Clippers’ new era looks a lot like the old one in loss to Spurs

Kim Hughes said he hoped the Clippers would play hard for him Saturday night in his first game as interim coach.

And for the most part, most of them did.

Now if he could only get them to play well.

Because while the Clippers were looking for a new beginning under their new coach, what they got instead was a stale replay of the kind of inconsistent performances they got far too often under old coach Mike Dunleavy.

And the result was familiar too -- a 98-81 defeat by San Antonio at Staples Center, the Clippers’ 15th straight loss to the Spurs and their sixth in seven games overall.

“It wasn’t a whole lot of fun,” Hughes said.

The Clippers looked awful from the start, scoring just 10 points in a first quarter in which they made just four of 19 field-goal attempts.

Hughes promised his Clippers would run. And they tried, getting 16 points off their fastbreak.

But he also said they would play smarter and shoot better, and they did neither, getting whistled for two technical fouls and turning the ball over 21 times, leading to 31 Spurs points.

Hughes had said before the game that anything over 14 turnovers was unacceptable. The Clippers had that many by halftime, when they trailed, 49-27. The 27 first-half points were a season low and by then the crowd of 18,258 was booing -- not the kind of welcome the Clippers had hoped for in their first home game in nearly three weeks.

“We turned the ball over way too many times,” Hughes said. “We can only blame ourselves. I think we’re a work in progress. The running is clearly a project we’ve got to work on.”

Guard George Hill did most of the damage for the Spurs, scoring a game-high 22 points, with 17 of those coming in the first 12 minutes when he was being guarded by Baron Davis.

Chris Kaman led the Clippers with 21 points, one more than Eric Gordon.

And while Hughes remains committed to his new offense, he conceded that the Clippers may not have the ballhandling skills necessary to run it.

“That was somewhat exposed tonight,” he said. “We played poorly. We shot the ball poorly and when we shot the ball poorly, we got down. It’s something we’ve got to work on and we’ve got to correct.”

But there were some bright spots for the Clippers. They outrebounded the Spurs, 42-41, for example. They also held San Antonio to 43% shooting for the game, and they outscored the Spurs, 54-49, in the second half.

But then, no Spurs starter played as many as 30 minutes, with Tim Duncan sitting out all but five minutes of the second half.

“The adjustment we want to make and the way we want to play now by pushing the ball more is going to require a lot of instincts out there. And it’s just going to take us some time,” said Davis, who had a rough night in his debut as Hughes’ quarterback on the court, turning the ball over eight times while scoring only eight points in 28 minutes.

“It was just one of those games where they whipped us up. And we just showed signs of fatigue. But I’m very confident that we’re going to win games playing this way,” Davis continued. “You can call it a wake-up call, you can call it whatever you want. We just have to turn the page. It’s got to be quick, though.”

kevin.baxter@latimes.com