Shrinking Clippers Lose by 40

Honey, they shrunk the Clippers even more Friday night, the latest starting lineup consisting of two small forwards and a shooting guard across the front line.

The Chicago Bulls followed through and brought them to their knees for the second game in three weeks and stepped on the Clippers harder than anyone in more than two years. This time, the damage was by 40 points, a 128-88 shellacking on a night when no Bull starter played more than nine minutes in the second half.

Had Chicago wanted to pour it on, it would have been worse. As it was, this was the biggest Clipper loss since the 50-point defeat Dec. 2, 1988, at Seattle.

“It’s really been a long time since we’ve played like that,” Coach Mike Schuler said. “We really got embarrassed tonight.

“I don’t know if the guys felt sorry for themselves because we didn’t have Charles Smith, but I told them at halftime that’s the way it is. I’m not sure we competed to the best of our ability. . . . Chicago played well. They were quick and beat us on the boards, but they are not 40 points better than us. That shouldn’t happen in this league.”

But it happened before 17,893 at Chicago Stadium, and no one seemed quick to use the absence of center Benoit Benjamin and power forward Smith as an excuse. The Bulls, easy winners Nov. 23 at the Sports Arena, simply used it as an advantage.

Chicago jumped to a nine-point lead at the end of the first quarter, pushed it to 22 late in the second, to 31 in the third, and then turned it over to the bench. The reserves continued the destruction, building a 34-point cushion long after Michael Jordan (20 points, eight rebounds, eight assists in 30 minutes), Scottie Pippen (22 points, eight assists, six rebounds in 29 minutes), et al, had retired for the evening.

“It’s a nice game when you can win sitting down in the fourth quarter and you don’t have to coach,” Bull Coach Phil Jackson said.

Chicago had won two of the previous three games by seven and eight points, but, in truth, neither was much closer than this when it was starter versus starter.

Maybe the Clippers got off easy in other ways, too. Last month in Los Angeles, Jordan scored only 14 points in 31 minutes. Take away these two games and the four-time defending scoring champion is averaging 30.1 and leading the league; with them included, he’s at 28.9, but getting rest.

With Benjamin still in Los Angeles recovering from having his wisdom teeth extracted and Smith not dressing because of a badly bruised left thigh that left him hobbling through 40 minutes his last appearance, Schuler’s forced small lineup had Danny Manning at center, Ken Norman at power forward and Jeff Martin, a natural off guard, at Norman’s usual spot. The only consistency was Bo Kimble and Gary Grant in the backcourt.

Chicago countered, respectively, with 7-foot-1 Bill Cartwright, 6-10 Horace Grant and 6-7 Pippen across the front line. The result was a 61-49 rebounding advantage, although Jordan, a guard, outrebounded any starter on either team.

Under difficult circumstances, Martin flourished again. That’s three games in a row now, after having seen limited action at best the previous six, the latest entry in his re-emergence being 22 points, tying Pippen for game-high honors, and five blocked shots.

Clipper Notes

Charles Smith, who said after Wednesday’s game at Cleveland that he would not play against the Bulls, could not estimate his chances for action tonight. “I still can’t do anything full-stride,” he said. . . . Greg Butler made his first appearance in five games, with good news and bad. He played a season-high nine minutes, more than the previous 14 games, but picked up five fouls.

The rising star in Chicago is rookie Scott Williams, the former all-everything at Hacienda Heights Wilson High. Originally undrafted and signed by the Bulls as a free agent but considered a 12th man at best, he has been seeing plenty of action, improving enough to cut into time once belonging to established performers Horace Grant and Stacey King. “I had my appendix out early in my senior year (at North Carolina),” he said. “Then I had problems with my shoulder. Those things probably had general managers scared to draft me. That was a big mistake by them, but it worked out great for me.”