Clippers Fall, Can’t Get a Break Except for All-Star Break

The Clippers proved here Thursday night, and for the umpteenth time this season, that they are a team that doesn’t quite have the horses to run the race.

It isn’t that they don’t try. It isn’t that they quit. That was never the case in their 116-104 loss to the Phoenix Suns.

No, it seems to be more a matter of trying to climb the Matterhorn in tennis shoes. The Clippers keep digging in, and keep slipping. They are a team with a serious power shortage. They are a few key injuries away from total blackout.

Thursday night’s setback was the Clippers’ third in a row and fourth in their last five games. It meant that their record went to 18-32 going into the All-Star break; it meant that they are two games worse off than they were at this stage last season, and it meant that they lost more ground in their quest to slip into the eighth and final playoff spot in the National Basketball Assn.’s Western Conference.

In other words, this is a team that doesn’t always lose, just usually. It is a team that, for the most part, specializes in driving crowds to the arena exits, as it did with the 10,207 that showed up here Thursday night.

But it is also a team that somehow manages to keep its heart.

As Sun Coach John MacLeod said afterward: “They don’t pack it in. They made a run at us in the second half that made us extremely concerned.”

A run, indeed.

The Suns had led at the half, 69-51, and were coasting along nicely until late in the third period and early in the fourth. Then, with Norm Nixon flying around and dropping in jump shots like the Norm Nixon of Laker vintage, Phoenix’s lead suddenly dropped to 90-87. And MacLeod, his ugly orange tie flapping in the breeze, was up off his chair and patrolling the sideline like a nervous tiger.

Alvan Adams, still smooth as silk after 10 years in the league and still smarter than he is gifted, sank two free throws to increase the Suns’ lead to 92-87. But then the Clippers got their real chance to get to the crest of that elusive hill.

Darnell Valentine, the Clippers’ heavily muscled point guard, drove to the basket, was involved in a collision and tossed up one of those shots that happen when you’re shooting baskets in the backyard, mom calls you for dinner and you flip it up over your head while in full stride toward the back door.

This one went in, however, stunning both teams and the crowd and setting up the possibility of a three-point play that would get the Clippers within two at 92-90.

But officials Darell Garretson and Bennett Salvatore weren’t stunned. In fact, they weren’t even impressed. They called an offensive foul on Valentine, who was too dumbstruck to even protest much, and the Suns, apparently realizing they’d just been yanked off death row with the chair plugged in and the seat warm, got real serious real fast.

Adams outwrestled three Clippers and two teammates for a loose ball that he eventually dropped in for a 94-87 lead. The Suns mugged a puzzled Benoit Benjamin the next time down the floor, and former UCLA player Mike Sanders got a layup, making it 96-87. The Clippers took a timeout, set up a clear-out play for that well-known pure shooter Rory White, who missed badly, setting up a basket by Bernard Thompson off a slick pass from Sanders.

And with the evening’s top scorer, Larry Nance, who had 29 points, grabbing off a hustling rebound and feeding the ever-present Walter Davis for a layup, and with Sanders doing the same for Davis seconds later, the Clippers were clipped again.

The saddest thing was they appeared to be pretty much helpless to do anything about it. The other guys fired the big guns, and the Clippers answered with blanks, which was all they had.

Nixon, who had 24 points, knows better than most what is going on. He has been on teams that had real ammunition.

“With the Lakers, we had the best half-court offense in the world,” he said. “Pass the ball down low to Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar) and watch him take the hook shot. Here, with the Clippers, it’s hard. So hard. The other guys get the quick rebound or the close-in shot, then we end up shooting the long jumper.

“You look up and the other guys have 7-foot, 6-10 and 6-9 in the front line, and we are going against them with three guards, a small forward and a center. You’ve got Marcus Johnson banging all night with guys like Nance and (Ed) Pinkney (6-9), and it catches up to you after awhile.”

Don Chaney, the Clipper coach, said his team did itself in with a poor first half.

“You can’t give up 69 points and expect to come back from that, especially not on the road,” he said. “We just didn’t play any defense. Great example of that was when Ben (Benjamin) got hit in the back of the head by a Suns’ pass while he was running down the floor. You have to see the ball at all times, especially on defense. That should never happen.”

Nor should the Clippers expect to slay giants with slingshots. And, where the Clippers are concerned, even the middle-of-the-NBA-road Suns take on Goliath proportions.