By Peyton Wesner
The high-flyers came into Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Wednesday night and it was not the halftime entertainment as the 7-14 Indiana Pacers hosted the 15-5 Los Angeles Clippers.
"Lob City", as the Clippers are known by, is in their second year of Doc Rivers manning the ship in the West. The franchise survived the Donald Sterling racism incident and are now owned by former Microsoft CEO, Steve Balmer. Balmer is a complete 180 from Donald Sterling as Balmer is a high energy guy that likes to have fun. Los Angeles had a good season in Coach Rivers first year but the team was bounced in the semifinals by number two seed Oklahoma City after surviving in seven games against number six seed Golden State. This season the goal is to make a title run but do the Clips have it in them? It is possible since they have all the components of a championship team like the all star point guard (Chris Paul), the high rising scorer (Blake Griffin), the defensive force (DeAndre Jordan), and three players that can drain threes (J.J. Redick, Jamal Crawford, and Matt Barnes). The problem for the Clippers comes with their second team's production or lack there of. Jamal Crawford leads the second team and is averaging 16.8 points per game but there are no players surrounding him that bring anything to the court. Los Angeles has had a really good season so far but to come out of the Western Conference, a team must play great not just good. The Clippers may not even win the Pacific Division this year because of the Golden State Warriors. The Warriors have looked unstoppable this season under first time head coach Steve Kerr. Currently, Golden State is on a 14 game winning streak while having lost a league-low two games. Like Atlanta Monday, the Clippers are coming in hotter than the summer weather on the strip as they have won eight straight games coming in. In their last game on Monday, the Clippers held off the Phoenix Suns who rallied from nine points in the fourth quarter to send it into overtime. Chris Paul had the chance at the end of regulation to win the game but his layup was blocked by former Clipper Eric Bledsoe. In Overtime, Los Angeles found themselves down two with two seconds left in overtime. That was when All-Star Forward Blake Griffin caught the ball on the right wing and fired not a game tying shot but a game winning step-back three pointer. The shot had no arch on it whatsoever as it hit the front rim, bounced high into the air while scrapping the backboard and then falling home for the win. Clippers win! Clippers win! But will they win tonight?
The Pacers are on a terrible losing streak that is now up to five games as Indiana was blown out at home on Monday by hometown point guard, Jeff Teague and the Atlanta Hawks. Roy Hibbert and David West have not been able to compete and score of late shown specifically in their performance against Atlanta. Granted Atlanta was coming into the game reeling off wins but so are the Clippers this evening.
Both teams raced off the starting lines as LAC had a 9-8 lead at the nine minute mark in the first quarter. Bad thing for Indiana was that three-point shooter J.J. Redick saw his first shot go down giving him confidence. Redick scored ten of the Clippers first 22 points handing them the a 22-10 lead halfway through the first quarter. 12 point deficit, six minutes into the game, wasn't that what everyone expected? It sure was. Jordan and Griffin scored the next six giving Los Angeles a commanding 28-13 lead. Game is over right? Well it would have been if the starting five of the Clippers could play 48 minutes. Coach Vogel "popped a timeout" to try to stop the run with 3:35 left in the first. Surprisingly and unlike Monday the timeout helped stop the run. Behind veterans Luis Scola and C.J. Miles the Pacers fought back into the game narrowing the deficit to eight at the score of 33-25 at the end of one.
The second team struggles continued for L.A. as the Pacers continued to lessen the Clippers strangledhold on the tempo and lead. Miles continued draining threes and scored ten of Indiana's first fifteen points in the second quarter. Los Angeles 44, Indiana 39. What was going on with the Clippers second team, why are they so bad? Doc put back in the starters to stop the Pacers run but it failed to succeed as Solomon Hill made a free throw with 3:10 left in the second quarter giving Indiana a 45-44. The Clippers' crowd was befuddled while the Indiana fans were going crazy. Rivers called yet another timeout to get his players refocused. This time, they came out responded by going on a 10-4 Clippers run to end the half and give Los Angeles a 54-49 lead going into the locker room.
I would assume Doc Rivers was not happy at halftime and gave his team a stern "ole fashioned butt chewing" because Los Angeles came out from the break a new team. They basically played the same as they did in the first quarter. Chris Paul was distributing the ball to everyone on the floor and DeAndre Jordan was grabbing ever rebound in his vicinity. The lead was rejuvenated to twelve but that would not be the highest it peaked. Halfway through the third quarter all the players in the starting lineup besides one had double figures scoring for the Clippers. The one who was not in double figures at that time was Matt Barnes. Soon Barnes would get his.
