GAME #57: LAL (31-28) @ LAC (37-19) WED 2/28—7PM, ESPN

[rocketsfan100]

Pj Tucker needs to shut it. He has no business seeing one second on an nba court ever again. Ty lue going with

Westbrook
Tucker
Coffee
Plumlee

When they were blitzing harden should be a no starter from here on. Harden and Kawhi are ere also awful in the clutch. They had to be more aggressive

[Jay555]

I see what Ty Lue did there..

He now can legitmately let PJ ride the bench without him whining..

[MartinToVaught]

You know what the saddest part is? In years past, I'd be absolutely livid at this meltdown to the Lakers of all teams, but at this point, I barely even care. Why should I when the team itself doesn't care? We all know there will be no accountability for another wasted season. The front office who traded the entire future away to construct this horrible roster will all keep their jobs. When Lue didn't get fired over the Morris debacle last year, he's definitely not getting fired for playing Tucker.

Despite all the bluster from Ballmer about how "hardcore" he was going to be when he bought the team, the Clippers are content with mediocrity. They don't want it bad enough. They aren't hungry for a ring. It's hard to believe after all the BS we've had to endure in our history, but it's the truth. Until that changes, it'll be the same results forever.

The only things that could make me care as much as I used to are a Finals appearance or a full rebuild with a new FO and coach. Treadmilling in the early rounds of the playoffs has lost all allure after 12 years.

[og15]

Clippers are usually on the opposite end of these kind of game endings, obviously not fun at all the be on the receiving end.

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Problem with PJ is that he's not going to take the shots. He took 3 FGA in 26 mpg last season. He's not going to shoot enough if left open to keep the defense honest enough.

[jengmann3]

I’m sorry but I just can’t agree with y’all who are saying no need to be concerned.

The Clippers are building some very bad habits.

Lue out of the blue playing with the rotation and stuff. For what?

Too many mental errors. Dumb costly turnovers. Questionable defense and rotations. Dribbling out the shot clock. Force feeding role players.

This team can’t afford to flip a switch. Other teams are locking in mentally and tightening up loose ends. They’re gearing up for the playoffs and we’re acting like it’s preseason.

Not a good message from top to bottom.

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Coach is delusional.

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I hear u. But Lakers play always the clips really tough. I think Lebron is into going against Kawhi and he has played great defense against him. But Lakers may not make the playoffs.
The team overall played well until the 4th but we were missing two starters including our second all star.Lakers were pretty healthy.
Similarly against the Kings, Fox kills us once a year. Law of averages tbh.
During the stretch when the team was playing well everyone was playing well. Russ, PG, Kawhi was on a tear, Norm, JH. Recently no one has been playing well tbh. So at least this game James and Kawhi looked like themselves. Kawhi could've really had 30 and did score 6 and got a stop on Bron down the stretch. Just missed THE shot. I actually think before the timeout Kawhi gave the ball up to James and James had the better matchup but then he pitched it back unfortunately and then they called time-out.

[NickP]

miss Zu

Law Murray
@LawMurrayTheNU
·
2m
Clippers used four lineups in the fourth quarter tonight

All of them bled profusely

This clearly tells me Lue uses the same strategy as youth league coaches.
Play everyone on the team in some sort of combination and hope something sticks.

[MartinToVaught]

Problem with PJ is that he's not going to take the shots. He took 3 FGA in 26 mpg last season. He's not going to shoot enough if left open to keep the defense honest enough.

Lue spent all last season saying the same delusional nonsense about Morris and threw the season away. This just tells me that Lue is being stubborn again and will keep PJ in the rotation for the rest of the year.

We have a 5-10 record in games that PJ has played in, and four of those wins were against Houston, San Antonio twice, and Memphis - just so everyone knows what kind of results we can expect from now on.

29 teams in the league would have sent PJ home after his outburst. We sadly root for the one team that always caves and treats washed-up role players like superstars in their prime. And we wonder why we never win anything.

Again, it's hard to care anymore when the team itself doesn't even care enough to give minutes to players who increase our chances of winning rather than decreasing them.

[madmaxmedia]

Was allowing this comeback bad? Yes.

Does it mean we should panic? No.

The Lakers were playing desperate in the 4th and the Clips were cruising. Ty used player combinations he is never going to use in the playoffs. Lakers gained momentum and we didn't stop it.

Clips will be fine. Lakers can hoist the "We won the Season Series vs the Clippers" banner next to their In-Season Tournament banner.

And what part of our history as a reference point do you come to the conclusion that we'll be fine and everything will be ok? Is it the numerous deep playoff runs, NBA Finals appearances, and multiple championships that we're known for?

