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Clippers Ramp Up Defense In 100-86 Christmas Win Vs. Warriors


Rowan Kavner

LOS ANGELES – It can take a Christmas miracle to overcome a 1-for-17 shooting start against the league’s top team. Either that, or some of the best defense the Clippers mustered up all season.

Head coach Doc Rivers said the Clippers (20-10) had been “intoxicated with offense” recently, and needed to approach games focused more on stops. They got them Christmas night, responding to Rivers by keeping the Warriors’ (23-5) vaunted offense in check in a 100-86 win.

“It came down to mental toughness, which team had the ability to kind of hang in there,” Rivers said, “and we did that.”

It wasn’t always pretty. In fact, “That was ugly,” was one of the first phrases uttered by Rivers as he sat down at the postgame podium, after a game in which the Clippers started 1-of-17 from the floor, including 16 straight missed shots.

But ugly is fine when the Clippers are winning in a game that came in stark contrast to a 121-104 loss that occurred earlier this season in Golden State, which led to Rivers criticizing the effort and toughness of his group. Neither of those could be questioned after holding one of the league’s top three offenses to 22 fewer points than their league average.

“It shows great growth,” Rivers said. “It’s what I said before the game, we’re better that we were the time we played them last time.”

“I thought our defense, second unit, first unit, whatever it was, I thought our defense was a lot more solid for longer stretches for us tonight,” said Blake Griffin.

The Clippers’ defensive prowess was a necessity, considering how the Clippers started offensively. The offense went cold after a DeAndre Jordan dunk to start the game, which gave the Clippers a 2-0 lead. They wouldn’t take the lead again until going ahead, 56-55, on a basket by Matt Barnes in the third quarter.

Despite the slow start, the Clippers managed to stay close with their defense. Even after a dreadful shooting start, the Clippers came back to tie the game at 18 and only trailed by two points after the first quarter. Griffin said at the beginning of the year he could’ve never imagined this team being down by two after a quarter despite missing 16 straight shots.

“It’s unreal,” Griffin said. “At a point, we were shooting under 20 percent in the second quarter and at halftime it was like 27 percent and we were down by one. When you have those kind of numbers after a poor shooting half like that, you’ve got to keep the faith and keep rolling.”

Because of the defense they played and attacking the rim to get to the line, they were able to survive the first half trailing by just one point despite Griffin, J.J. Redick and Matt Barnes all not hitting a basket the first 20 minutes of the game. Griffin and Redick still finished in double digits, as Griffin scored 18 points and pulled in a game-high 15 rebounds.

The combo of Paul and Jamal Crawford, who finished with a game-high 24 points, kept the Clippers’ alive enough offensively to hang around until the rest of the team’s shooting returned in the second half. The much-needed victory snapped a two-game losing skid for the Clippers.

But Paul knows this doesn’t fix problems of previous games and that the Clippers need to keep it going.

“It shows we’re going in the right direction,” Paul said. “But we’ve got to put it together.”

NOTES – The Clippers improved to 5-8 in Christmas Day games and brought their overall home winning streak up to eight games...Crawford and Redick combined for seven of the Clippers’ nine made 3-pointers...The Warriors only had six 3-pointers…The Clippers held “Splash Brothers” Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson to 11-of-30 shooting…The Clippers won despite shooting 39.1 percent and 28.1 percent from deep…The Clippers pulled in 50 rebounds and forced 16 turnovers… The Clippers are on a seven-game home winning streak