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Practice Notes: Clippers Look To Improve At Home; Injury Update

PLAYA VISTA, Calif. – The Clippers, last year’s No. 4 seed in the West, ended last regular season with eight more road wins than the No. 5-seed Blazers, one more road win than the No. 3-seed Thunder and just three fewer road wins than the 67-win Spurs.

On the flip side, that meant the discrepancy between home and road victories for the 53-win Clippers wasn’t particularly significant. That’s something they hope to change during the 2016-17 season, and they believe it’s on them to do so.

The Clippers went 29-12 at home and 24-17 on the road last year, and Chris Paul said the Clippers haven’t made their home court much of an advantage or a tough enough place to play.

“Don’t get it twisted,” Paul said. “Our crowd is behind us all day, every day. But, it’s us that have to give them a reason to a cheer…That’s on us as a team. The way we come out, we’ve got to provide that energy.”

Paul said places such as Portland, Oklahoma City and Golden State are typically tough to play at. Those teams’ records last year reflected that. The Spurs lost one game at home; the Warriors lost two games at home; the Thunder lost nine games at home; and the Blazers, despite having nine more total losses last year than the Clippers, had just one fewer loss at home than the Clippers.

“We’re the ones playing,” Paul said. “We have to give our crowd something to cheer about, something to get behind. We’ve got to make Staples Center, for our home games, a tough place to play.”

The Clippers are in agreement there’s only one way to do that.

“Winning games,” said DeAndre Jordan. “I feel like sometimes we’re a better road team than we are a home team, and that’s not good…I mean it’s good, but we want to be a great team at home and a really, really, really good team on the road. We need to figure out how to transition that, and we’ll be fine, but we’ve got to pick it up at home.”

Jordan said last year when the Clippers hit the road, they brought the mentality that it’s them against everyone else. That can add to their motivation.

“So, we’ve got to find that same fire at home,” Jordan said.

Of course, losing Blake Griffin for half the year would affect any team’s winning percentage, whether home or on the road. But the Clippers’ road record last year still rivaled just about every team’s record away from home last year.

The focus now is on improving in front of their own fans, something head coach Doc Rivers knows from experience can only happen with stronger play.

“I always use Boston as a great example,” Rivers said. “The Celtics, that wasn’t a great home advantage, until we were a real good team. It’s really no simpler than that… When you’re good, and you’re really good, you should value home more and win games. I don’t think we did a good job of that last year.

“You look at how many games we won and consider how many home games we lost, we should have had a much better regular season, because you have to win home games if you want to be a great team. It’s not the building at all – it’s us. We’ve got to do a better job.”

Injury Update

Luc Mbah a Moute is expected to return to practice Saturday after going knee-to-knee with an opponent in the preseason finale, but head coach Doc Rivers said Paul Pierce (ankle) won’t be able to practice this week and will miss the opener at Portland.

Mbah a Moute did some non-contact work Friday but didn’t practice fully, so Saturday should be an upgrade. Other than those two players, the Clippers are healthy.

“We’re going hard,” Rivers said. “We’re scrimmaging, we’re running, we’re playing. We’ve gotten a lot in…Tomorrow will be a really short (practice) and then Monday we’ll probably be off and then we’ll get back Tuesday and Wednesday.”