It's fine, until it isn't. And it's not fine, until it isn't that either.

I don't think we're fine right now, but we were more than fine a month ago. I think the future is an open book, so we'll see. What Lob City did or didn't do, or teams before that did or didn't do, shouldn't make us feel better or worse about this team now.

[Roscoe Sheed]

Problem with PJ is that he's not going to take the shots. He took 3 FGA in 26 mpg last season. He's not going to shoot enough if left open to keep the defense honest enough.

Lue spent all last season saying the same delusional nonsense about Morris and threw the season away. This just tells me that Lue is being stubborn again and will keep PJ in the rotation for the rest of the year.

We have a 5-10 record in games that PJ has played in, and four of those wins were against Houston, San Antonio twice, and Memphis - just so everyone knows what kind of results we can expect from now on.

29 teams in the league would have sent PJ home after his outburst. We sadly root for the one team that always caves and treats washed-up role players like superstars in their prime. And we wonder why we never win anything.

Again, it's hard to care anymore when the team itself doesn't even care enough to give minutes to players who increase our chances of winning rather than decreasing them.

Morris is not the reason why they got eliminated from the playoffs last season- injuries to PG and Kawhi were most responsible

[esqtvd]

I see what Ty Lue did there..

He now can legitmately let PJ ride the bench without him whining..

Sort of like when Mook disappeared for a couple weeks last year with "COVID protocol."

Tucker is still owed for next year too, so the FO might want to keep him for salary ballast in a trade. Ty is stuck with keeping the peace. With PG and Zu out, this was a chance for everybody to see where things stand.

[MartinToVaught]

Morris is not the reason why they got eliminated from the playoffs last season- injuries to PG and Kawhi were most responsible

Those injuries don't explain how miserable the rest of that season was. Don't forget, we were fighting an uphill battle in the playoffs as the 5th seed. We were lucky to avoid the play-in. Morris getting 30 guaranteed minutes per game all year despite being horrendous was one of the biggest reasons why that team underachieved so much.

I'm so sick of all this favoritism for washed veterans. We will never be a serious franchise until we have a serious coach who plays his best players. It's shocking that this isn't already a given.

[jengmann3]

Also thought the bigs weren't terrible. They had some terrible plays and Theis couldn't make a 3 but they were relatively productive. Im interested to see how they look Sunday and then against Milwaukee.

[Roscoe Sheed]

Morris is not the reason why they got eliminated from the playoffs last season- injuries to PG and Kawhi were most responsible

Those injuries don't explain how miserable the rest of that season was. Don't forget, we were fighting an uphill battle in the playoffs as the 5th seed. We were lucky to avoid the play-in. Morris getting 30 guaranteed minutes per game all year despite being horrendous was one of the biggest reasons why that team underachieved so much.

I'm so sick of all this favoritism for washed veterans. We will never be a serious franchise until we have a serious coach who plays his best players. It's shocking that this isn't already a given.

true- Morris shouldn't have been playing much and Tucker shouldn't be playing at all, but last season was complicated- Kawhi didn't return to form until mid-season, PG got injured, and Powell missed time too. It was a very disjointed season

[TrueLAfan]

We’re missing PG. He’s a great perimeter defender—good enough so that even though his numbers were down in Feb., when he was injured, he was an overall plus player. I don’t like to second guess coaches in general, because they know (much much) more about player health and lineup fit than any fan—and also because they’re good at it—but the problem in the fourth was that for most of the quarter Powell and, sometimes, Harden were on LeBron. LeBron is simply too big and strong for those guys. He’s not too big and strong for PG, though—like I said, we missed him big.

PJ basically relegated himself to 14th-15th man status last night. He’s supposed to be a defensive guy and kind of a hawk on D. Okay, well, -10 in three minutes in the 4th makes you done. We kept Coffey off the court because, I’m assuming, this was PJ’s specialty and he fumbled it all off the place.

Should we be worried? Well, yeah—sort of. There are barely 20 games to the playoffs; about six weeks left. We should be locking things down right now in terms of lineups and intensity. The saving grace is we saw that the team *could* do that for an extended period of time. But it’s a “what have you done lately” world going to playoffs—and we’re not doing nearly enough now.

[Clemenza]

Was allowing this comeback bad? Yes.

Does it mean we should panic? No.

The Lakers were playing desperate in the 4th and the Clips were cruising. Ty used player combinations he is never going to use in the playoffs. Lakers gained momentum and we didn't stop it.

Clips will be fine. Lakers can hoist the "We won the Season Series vs the Clippers" banner next to their In-Season Tournament banner.

