Heavy doses of effort and hustle helped LA Clippers guard Patrick Beverley go from NBA afterthought to one of the best perimeter defenders in the NBA. His passion on the court has led he and his teams to success in the league, but of late, the Clippers are far from success.

After last night’s loss to the New York Knicks — the Clippers’ ninth straight defeat — Beverley could easily see what is ailing his team. In his first game back after missing the last five contests, Beverley was disappointed with the overall effort the Clippers showed. That, combined with what Broderick Turner of the Los Angeles Times termed an overall lack of unity on Monday, had Beverley in rare form:

As he sat at his locker after returning from a five-game layoff, only to be part of an 11th loss in 12 games, Patrick Beverley expressed how “pissed off” he was.

“This … feels like 100 losses,” Beverley said. “Straight up. This … is weak. This ain’t how I roll. That ain’t OK and I won’t allow it to be OK as long as I’m here. That’s a fact.”

The Clippers already had one team meeting following their third straight loss in San Antonio on Nov. 7. Is it worth having another one?

“Hell no,” Beverley said. “We just got to play harder. That’s it. We just got to play harder. You get rid of the mistakes by playing hard. We’re not playing hard; the first unit, not the whole team. I challenged the first unit to play harder.”

Many of the Clippers’ top offensive players had rough games against the Knicks, with star Blake Griffin notching 21 points (but also four rebounds and four turnovers) and DeAndre Jordan finishing with 10 points and nine rebounds. Beverley himself had nine points, while guards Lou Williams (eight points) and Austin Rivers (two points, 1-for-9 shooting) struggled, too.

“So what if you have two points? As long as we win, what does it matter? What if you don’t have no points?” Beverley said. “And that’s the maturity hump that we got to get over. We have to be more mature and I don’t think we’re mature enough yet. It’s there. It’s real close. It’s real, real close. But, we just got to play harder.

“We too cool. We too cool. We come in this game, we come on the court like people are supposed to back down because of the name on the back of our jerseys and that’s not the case. The only thing people are looking at is the name on the front of our jersey, and that’s nine losses in a row. They don’t give a … about what you’ve done in the past or your stats or anything. Teams out here are trying to beat our … and they are beating our … .”

…

“We took another ‘L.’ This is new territory for me, and I don’t like it.”

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