Tyronn Lue rips Clippers stars after fifth straight loss

The Los Angeles Clippers are winless since trading for James Harden. They may have reached a new low after giving the struggling Memphis Grizzlies just their second win of the season, all while dropping their record to 3-6.

Of course, the Clippers aren’t so worried about the regular season as much as they are about the playoffs, but losing habits tend to snowball, and losing five consecutive games leads to frustration.

For coach Tyronn Lue, it’s not so much about the losses but about the way they’re losing. He believes his players are just walking around and lack the intensity they need to get the job done at the NBA level.

Clippers Are Going Through The Motions, Says Coach Lue

“I think playing too slow, just playing too slow,” Lue said, as quoted by The Athletic. “We get rebounds, you get stops, you got to push it. On makes, we got to push it, get up quick and attack early. No, I mean, we just can’t just walk around offensively. Like you got to get to the next actions.”

Kawhi Leonard and Paul George of the Los Angeles Clippers

The former NBA champion wants his players to go hard on both ends of the floor. He thinks his star players need to lead by example so the rest of the team can play off their energy as well:

“If you don’t do that, you don’t do it hard, you get beat every night and we’re seeing those results,” Lue added. “So until we want to play hard on both ends of the floor, if we want to do things hard: cuts, screens, running the screen, sprinting the floor, then it is going to be tough nights, every single night. And so, you know, it’s up to our guys to change their mentality in that regard. Because we’re teaching it, we’re showing it, we’re telling it. So now we got to perform.”

He Wants Harden To Be Harden

Harden’s arrival hasn’t done much to help the Clippers win games — yet. Even so, he’s not the only one to blame for the team’s struggles. If anything, coach Lue wants him to be the same player he’s always been and not overthink his new role too much:

“Just play, like just do your thing,” Lue said. “Like, if you do it too much, we’ll let you know. And he’s a special player. And so we understand that. And when you come into a new situation that you have really good players, you know, it’s always tough to come in and just try to take over. And so with PG [Paul George], Kawhi [Leonard] and Russ [Russell Westbrook], we’ve had these conversations. So we just got to make sure we get James as comfortable as possible, because he’s going to be huge for our team and what we’re trying to do.”

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The Clippers need to move Russell Westbrook to the bench

It’s normal that new teams struggle a little before finding their groove. The Clippers gave up some major contributors to land Harden, and they just need to learn how to coexist with this new group. It might take days; it might take weeks, but the results could be quite special.