Heat Trots All Over Clippers

The worry lines in Clipper Coach Bill Fitch’s forehead seemed to bulge as he watched his team fall behind against the Miami Heat.

The NBA’s second-worst defensive team, the Clippers gave up a season-worst 45 points in the first quarter and lost their seventh consecutive game, 122-113, Wednesday night before 14,311 at the Miami Arena.

“It almost feels like the Washington Generals out there,” guard Brent Barry said after the Clippers lost for the 10th time in 11 games this season.

Heat guard Tim Hardaway, who had a season-best 33 points, said the Clippers appear disorganized.

“They’ve got some good players,” Hardaway said. “I don’t know. I want to say they’re fed up with the system, but I don’t know what’s going on there.

“Maybe they just don’t like playing for him [Fitch]. They’ve got real good chemistry. But that’s them. I can’t worry about them.”

The Clippers, who made the playoffs last season, are off to their worst start since they opened the 1994-95 season with 16 consecutive losses.

“No two seasons are alike,” Fitch said. “We knew going into this one that we had some new faces and some new things and we were going to have to grow together.

“I don’t think that anybody in that [locker] room thought that we’d be 1-10, but we knew that we had a team that wasn’t as good as the one that ended last season. However, we felt we had the potential to be as good or better. I still think we can get the caliber of our play up to where we were last year.

“But I don’t know if the caliber of play we had last year is going to be good enough to win in the West because this is an improved conference. However, this team has still got a lot of character and I think we’ll bounce back.”

It won’t get any easier for the Clippers, who return home to face the Chicago Bulls on Friday at the Sports Arena and play the Lakers on Sunday at the Forum.

“It’s very humbling when you get your head handed to you like that in the first quarter,” Fitch said. “It would be easy to go home and just mail it in, but we didn’t and I think we’re going to pick it up in the next few weeks even though schedule gets tougher.”

Center Stojko Vrankovic, who had only two points and no rebounds in six minutes, made Heat center Isaac Austin look like Alonzo Mourning, who is injured.

Austin, who tied his career high with 26 points, had 22 points in the first half as the Heat registered a team-record 75 points to take a 20-point halftime lead.

“I think Isaac Austin may be one of the best underrated players at his position, and I mean that,” Fitch said.

The Clippers, who trailed by as many as 29 points in the second quarter, outscored the Heat, 14-4, in the first four minutes of the third quarter to cut the deficit to 10 after Fitch started reserves Lamond Murray, Lorenzen Wright and James Robinson.

Murray, who came into the game shooting 57.1%, made 14 of 18 shots, including all three three-point shots, and scored a career-best 32 points, 27 in the second half.

“When we were sitting on the bench [in the first quarter] we were looking up there and it was like 30-6 and it was like, ‘We’ve dug ourselves a hole again, now we’re going to have to come back,’ ” Murray said. “You can’t do that every night.”

Robinson, who had made only two of 22 shots in his last four games, broke out of his slump, making six of nine shots, including three three-pointers.

“My confidence was kind of shot for a little while,” said Robinson, who had a season-best 16 points. “But tonight I just had it going. I wasn’t thinking about how I’ve been shooting the ball when I first came in.”

Heat Coach Pat Riley was livid when the Clippers came back.

“The worst thing in the world is a nightmare,” Riley said. “To have a 30-point lead and lose a game like that is a nightmare.”

The Heat woke up, but the Clippers’ nightmare continues.