Chris Paul dished it to a wide open Matt Barnes for an easy layup. Prior to the deuce, he only had two points but he was about to get the scoring going. A minute later Barnes made another layup assisted by Chris Paul and then drained a three passed by Redick. He made another layup giving L.A. a 77-60 lead. He scored nine consecutive Clippers points! The game looked over as the quarter ended with the score Clippers 82-65.
C.J. Miles railled the Pacers for a run to start the forth quarter against Atlanta but the Hawks' lead never went below ten. Tonight, Miles was a man on a mission.
Blake Griffin and Chris Paul had played the whole third quarter since Doc was trying to put the game away. The lead was at seventeen, surely the Clippers second team would not let a lead of that size squander. They did. C.J. Miles led the Pacers on a 10-4 run, which cut the L.A. lead to under ten at the 8:52 mark in the forth quarter. Rivers called another timeout but it did not benefit. Less than ninety seconds after timeout, the Pacers continued and cut the lead to five. Rivers called one more timeout and put star Blake Griffin back in but tonight, Griffin could not hit outside the paint. He was not the same man that scored 45 points against Phoenix two days prior at Staples Center. The 6'10" forward from Oklahoma shot 7 for 17 from the field accumulating only 17 points on the night. After another few minutes of back and forth action, Lavoy Allen nailed a wide open jump shot to make the score 98-96 with exactly two minutes left. The crowd was on their feet and cheering, it was practically a new ball game. The Clippers had the ball and desperately needed a basket to extend the lead to two possessions and to silence the arena's crowd. Chris Paul, who was two rebounds shy of a triple-double, recorded his 15th assist by passing it to Jamal Crawford for a jumpshot that gave Crawford his eighteenth point of the game and Los Angeles a four point lead. The pressure was on Indy to get points from their next possession but C.J. Miles missed a three pointer with 1:30 left in the game. Blake Griffin later hit one of two free throws to seal the game, Los Angeles 103, Indiana 96. It definatley was not pretty but the Clippers survived in the end and that is all that matter.
Points, Rebounds, and Assists, Oh My!
The Clippers filled the stat sheet tonight in all three main statistical categories. Blake Griffin (17 pts), Matt Barnes (11 pts), DeAndre Jordan (12 pts), Chris Paul 17 pts), J.J. Redick (16 pts), and Jamal Crawford (18 pts) all scored in double figures. DeAndre Jordan and Blake Griffin dominated the glass as they combined for 29 of their team's 50 rebounds (Jordan 19 and Griffin 10). Chris Paul had another typical performance with 8 rebounds and 15 assists to go along with his 17 points. The three players previously mentioned all achieved double-doubles with Jordan's 19 rebounds setting his season high and Paul's 15 assists being one assist short of his season high set last Saturday against New Orleans (16 assists).
Where's the Bigs?
David West and Roy Hibbert have both played like they are...old. West scored 8 points while grabbing 4 assists Monday night and only had 2 points and 3 rebounds tonight. Hibbert has scored a total of 12 points in his last two games (8 pts against Atlanta and 4 pts against Los Angeles) with only 8 rebounds. The only two starters healthy from last year's lineup did not even play in crunch time tonight as Vogel went with Lavoy Allen and Luis Scola. The road does not get easier for the set of bigs to get back on track with Toronto coming Friday.
What's Next
Tonight started a slate of five games against Eastern Conference opposition. Friday they put their nine game winning streak on the line to start a back-to-back in a high-profiled matchup against the Washington Wizards, who have won six of their last seven, at the Verizon Center. This matchup is intriguing as the NBA will get to see two of the best point guards in the NBA, Chris Paul and John Wall, face off. In addition to the point guards, the matchup at the four (PF) and five (C) positions should be entertaining as it will be the Wizards' experience versus the Clippers youth down low. After Washington, "Lob City" makes an appearance at Milwaukee before returning home to face Detroit on Monday and Indiana on Wednesday.
The struggling Indiana Pacers head up North to face the Eastern Conference leading Toronto Raptors Friday before returning back to Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Saturday to face the Portland Trail Blazers again. Then on Monday they welcome the worser of the two teams from the "City of Angels", the Lakers and Kobe Bryant to Indianapolis for a rematch of the 2000 NBA Finals. In 2000, the Los Angeles Lakers ended up defeating the Pacers in six games with Phil Jackson as head coach. After the game on Monday, Frank Vogel and the Pacers travel out to Staples Center for a rematch of tonight's game.
Players of the Game:
Los Angeles Clippers: Chris Paul 17 points, 8 rebounds, 15 assists, and 3 steals.
Indiana: C.J. Miles 30 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists.
Next Up:
Los Angeles Clippers: Friday at 15-6 Washington.
Indiana: Friday at 16-6 Toronto.
No comments:
Post a Comment