The moments of shame keep piling up for the Los Angeles Clippers, with the latest being yet another embarrassing 102-89 loss against the Sacramento Kings. The fact that Sacramento is one of just a handful of teams with a record inferior to that of the Clippers should have been enough of an opportunity for a win, but to make things even easier for LA, Sacramento was forced to play without without their star rookie Tyreke Evans.
Let this sink in; Evans is a near lock to win this year’s Rookie of the Year award and is averaging 20 points to go along with nearly 6 assists and 2 steals a game. He already wowed fans with one triple-double this season and has flirted with a few more, and he wasn’t going to play. Let’s go LA! right?
Wrong.
Sacramento jumped out to a big lead in the first, scoring the final 10 points of the quarter to take a 32-19 advantage into the second. The Clippers never recovered and trailed the rest of the way, ending their short-lived one game winning streak and dropping them to 26-44 on the season.
Eric Gordon was LA’s top scorer, finishing with 23 points in an ugly game that saw the Clips hand out only 17 assists on 34 baskets. Seeing as how back up point guard Steve Blake accounted for six of those 17 alone should give you a hint as to how poorly the night went.
Looking at the remainder of this year’s schedule, only 12 games are left for the Clippers, with eight coming against playoff teams. That’s hardly a sight for sore eyes, so I’m hoping the team can at least use their talents to win the five other games and finish with 30 or more wins. If not, we’ll be stuck celebrating huge accomplishments like only seeing Blake Griffin play in the new NBA Jam game and moving up three spots in this week’s NBA power rankings.
That puts us at 21st place, which I remind you haters, is a full nine spots away from the bottom. (Show a little sympathy and humor me folks, it’s the least you can do.)
-Will.
“Diary of a Clippers Fan” will be published Mondays and Thursdays during the regular season.
