Paul George offered up a telling assessment of the Los Angeles Clippers’ collapse against the Denver Nuggets.
The Clippers had Denver down 3-1 in the Western Conference semifinals before losing three straight to drop the series. The Nuggets were down double digits in both Games 5 and 6 as well, but the Clippers collapsed late. In Game 7, the Clippers simply could not score down the stretch.
In an interview with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson’s “All The Smoke” podcast, George admitted the Clippers hadn’t bothered to make any adjustments during those games, even though the same things kept happening.
“During that whole process, we never worked on adjustments,” George revealed. “We never worked on what to do different. We just literally having the same s— happen over and over again. It started to play a trick on you, like, man, what’s going on?
“We talking amongst each other, like, we’re gonna be all right. The conversations should have been like nah, we need to change. We need to switch this up. At the end of the day, I don’t think we deserved it. We wasn’t prepared enough going into it. Just us making adjustments. We wasn’t prepared. We didn’t put the work into it.”
George also once again brought up issues with team chemistry, citing the fact that he had barely practiced all season and thus did not get the opportunity to jell with his new teammates.
Ultimately, it’s not a huge shock to hear this. The Clippers looked dysfunctional in those three games. Games 5 and 6 were almost identical in terms of how they lost. Nothing ever changed, even though it was clear that the Clippers' mentality was doing the players no favors.
Maybe George was one of the players behind this report about Doc Rivers’ decision-making.
More must-reads: