likely had figured out how to beat the Clippers and were on their way to winning the series anyway.
The Clippers have a weakness inside, and Portland had started to exploit it. That’s the same thing that happened in the second round last year with Houston and also several years ago with Memphis. In both of those series, the opponents fell behind but then figured how to beat the Clippers by exploiting their weakness inside, and then they came back and won the series. That likely was happening again this year against Portland.
The fault is Rivers’ but he likely will now escape blame. If the injuries hadn’t happened and the Clippers had lost to Portland, then he would have gotten the blame. So Rivers actually got lucky.
Look at the back-ups Rivers brought in since he got here. The team the Clippers will put on the court the rest of this series would have lost a series to the current decimated Memphis team that got swept by San Antonio. That horrible and depleted Memphis team probably would have swept these Clippers, because of the deplorable job GM Rivers has done..
As I’ve often said, Paul and Griffin are excellent, the rest of the starting lineup all have serious limitations and the bench is terrible, mainly because it’s been made up of mostly old, way over the hill has-beens from Rivers past and the coaches son, who if his father hadn’t picked him up, would have been out of the NBA.
Hard to say if this is going to be an ongoing injury for Griffin, that’s the only thing I don’t like about him right now.