What can a fan do while watching a display as painful as the Clippers giving up 116 points to a 25 win team? There's not a lot you can do but hope and pray that next season will be different. This team is playing out the string in embarrassing fashion. They'd better hope that the free agents out there have better things to do than to watch their games, because it's hard to imagine that anyone would want these guys as teammates.
Is it delusional to think that things could be different next season? Probably, but maybe not. Putting aside the not very realistic dreams of signing a major free agent, the Clippers still have a chance to start relatively fresh next season. They'll have a new coach. They'll have Blake Griffin. They'll have another lottery pick. And they'll have probably 7 or 8 new faces. For the right coach, it could be a chance to say "Nothing else matters but what we do from today forward" and actually have the team believe you.
As for the current team, it's an embarrassment to the league. You could accuse them of tanking, but I think it's worse than that. Playing to tank would at least have some purpose. The Clippers are so purposeless, tanking would be a significant upgrade. For the OK opponents (like Portland Wednesday night) they sort of kind of half show up. For the bad teams, they shouldn't even bother to play the games.
Consider that Sacramento has two wins in their last dozen games - and both of them came against the Clippers - by 13 and 22. Consider that the Kings have scored over 100 points twice in their last dozen games - both against the Clippers. Consider that they have only one six times since the last day of February - and they are 3-0 against the Clippers in that time. And consider this in particular - playing without their starting center tonight, the Kings outrebounded the Clippers 29 to 13 in the first half. How is that possible? Well, it starts with the fact that Jason Thompson and Carl Landry seemed to sort of, you know, care, which is more than can be said for any Clipper players other than DeAndre Jordan. (DJ had as many rebounds in 21 minutes as Chris Kaman and Drew Gooden had combined in over 66 minutes.)
The Clippers were not particularly bad on offense tonight. They made almost 48% of their shots, they turned the ball over only a dozen times, Kaman scored 23, Eric Gordon scored 21. But they were so horrifically bad on defense and rebounding the ball that it didn't matter. Is it a coincidence that defense and rebounding happen to be the hard work categories of basketball? No, it's not.
This season can not end soon enough. Will the next era be better? It couldn't be much worse than this.