The Los Angeles Clippers were once again dominated in a horrendous way this Sunday, making history in the NBA and not precisely for the right reasons. The Clips lost the game, at home, with a final result of 124-73.
The Clips played the Denver Nuggets on Christmas Day and had their celebration on Dec. 26; Ty Lue decided to give them Saturday off so they could get some rest and spend some time with their families but that was a bad decision.
What followed after that was a huge win and display from the Dallas Mavericks, who had no mercy with the Clips and beat them by 51 points. It was a really embarrassing game for the Los Angelenos teams but nobody seems to be too worried about that result.
Paul George and Tyronn Lue play down the Clippers’ embarrassing 51-PT loss against Mavericks
Paul George, in the absence of Kawhi Leonard, was expected to become the leader of this team but none of that happened and after the game, he took the full blame for the bad result but making it clear that it wasn’t a ‘big deal’.
“I take full responsibility,” Paul George said. “You know, it’s a tough game coming (after) Christmas. I enjoyed my Christmas Day yesterday, today just popped up on me a little too fast. I’ll take full ownership for that, coming out and being prepared to play today. Be a different situation come next game and we will be ready, make sure our group will be ready.”
“It’s not that big of a deal,” George added. “We got our butts kicked today, but you know, it’s one game. Think we will just take what we need to take away from today and go to the next one. We wasn’t ready today, we wasn’t prepared. Not from the game plan but us just being ready to go. And that’s on me. So we will be ready for the next game. It’s not like we lose, we get three Ls by about 50 points in one trip.”
PG wasn’t the only one dismissing any narrative suggesting this is a new crisis for the Clippers. Tyronn Lue also talked about it, explaining that it was a one-time thing and no more than that. The head coach knows what they need to do now and the players are ready to follow him.
“I think you throw it away,” Tyronn Lue said. “And get back to what’s been working and how we’ve been working and working on. Tonight our guys didn’t have a lot of pop on either end of the floor, and you could see it.
“It’s just an exception. It doesn’t take away from what we’ve been doing and what we’ve been working on, and how we’re trying to get better each night, and like I said you know there wasn’t a lot of fight, a lot of pop tonight, and, you know, we know we’ll have that come next game.”
This doesn’t help the Clippers’ image after the fiasco they lived last season, getting eliminated by the Denver Nuggets after having a 3-1 advantage in the second round of the postseason. It’s not the same situation, of course, but the Clippers must know that these performances aren’t very promising for their fans.
Hopefully, this won’t happen again and they get things back on track for their next game.