If the Los Angeles Clippers hope to please fans and make the playoffs next month then they will have to play better than they have been lately.
The Clippers, who underwent some pretty substantial changes during the recent NBA trade deadline, have now lost four games in a row.
Their latest defeat might have been the worst.
Thursday night’s loss to the Golden State Warriors wasn’t even close and it showed several huge weak spots on the Clippers’ roster.
Head coach Ty Lue didn’t ease worried minds on Thursday following the loss.
His comments show that he’s not quite sure what’s gone wrong.
Ty Lue on if he foresaw losing 4 straight with new-look team:
"No I didn’t. I thought it would take some time to kind of figure out rotations & how we want to play. But to lose 4 in a row I didn’t see that coming… We got to do a better job of taking care of the basketball."
— Tomer Azarly (@TomerAzarly) March 3, 2023
Here is what Lue said when asked if he saw these tough losses coming, according to NBA writer Tomer Azarly:
“No I didn’t. I thought it would take some time to kind of figure out rotations and how we want to play. But to lose 4 in a row I didn’t see that coming… We got to do a better job of taking care of the basketball.”
The Clippers have recently fallen to the Sacramento Kings, Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves, and finally the Warriors on Thursday.
Some of those defeats have been close – like the 176-175 beating by the Kings – and some have been blowouts, like the Warriors’ 115-91 drubbing.
If the team is going to come back from this, Lue will need to have a solid plan to rely on.
LA is now the seventh team in the West, which is down a few notches from where they were a couple of weeks ago.
Faithful Clippers followers have been expecting a powerful playoff run all season long but if the team keeps playing like this, that could slip away.
To avoid that, Lue and his staff will need to figure out what’s going wrong and stop the skid.
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