Cooler heads prevail as Clippers prepare to face Denver

The Clippers arrived at the Pepsi Center for their shoot-around Tuesday appearing a lot calmer than when they departed Staples Center two days earlier.

The locker-room shouting that could be heard in an adjacent interview room Sunday after the team’s third consecutive loss was replaced by calm perspective. Maybe that vocal dissatisfaction served a purpose.

“I would rather frustrations boil over than fester,” shooting guard J.J. Redick said. “In any relationship, when you don’t express your frustration, resentment can build. I’m married, so I know that.

“It’s good to air things out. I don’t know that it will be a turning point. I think a turning point will happen when we start winning games.”

The Clippers will enter a stretch that appears ripe for success starting with their game against the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday night. Eight of their next nine games are against teams with losing records starting play Tuesday.

The Clippers (6-7) also aren’t in terrible shape in the Western Conference standings, even after having lost seven of nine games. They entered Tuesday tied with Utah for seventh place.

“Right now we could win three or four in a row and be one of the top teams in the West,” guard Austin Rivers said, “because everybody right now is around that range.”

Clippers Coach Doc Rivers told reporters not to read anything into his team scheduling and then canceling a practice Monday because the practice was previously scheduled. Players came to the practice facility and walked through some things on the court before departing for Denver.

Rivers said there were no epiphanies about changes that needed to be made.

“We’ve just got to do what we do better, harder, execute better,” Rivers said. “It’s not like we need to come in and make wholesale changes. We’re just not playing well. I don’t think it’s that hard to see. We’re not rebounding well at all. We’re defending in stretches and offensively we’re playing in stretches as well and our execution is not very good at it, so we have to keep working at it.”

Rivers said backup point guard Pablo Prigioni had rejoined the team after missing the previous two games with flulike symptoms and forward Blake Griffin’s left knee was improving after having limited his movement Sunday against the Toronto Raptors. Griffin finished that game with a season-low nine points.

“I thought it bothered him in the game the other night, personally, just his movement didn’t look the same,” Rivers said. “It was the first game this year where I didn’t think he moved as well.”

Austin Rivers said the team’s recent losses didn’t signal the end of the world, even if outsiders acted like it.

“Everybody’s like, ‘What’s going on?’ ” he said. “[We’ll] just keep pushing through and once we break through this, then we’re going to break through it. That’s really it. Three or four games from now will be a totally different feeling around here.”