Lakers 106 - Clippers 88

In a strange way, the way the stock market has been plummeting 300 points in the last 10 minute of trading and the way the Clippers have been collapsing is eerily similar. I sense a conspiracy of some kind, probably by evil short traders or a cabal of rogue referees fixing Clippers games.

On most real professional basketball teams, with real coaches and real NBA players, when the other team goes on like a 10-0 run, the coach usually calls a time-out, diagram a play, change some personnel and tries to get a good look/basket to break the run.

We haven’t been screwing up the time-out part (Dunleavy hasn’t broken his fingers jabbing his palm or spoken in Portugese to the referee) but everything else has been disastrous. We haven’t made any dramatic personnel changes to break the opponent’s run; we might subsitute Ricky Davis for Mobley, or Paul Davis for Brian Skinner and they usually take up space on the floor but don’t contribute much in the way of helping us get a bucket. I’m thinking, if the other team is on like 20-0 run and we haven’t scored a bucket in 8 minutes, wouldn’t it be good to try to put in some shooters like Novak or Gordon? If Millsap or Bynum is grabbing every loose ball for 5 minutes straight, shouldn’t we put in someone like DeAndre Jordan to body up on him? I mean how bad can the rookies be? Are we afraid that the run is going to baloon to 68 – 0 or something? Heck we’re already down by 25.

Generally, we’ve been trying to force the ball into Kaman on those crucial plays or it ends up with Mobley or TT shooting a prayer of a fade away. So the run continues unabated. I want to know the NBA record for the most unanswered points in an NBA game or across multiple NBA games. I mean we should set a very high goal here. Not only can we go 3 or 4 quarters where the other team score on us unanswered, we can stretch it out over two or three games where we get outscored like 280 – 0 and own this record for all of eternity.

but their defense kept them in it. The Clips missed 14 shots in a row, I believe. I’m also curious as to why Bynum gets all the calls when he is a relatively new and young guy in the league. I’m really frustrated by Ricky Davis as well. Paul Davis is a sloth out there and he doesn’t hussle. At this point, I don’t see any issues with putting DeAndre in the game. I don’t think he could hurt us anymore than those guys could.

Seriously. I don’t think it could be more blatantly obvious how bias this game was officiated. It’s not the refs fault that we couldn’t put the ball in the hole during the 4th and I’m in no way saying that. However, the officiating was definitely unbalanced. Everyone saw it, even Laker fans.

It was an encouraging game for Clips Fans. Camby and Kamen can play well together, whenever they are actually on the floor at the same time. Foul trouble hampered any real sense of continuity in the 4th. MDsr probably should have kept Baron on the floor after the 5th foul, but once again, he’s sometimes too conservative.
it was close, a few plays here and there could have kept the Clippers in the game longer. Plays like the missed dunk by Skinner, TT’s mystifying lazy pass, Thornton making one of his many missed layups, etc.
-Don’t think we’ll be see much of Novak as long as Thornton and TT and Paul Davis are healthy and productive. He’s a superb shooter, but he just doesn’t really have a position to play, even on the Clips.

Is it time to get rid of Mobley and Tim Thomas? Time to forget 2010??

Tim Thomas needs to get rid of his post up game. Nothing good ever comes out of it. The Tim Thomas that I love to see is the one in the 2nd quarter, when he was running the floor and spotting up outside the three point line and baron was finding him for easy buckets. Thats the Thomas that we saw in Pheonix and I believe thats the way we can get the most out of him. Stop giving him the ball in the post and isolating him that way.

Gordon was glued to the bench because he took a shot Dunleavy didn’t like. Dunleavy needs to be able to control him before he can play him.

Typical Dunleavy loss. You knew this would happen. Refs are not going to be responsible for a 22-0 run. They were letting stuff go on both sides. Clippers have lost by an average of 20 pts a game.

…statwise, but he is, and has always been his whole career, a guy with great natural gifts but a flawed individual who commits mental mistakes at crucial times.

my own view would emphasize the progression and the “encouraging trend” of when the breakdown occurs. This was very different from previous collapses, and came much later. And what we’re painfully, excrutiatingly watching is essentially the preseason. This team is starting with both a handicap and a tough schedule. It’s going to get better very soon, barring new injuries, but the question will be whether they can make it up.

“Why is this collapse different from all other collapses?” (Manishtanah halilah collapse—can the Clips be above .500 by Hannukah?) Because of bad refereeing. The trick with all of the calls against the Clips was the way that it affected the middle of the game and then set up the 4th quarter. Call after call was going against the Clips and bailing out the Lakers. The way that the Clips battled through the 2nd, holding down the Lakers when the Clips went on their first significant drought, and won the 3rd was very impressive, especially Taylor going after Farmar.

But it was all set up for a crash in the 4th, when Davis, Kaman, and Camby were all on the edge from the very start. Once again (as with Utah 2), just when Camby was active and influencing the game, he had to head to the bench. The impact of the 5th foul on Davis was obvious. Again, it’s not that the 4th or 5th foul on any of these guys was an especially bad call or anything, it’s the fact that one or two or even three of the first four fouls shouldn’t have been whistled (or wouldn’t have been, if it was the Lakers). The Clips battled against this the whole game, and it all crashed down when Baron got his 5th foul, Camby was already on the bench with his, and Kaman had just come back in.

And this is against a stacked team which has no real weakness, matches up against the Clips’ strength, that has a dynamic bench. This game was real progress, and the collapse was very different. It’s great to have Camby playing and BD out there, and things are going to start clicking very soon. Maybe it won’t be soon enough, but it will be a lot more fun to watch. The degree to which the Clippers are competing and getting better with every game is very significant.

With the way our luck has been this year, the Rockets will lose tonight’s game in the last second of regulation on a controversial foul and they will come out steaming and pissed off against us tomorrow. By the first quarter of tomorrow’s game, we will be behind like 39 – 0 and Dunleavy still won’t play EG until there’s only 1 minute left in the game and we’re behind 150 – 12…upon which EG will hit a three pointer at the buzzer to make the score semi-respectable; 150-15.