The Los Angeles Clippers are suddenly struggling, unable to figure out what ails them.
No less than coach Tyronn Lue even defined their identity as “soft” following Monday’s home loss to the Indiana Pacers.
For the record, the Clippers (44-27) have lost five straight at home and six of nine overall. They’ve allowed the New Orleans Pelicans to overtake them for the Western Conference’s fourth seed in the process.
Not what they were expecting from a team featuring Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, James Harden and Russell Westbrook.
“You don’t want to be leaking oil at this time of year,” former NBA guard and current ESPN analyst Tim Legler said. “When they played that stretch where it looked like they had found cohesion .. they looked like they had the talent and depth to challenge Denver, maybe more so than anybody in the West because all those other teams had question marks.
“But let’s look at what’s going on here over the last six weeks. We’re all talking about the same thing. But when you really dive into the numbers, here’s what’s really scary — they are 1-9 in the last month and a half against any team that’s in the top six in the Eastern or Western Conference.”
That’s, like, bad.
“So they’re playing good teams and they’re losing to all of those teams,” Legler continued. “The few wins they do have (in that stretch) are against bottom-feeders. This has been going on for six weeks. This isn’t a small sample size.”
As for the Clippers’ identity, Legler said he doesn’t want to hear it.
“When people say like of identity, that’s a euphemism for lack of effort,” he added. “That’s all that is. They’re not playing hard enough, they’re not physical enough, they’re not tough enough defensively.
“Can they turn that around? Look, we’ll see.”
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