In a span of a week, the Clipper have slid from fourth place in the Western Conference to their current residence at eighth, the result of five consecutive losses.
And that could be six in a row after Sunday’s home game against the Memphis Grizzlies, who sit in second in the West at 38-24. The Grizzlies, however, will be without star Ja Morant, who was suspended Saturday for at least two games after displaying a gun during an Instagram video, the team announced.
No matter whom the Clippers (33-33) face, with just 16 games left in the regular season, the message is emerging from the locker room: They must be better.
“There should be no excuses,” guard Eric Gordon told reporters after the collapse against Golden State on Thursday. “We got to [have] more attention to detail. To me it’s all on us players and we gotta bring it more.”
Kawhi Leonard said they need to have their “urgency level high.” And after dropping a 128-127 loss to Sacramento on Friday, Paul George talked about the need to play with desperation.
“We got to just dial in, continue to dial in,” George said to ESPN. “All these teams we’re playing, especially in this stretch right here, (are) playoff teams. That’s how we got to approach this – be locked in as if these are playoff games to help get into that mindset. Because we need these games right now.
“These are games that we cannot allow ourselves to slip, and these (are) the games you shoot yourself in the foot when it comes to the end of the season, and we look at where we’re at and we’re not happy with where we’re at. So, we got to have some desperation going into these games.”
Whether the Clippers can dig deep enough to find that resolve before the season ends remains to be seen. They have not won since the All-Star break, but Coach Tyronn Lue says they are close to turning around the losses.
“We’re close,” Lue said Friday. “The losses hurt, but we have played some good basketball in stretches and we’ve played against some good teams as well. So (my job) is to challenge us to see where we are at after acquiring our new pieces through trades (who came in) not knowing what we want to do offensively and defensively,
“I thought our new guys have done a good job. (I need to) just try to get those guys up to speed and keep doing the good things we have been doing.”
One thing Lue continues to try is finding a set rotation before the postseason. With Leonard sitting out Friday’s second game of a back-to-back, Norman Powell (shoulder), Ivica Zubac (calf) and Marcus Morris Sr. (elbow) all out, Lue went with yet another new look.
Nicolas Batum and Eric Gordon started, and Robert Covington played 31 minutes, the most time he has seen on the floor since Jan. 26 when he logged 21 minutes in a victory against San Antonio.
That victory came during a five-game winning streak in which Covington twice saw more than 20 minutes on the floor and another game in which he played 19.
Covington told reporters in Sacramento that he brings “a different thing to this team.” Lue didn’t disagree.
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“Roco coming into the game, blitzing and firing, made us active defensively, made us flying around and not being stagnant defensively,” Lue said. “That really helped us out.”
Although Covington’s presence didn’t keep the Clippers from losing, he sounded hopeful that the losing would end.
“This ain’t going to be every game,” he said. “It’s going to flip and it’s going to flip very soon.”
Memphis at Clippers
When: 7 p.m. Sunday
Where: Crypto.com Arena
TV/Radio: Bally Sports SoCal, ESPN/AM 570