Clippers Assessing Flood Damage

The Clipper bus was sitting in the parking lot of the team hotel preparing to depart for Friday night’s game against the Charlotte Hornets, when a blinding rainstorm struck.

Maybe the team would have been better off staying on the bus.

Leading the Hornets by two points at halftime, the Clippers gave up a season-high 41 points in the third quarter and lost for the fourth time in five games, 114-96, before a sellout crowd of 24,042 at the Charlotte Coliseum.

“There’s no excuse for the way we’re playing right now; it’s terrible,” reserve swingman Eric Piatkowski said after the Clippers had lost their seventh consecutive road game. “We need to get something figured out.”

It was the second consecutive game in which the Clippers collapsed in the third quarter.

The Clippers, who were outscored, 15-0, in the third quarter of Thursday night’s 17-point loss at Philadelphia, were outscored, 12-0, by the Hornets in the first three minutes of the third on Friday.

“We might need to start skipping the third quarter and just go one, two, four,” guard Malik Sealy said. “Maybe if we renumber [the quarters] that will help us. We’re going to start in the third quarter and then go one, two, four.”

While being outscored by 17 points in the third quarter, the Clippers committed seven turnovers, which the Hornets converted into 14 points.

“They came out blazing,” Sealy said of the Hornets, who outscored the Clippers, 15-2, at the start of the third quarter. “We didn’t execute, and when we missed they [went on a fastbreak], and when they missed they got the rebound and put it back in and stopped our break.”

Guard Glen Rice, who came close to being acquired by the Clippers for Danny Manning in 1993, scored 18 of his game-high 29 points in the third quarter. Rice made seven of nine shots in the third quarter as the Hornets shot 68.2% en route to their largest margin of victory this season.

Rice said he’s glad he wasn’t traded to the Clippers (21-29). He’s happy in Charlotte, where the Hornets (33-21) are off to the second-best start in team history, winning seven of their last nine.

“I could have been [a Clipper], but the trade never went through and I’m glad being a Charlotte Hornet,” Rice said. “If it would have happened I would have had to go there and do what I had to do.”

Fitch said the Clippers played poor defense on Rice, most valuable player of the NBA All-Star game.

“You can’t leave him open,” Fitch said of Rice, who has scored 20 or more points in 24 of his last 26 games.

“We’re not a quick team, and when we’re slow out of the blocks we look even slower. We’ve just got to play our way out of it. I don’t know any other way when you get a young team struggling.

“I’m not worried, but I’m concerned about where do you go? We can’t fix it on an airplane or a bus.”

Forward Anthony Mason, who had 22 points and 14 rebounds, said the Hornets wanted to pay back the Clippers for a 96-89 defeat at the Sports Arena on Dec. 3.

“It was like a planned schedule, they lined them up all in a row, Orlando, Phoenix and the Clippers, three teams that beat us and we got ‘em back,” Mason said.

Rookie center Lorenzen Wright was one of the few bright spots for the Clippers, tying his season high with 16 points and getting 11 rebounds.

“The first half he got some good shots and he took advantage of it,” Fitch said of Wright, who made five of 10 shots in the first half as the Clippers took a 49-47 lead. “The one thing you get from him is total effort. He’s playing a lot of minutes.”