Chris Paul will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in a few years. James Harden will get there too. Kawhi Leonard seems like another lock to be inducted, and it shouldn’t be surprising if coach Tyronn Lue does so one day too.
The Los Angeles Clippers have a lot of big names.
They also have many major problems.
Monday night’s 140-123 loss in Miami left the Clippers, generally considered a championship contender entering the season, to 5-16.
Yes, Bradley Beal is injured and will miss the rest of the season. Yes, the team is old, as old as the oldest team in NBA history. But the Clippers have fallen far behind in the Western Conference, ahead of only New Orleans.
“Everyone wants to get a win,” Leonard said. “And we’re not finding one right now.”
This is just part of what happened on Monday: The Clippers missed 11 consecutive shots and allowed Miami to go on a 30-2 run in the first half, gave up 12 unanswered points in 122 seconds to start the second half, and just when it seemed like there was a small chance — what had been a 38-point Heat lead was cut to 12 with 2 minutes left — Miami scored nine straight points in a matter of 52 seconds. Lue brought out his entire starting five just 1’26” into the second half. Four eventually returned to the game. Harden never returned to the court.
Because? It seemed like a punishment, but it wasn’t clear.
Lue went to the Clippers’ interview room almost immediately after the game ended, saw no one inside, and left because there was no one to ask questions. You can’t blame Lue for that. But it doesn’t look like the Clippers have answers right now.
“I never would have guessed they were going to be 5-16,” said Miami’s Norman Powell, who is on pace to have the best season of his career, even surpassing the career-high numbers he posted last season with Los Angeles.
The Heat are thrilled to have Powell. The Clippers are probably regretting letting him go. Perhaps Powell would not have avoided the bad start, but he is clearly missed. And there are already some murmurs around the league about how Oklahoma City — the defending NBA champion who is 20-1 to start the season — could end up with the Clippers’ first-round pick as part of the Paul George deal that sent Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to the Thunder years ago.
“There’s a fine line in this league, particularly now when there’s parity and a lot more teams competing and then you’re seeing this new wave of teams that haven’t necessarily been at the top of their conferences and they see an opportunity,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said after Miami’s win over the Clippers.
“There are a lot of young, ambitious teams. But those have Hall of Famers there,” he added.
It’s going to take a Hall of Fame-worthy effort to right this ship.
Only seven teams in NBA history have started 5-16, or worse, and made the playoffs. It happened relatively recently. New Orleans achieved it in the 2021-22 season. But only one of those seven teams recovered from such a poor start and won a playoff series: the 1977-78 Seattle SuperSonics, a team beloved of Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, who tried to save the Sonics before ultimately buying the Clippers.
There are three-quarters of the season left to play, but the Clippers appear to be running out of time to raise their heads.
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