It only took the Warriors one quarter to break the Clippers
LOS ANGELES — If that was the Clippers’ best effort — their best shot in their quest to prove that they are the team that can knock the Golden State Warriors from their perch atop the Western Conference, we can go ahead and write off Los Angeles for the rest of the season.
That’s how convincing Golden State’s win was Wednesday night.
And here’s the crazy thing: The Warriors didn’t even play all that well.
The Clippers had built up Wednesday’s game in a big way — after L.A. jumped out to the best start in franchise history and had beaten the Cavs in Cleveland, they were feeling confident that they could give the Warriors a run and snap a six-game losing streak to their rivals.
This was going to be the year that L.A. proved it was in the same class as Golden State, and Wednesday’s game was going to be the contest where they first proved it.
It only took the Warriors one quarter to dispel that notion and break the Clippers’ spirit.
That’s not interpretation or inference — those were the words of Clippers coach Doc Rivers.
"They took us out of our stuff. We stopped trusting... We never got our spirit back after the beginning… We have to get our mojo back.”
The first quarter that broke the Clippers’ spirit wasn’t all that special. The Warriors jumped out to a 37-19 first-quarter lead because they played good defense to start the game and shot 52 percent from the floor.
But they only made two 3-pointers in that frame and they weren’t doing anything radical or even nuanced on either side of the court. It was simple stuff.
The Warriors took on the Clippers man-to-man and smacked 'em.
No wonder L.A. lost its mojo.
The Warriors cruised the rest of the way in a non-competitive game, winning 115-98.
It wasn’t anything close to an A-plus effort from Golden State — Kevin Durant had a poor shooting night, going 5-of-17 from the floor, and Curry didn’t make a 3-pointer.
It’s not as if either lacked for open looks, either.
What would have happened if either played at even half of their best?
Can you eviscerate a collective spirit?
Things had been trending this way for a while, but the Warriors-Clippers rivalry officially died Wednesday night. You need to have some level of intrigue and competition for it to be a rivalry, after all, and these matchups have become foregone conclusions.
The Clippers unquestionably stopped being able to match up with the Warriors last year — Chris Paul couldn’t keep up with Curry, Draymond Green was having his way with Blake Griffin, and Klay Thompson was far superior to J.J. Reddick.
The only place you could say the Clippers had an advantage was at the center position, but the team isn’t going to run their offense through DeAndre Jordan, and the Warriors knew how to take him out his preferred positions defensively.
All of that turned into six straight Warriors wins in the series. Then Golden State went out and added Kevin Durant this offseason.
This is no longer a fair fight, and it seemed as if the Warriors wanted to prove that point on the defensive end Wednesday.
Green manhandled Griffin both in the post and on the perimeter in the Warriors' win. The Clippers’ star forward was 5-of-20 from the field with seven turnovers in the game — his worst performance of the season. Green had 22 points on the other end.
And Curry, as if to make his final argument that he had surpassed Paul as the league’s preeminent point guard (as if that was still an argument) put in an excellent defensive shift. Paul’s numbers weren’t as bad as Griffin’s — they were passable, in fact — but his impact on the game seemed minimal at best.
Regardless of the outcome Wednesday, the Clippers are still an excellent team — they should be the second for third seed in the Western Conference.
And the second or third best team in the Western Conference should be a title contender, but there is such a gap between the Warriors and the rest of the competition that no sane person — not even the members of the team or its coaching staff— would pick the Clips to beat the Warriors in a seven-game playoff series at this point.
The Clippers said after the demoralizing loss that they’ll go back to the film and figure out what happened. They’ll convince themselves that they can beat this Warriors team, if they do this, this, and this.
But those are just lies they’ll tell themselves to mask the truth of the matter — the only way the Clippers are beating Golden State is if two of the Warriors’ four best players are injured, and even then, it might be a game.
This Clippers team can beat any other team in the league — they’ve proven that so far this season — but no matter how many cracks they seem to get at it, they won’t be able to land a knockout blow on the only team it really needs to beat.
It took less than a quarter for the Clippers to realize that Wednesday.
What they do from this point on is anyone’s guess.
