Can Lue please stop playing Tucker? It seems obvious to most if not all fans that the Clippers play at a distinct disadvantage when Tucker is on the floor. If Lue wants to throw Tucker’s wide body at Jokic, ok. Otherwise, forget it.

More Mann and more Coffey.

All of these pee-poor starts are on Lue. A big part of Lue’s job is having the Clippers ready to play. He has had too many failures.

On to the next game.

One observation: Russel Westbrook making layups in the playoffs will feed families. I hope he can figure that part of the game out. It would relieve a lot of potential wear and tear on the big 3 and shorten series in the Clips’ favor.

In this Cleveland game, had Russ just made the makable shots, the Clips would not have needed the dramatic finish to win that game. I think even the most diehard Russ fan can accept that the world peace would breakout if Russ made his layups.

Cleveland also almost always took a 3 pt shot/jumper when matched up on PJ. They all felt confident they could get that shot off because he can’t move to the spot at an angle or jump to bother a shot.

I can persuasively argue that Kobe Brown would be much better offensively. Defensively, he hasn’t had the reps to be a quality defender, but his athleticism > PJ’s presumed veteran savvy. No team respects PJ when he’s on the court. About the only good thing we’ve seen from PJ is tracking Jokic from the backcourt. That’s because Jokic moves at a pace that he can match, but it doesn’t matter in the half court b/c Jokic’s size and height negate anything PJ might be able to do to slow him down.

Free Kobe.

I was out in my back yard, but around mid afternoon, I could hear my family yelling at the tv screen. Not a bad way to finish a game.

Coach lighted something in the 2nd half, but simply, just playing hard for the entire game helps. We have a great veteran team and enough young guys with some experience. Zu, Coffey and T. Mann all earned their places, and they are all dependable.

The delicate balance between iso ball and ball movement — PG and KL’s focus. The double is going to come, how are these two great players going to attack it.

Looking ahead at the standings, I’m not thrilled to see that we’re in the bracket side with Dallas, and if we advance, then Minn. Never easy in the West.

Agreed, we should rest our geezers for Tues.

One last item. I get why “iso ball” has a negative connotation because some guys are ball hogs and chuckers. But you can’t win chips without great iso ball players. PG won this one with iso ball. Kawhi’s legendary buzzer beater against the 6ers was iso ball as was Kyrie’s shot over Steph in game 7. Lou’s epic dual with KD in 2019 was iso ball and CP3s game winner over the Spurs in Game 7 was iso ball. Having a handle and being able to get that game winner off is to me the most beautiful thing in basketball. Just wanted to give a shout out to iso ball.

It appears we just need to win two out of the last four games to lock up the 4 seed. I think the smart play here is to send in the canoes on Tuesday and have all our starters rested for Wednesday at home to grab that W. To hell with what the league thinks. Then all we have to do is take another gimme from Utah and it’s a wrap. Seems like Kawhi is ok so giving him two weeks rest would be awesome.

Then we had moved into a 33-31 lead after Cleveland started out with a working margin before the bottom fell out in the last min of Q1. Then we got back to within 1 pt about 4 mins into Q2 and the bottom fell out for real, losing 80-59 at the half. Everyone in the arena thought the starters might not go back in.

I spent halftime and the rough part of Q3 back at the bar/restaurant watching the end of the Iowa-South Carolina game. Got back to the seats for the last 5 min of Q3 and we shrank the lead 24 down to 12. Everyone in the building thought we had a shot at that point.

Q4 saw the Clips shave another 6 point off the lead but it felt a little short as the offense started to stagnate into iso ball. When Garland made a big 3 to put Cleveland up 7 with under 3 min left I was prepared to say, ‘good comeback effort, but maybe we would’ve won this game had we not played so many minutes 4 v 5 with PJ Tucker on the floor’.
Then PG made 2 FTs and a bucket and we finally corralled Garland and got the ball out of his hands or made him take a tough shot. T-Mann had a good contest, then Amir did, then Allen made a turnover and the ball rotated to where PG and Russ intentionally empowered Amir and T-Mann to make plays and each one made an absolutely huge 3.

PG’s game winning basket and block were iconic and the Clips won the game. I didn’t really think we played that badly even when we gave up 80 points in the first half. I just think we had a very hard time getting control of Garland, especially when T-Mann was not on the floor, and he made us pay for every bad decision on the offensive end, whether it was Russ force feeding Plumlee w/T-Mann and Norm on the court and open, or a turnover. It was just really weird to be down by 20+ point with Harden looking great, Mann playing well and PG looking pretty solid.

I think we simply failed to work matchups in our favor whereas Cleveland really hunted guys like Tucker, Norm, Harden on defense. Garland was also just that good. his speed and ability to literally do a spin cycle around the key can be maddening to defend. He got Strus/Levert going and they made a lot of shots, while Allen/Mobley were also ignited by his play. Cleveland did a good job of picking on Harden/Norm/PJ and we didn’t make sufficient adjustments in the first half.

In the 2nd half, Zu established himself and we started to see Allen/Mobley slow down while Strus/LeVert didn’t do much at all. Plumlee was very solid in Q4 and seems to have found his niche as a guy who focuses on rebounding first, PnR/High post work 2nd, and post defense 3rd. Russ provided a lot of energy and made his share of plays, but his shot/pass selection and inability to make a layup held the team back. I do think we need Russ to be better than this in the playoffs. Norm found his post-season rhythm in this game. He got exploited a lot on defense in the first half, but was much more solid in the 2nd half and provided those key buckets that made fans stand up and think ‘this is a game!’ Amir Coffey was very passive for most of this game, but man did he ever hit a huge, huge shot.  Mann was 6/6 and was robbed of a basket on a questionable offensive foul call. At what point does Lue turn him loose and tell him, ‘we don’t want you deferring to get PG or James a shot. Go get your shot every chance you get.’

I really don’t want to see PJ Tucker on the floor, period. When he was out there it was pretty obvious to folks in the building that the Clips were playing 4 v 5, Cleveland was able to cheat off him to close down passing and shooting lanes and that’s why our offense was slower and less efficient than Cleveland’s. Harden’s hot shooting kept us from getting down double digits early, but we can’t afford Tucker on the court. Everyone finds him on defense, draws him closer to the 3 pt line and shoots over him. He’s actually a liability at both ends, not just the offensive end. 

But this was such an amazing, visionary win by the Clippers that I yelled out ‘Clips are gonna win the chip! with fans nodding approvingly. Yeah, today it really felt like the Clips are going to win the chip. Paul George bringing his A game like that and Harden getting into form objectively make the Clippers one of the toughest teams to beat.