And what part of our history as a reference point do you come to the conclusion that we'll be fine and everything will be ok? Is it the numerous deep playoff runs, NBA Finals appearances, and multiple championships that we're known for?

It's fine, until it isn't. And it's not fine, until it isn't that either.

I don't think we're fine right now, but we were more than fine a month ago. I think the future is an open book, so we'll see. What Lob City did or didn't do, or teams before that did or didn't do, shouldn't make us feel better or worse about this team now.

I'm not trying to project our past failures on this team at all. But we've been down this road before, numerous times. Too many to count to be exact. Not to mention this is year 4-5 of the 213 era. All I'm saying is the "we'll be fine" and then talking sh*t about the Lakers is not the move right now. Never is really. Here's hoping for good team health and prosperity going into the playoffs.

[donemilio21]

a night after outscoring our entire team in the 4th quarter by himself, 39 year old Lebron scored 31 points in an OT win.
That's how a superstar plays, takes matters to his own hands when his team needs him.

Kawhi has shooting splits of almost 60/50/90. He took 4 shots in the 4th quarter last night. His 2nd shot of the 4th quarter came with 1:10 left on the clock. He only had 1 assist in the 4th. That is the problem. Not PJ Tucker. Not Plumlee lineups. It's that Kawhi does not take 25 shots a game (FGA + fouled attempts). It's that Kawhi does not engage in offense for extended periods while in the game. He is our best player and best shooter, the offense should be running through him half the time when he is on the floor.

[Captain Ballmer]

PJ basically relegated himself to 14th-15th man status last night. He’s supposed to be a defensive guy and kind of a hawk on D. Okay, well, -10 in three minutes in the 4th makes you done. We kept Coffey off the court because, I’m assuming, this was PJ’s specialty and he fumbled it all off the place.

Amir needs to pull Kuminga here and question his playing time same way he did to S.Kerr. He doesn't owe anything to Clippers and certainly not to Ty Lue.

[KL2]

a night after outscoring our entire team in the 4th quarter by himself, 39 year old Lebron scored 31 points in an OT win.
That's how a superstar plays, takes matters to his own hands when his team needs him.

Kawhi has shooting splits of almost 60/50/90. He took 4 shots in the 4th quarter last night. His 2nd shot of the 4th quarter came with 1:10 left on the clock. He only had 1 assist in the 4th. That is the problem. Not PJ Tucker. Not Plumlee lineups. It's that Kawhi does not take 25 shots a game (FGA + fouled attempts). It's that Kawhi does not engage in offense for extended periods while in the game. He is our best player and best shooter, the offense should be running through him half the time when he is on the floor.

I say it all the time about how offensive it is Leonard not taking a shot for 5 minutes at a time. Worse sometimes he’s parked in the corner not even touching the ball. It’s even more glaring now when someone like Harden has the ball in his hands for 20 seconds of the clock.

I think it’s a team wide blame though. Leonard takes the kind of action we want in the playoffs. That’s when he gets down to business. You see him do it in the regular season now and then but not enough to my liking. But how does coach not see it and not think to correct it in a TO? Or call a player over during a ft to give some play call? How does the pg not see the best player needing more touches? Or play calls to get him in his favorite spots?

I remember guys like Parker, Nash, even Lowry saying things like the big dog wasn’t eating enough and I had to correct that. I remember Pop calling guys over during a ft to give those kind of orders.

Lue likes to run this team where everybody eats so …

[madmaxmedia]

And what part of our history as a reference point do you come to the conclusion that we'll be fine and everything will be ok? Is it the numerous deep playoff runs, NBA Finals appearances, and multiple championships that we're known for?

It's fine, until it isn't. And it's not fine, until it isn't that either.

I don't think we're fine right now, but we were more than fine a month ago. I think the future is an open book, so we'll see. What Lob City did or didn't do, or teams before that did or didn't do, shouldn't make us feel better or worse about this team now.

I'm not trying to project our past failures on this team at all. But we've been down this road before, numerous times. Too many to count to be exact. Not to mention this is year 4-5 of the 213 era. All I'm saying is the "we'll be fine" and then talking sh*t about the Lakers is not the move right now. Never is really. Here's hoping for good team health and prosperity going into the playoffs.

Understood. We're definitely not fine right now, and have 20 games to figure it out. I don't think this funk will last, I mean who thought after the Boston blowout that everything was going to come undone soon after LOL. But I certainly don't know what will happen. Our offense came really easy for awhile but I feel like teams have caught up, and we need to figure out how to reach that next level to get that flow again.