Last time Clippers lose in Brooklyn ninety three. Highlight of the game was the
pregame with no eagle Carlo Amenez at a great call, though even in a
loss tough one, Clippers dropped to zero and two so far with James Harden
welcome back in. This is Clippers Talk. I'm at a moslin A six
six, nine, eight seven, two fives seventy is the phone number.
But right now Chuck Mockler for a little clips and double dip action here on
Clippers Talk. How are you, Charles? I don't know. I'm not
doing very good, Adam. I know what's in the game two of the
James Harden experiment. But ninety three points against a shorthanded Nets team, a
defense that seems to be doing its job. You know, one hundred points
giving up isn't anything to really, you know, put your nose up to
in the modern NBA. But this offense is barken right now. I just
I don't know. Am I wrong? No, that's a good way to
put it. I will try to spin that though, because coming in we
all said, well, we're not that worried about the offense. They'll figure
it out. It's the defense. Worried about the defense hasn't been that bad.
I'll give it up. One hundred points was nothing tonight. I thought
defensively they were good enough. Granted, like you said, a Brooklyn Nets
team that was missing a lot of guys, including Cam Thomas throughout most of
that second half. You would think though, that they could just roll the
ball out and do you know, a plethora of just my turn, your
turn, and win a ball game against this Brooklyn Nets team. And they
couldn't even do that tonight. No, there's there's this weird disconnect where it
feels like everyone is passive at the same time and everyone is too aggressive at
the same time, if that makes sense. You look at just even if
you were just box if you were just box score watching this game, you
can get a pretty good idea of what happened. Russell Westbrook had eighteen field
goal attempts. Usually that's something that's not too bad. But Kawhi had fifteen,
James Harden had not. That's not ideal, right, George Shoot's thirty
five percent. You don't like that. You look at the fourth quarterbox score
and you see eight turnovers in the fourth quarter and R seven Excuse me,
it's just I know it's gonna take a minute. Tyler was gonna do is
ten to fifteen games type thing. But you're you're not wrong. We thought
that it would be even at its base, better than ninety three points per
game like they were tonight. And the way they just kept chucking three after
three in the fourth quarter, they're not falling. It's not an insurmountable lead.
You don't have to settle for three pointers, and they did, and
they just kept missing. That offense was really really tough to watch, and
it just showed, look, when guys are missing that many open threes,
and a lot of them were good looks, good takes. I guess you
could say if they just weren't having such a cold to start with, but
it tells you there's just not a lot of rhythm. Guys don't feel like
they're in the flow of any type of offense, and therefore they're not going
to fall right, there's no rhythm. They took eleven threes in the forest,
they made one. They took thirty six the whole game. That's tiredness
too. You know, maybe they're not as used to getting this. You
know, the sets lined up so you just take the ISO three, you
take the one path and then the three point, and we saw a couple
of those from Kohir, at least one that was just it's that thing that
Clippers fans have been worried about, which is that heart and that energy and
that effort, which you know they've been saying they want to play faster.
They're still middle of the league in pace, they're still not totally winning the
possession battle. These growing pains, and hey, I'll say I'm guilty of
it. These growing pains are a lot bigger than what we thought they were
going to be, which is compounded by the fact that this is a quote
unquote easy part of the schedule. This is when we were supposed to be
stacking wins. Yes, that was before the James Harden trade, but as
we all thought, the James Harden trade was gonna make us better. So
we should at least be on pace to be over five hundred for these these
opening ten games before things get really you know, in the in the wis
with the scheduling. But I mean there's it's not like there's a lot of
fingers the point, I guess it's not one person's fault. But yeah,
everyone's got to get it figured out. It seems yeah, and in the
short term I could have seen them taking a step back, but I would
have thought they would have just found a way to win a game like this
in Brooklyn against a depleted NETS team that was missing guys coming in and then
lost their best player against the Clippers, for sure, Cam Thomas, I
mean, McHale Bridges had ten points on four of eleven shooting. How do
you lose that game where Cam Thomas is out from pretty much to start of
the third quarter on One of the things that Color brought this up that we've
been focusing on is just someone taking the reins and taking over late. It's
an ugly game. You can't figure it out. You got to dig it
out of the dirt, as Brian Seaman would say. And hey, Kawhi
Leonard comes back in with six thirty left in the fourth quarter. He doesn't
take his first shot in the fourth till one fifty five left in the fourth,
Right, that's the guy to me that you just have to get him
involved right away. That's what he's there for. He's your closer one hundred
percent. We've heard that every player is going to have to sacrifice from this
California four or whatever we're calling it. But when it's late, there's there's
one guy who definitely shouldn't sacrifice, which is Kawhi. There's another who probably
shouldn't, which is Paul George. Everyone else get out of the way.
Help these two guys in crunch time do what they are supposed to do,
which is take this team to where they've never been, and that I guess
still has to get figured out. But I might be on the side of
some of the college I'm a little fired up by this. I'm just like
I wish it was game two instead of Game seven or wherever we're at already,
you know, like this is just there's seventeen games in March. I'm
worried about this team. This team has a lot of stuff to get figured
out, whichween now and then. I do think they will figure it out
to some extent. I don't think it will get worse for you know,
when it comes to that. But this offense is not a modern NBA offense
right now, and the starting five we talk about finishing a lot, but
the Clippers issue a lot of this time. This two and three era has
been starting games slow. And they're still starting games slow, and that's against
kind of the rhetoric we heard during this whole offseason about you know, starting
quick and playing fast. It hasn't really happened outside of the first game against
a very bad Blazing team. So well, look, they won the last
two first quarters. They won both first quarters in New York. They did.
They weren't great, but their defense was good enough. I just if
it's not one thing is another the defense. Yeah, the defense is there.
The defense has shown up for sure, But you're right, it's the
offense where it's like we should have maybe a fifteen point lead instead of a
six point lead or something like that. It feels like when there's one kind
of bump. Right now, they're getting so derailed they can't really get on
track. And I guess it's more practice time and hopefully when they get back
on the West Coast it's a little more comfortable. But we gotta hope that
starts soon. I'm not sure about your I can't get any worse checks notes.
Oh they got Dallas on Friday. Okay, okay, I'm doing my
best here. No, no, no, it's fair, it's it's fair
and we like that look. It would be on par for the Clippers to
show up in a big way against Dallas and win, right like, we've
seen this team play down to competition and then just figure it out. But
we're waiting for them to click in Chuck, thanks for doing this tonight.
Do we get a tripod coming up tomorrow? We have a tripod at some
point. For sure, I'm still Montana, but we'll figure something out,
all right, all right, Well, thank you, chef. That's down,
Adam. Good luck to night, buddy. Yeah,