Clippers Can’t Contain 76ers

It was a blue Christmas for the Philadelphia 76ers, who flew their wives to the West Coast so they could be together for the holiday, enabling the spouses to watch their husbands cough up a 13-point fourth-quarter to the Lakers and lose.

Wednesday, Dec. 26, known throughout the nation as the day for returns, however, went better.

Back at Staples Center against the Clippers, who were at full strength and hotter than the Lakers in December, the 76ers arose to something resembling last season’s stature. Before a sellout crowd of 19,161, they won, 100-86, led by Allen Iverson’s 23 points.

Not that this represented a bad night for the Clippers’ heretofore excellent defense, but it was only Philadelphia’s second 100-point game this season.

“I know Larry [Brown’s] teams,” said Clipper Coach Alvin Gentry, who came up as an assistant under Brown, “and obviously, they defend the heck out of you.

“They’ve always been able to do that, but I think they just physically took it to us from the start and this is a very difficult team to play uphill against.

“I’m not going to be like everybody else and sit up here and talk about what we didn’t do. They played well and they deserved to win. They out-played us and we haven’t been out-played in this building too many times.”

The Clippers had, in fact, won their last three games and their last five at home.

Besides the game, they also lost a player, Lamar Odom, who sprained his right wrist and is expected to sit out tonight’s game at Seattle.

The 76ers kept taking leads, going up 16-5 at the start, and the Clippers kept coming back, led by Elton Brand, who scored 26 points, and Michael Olowokandi, who had 16.

Philadelphia led, 49-47, at halftime, then 74-66 after three quarters. The Clippers had made a practice of coming back recently, in victories over the Pistons and Suns, but Wednesday night, they just slid away.

The Clippers started the night rested, the 76ers restless.

The night before, of course, the visitors had been on the same floor, blowing the late lead against the Lakers, losing the game and dropping to 11-16, last in the not-so-awesome Atlantic Division.

Or as Brown put it before Wednesday’s game, “Thank God, we’re playing tonight, not three days from now....

“I just think we’ve got to come to grips with deciding just how important it is to defend. Defend every possession, where you don’t go into the fourth quarter every time and have critical stops.

“But we tallk about transition baskets and not turning the ball over and getting to the free-throw line, taking high-percentage shots and we’re not doing that on a consistent basis....

“I don’t know if we’re just not a good defensive team or we don’t approach it with the intensity that we need to. You don’t have very good defense if you take bad shots, or turn the ball over.”

It may be a coincidence that Brown’s big-hearted, hard-headed star, Iverson, takes a lot of bad shots and turns the ball over a lot. However, Wednesday night, looking like a reformed man--at least for a while--Iverson started penetrating, assisting on five of the 76ers’ first six baskets and scoring the sixth as Philadelphia jumped out to an 11-point lead.

At that point, however, Gentry called for a timeout and Iverson lost the thread. In the last 5:25 of the first quarter, Iverson took five more shots and missed them all.

The Clippers barged right back into the game, led, improbably enough, by Olowokandi, who did a number on 7-foot-1 76er center Dikembe Mutombo, an annual all-defense first-team selection.

Olowokandi scored eight points on him, while forcing Mutombo to the bench with two fouls. The Clipper center scored six more points in the second quarter, ending one of the great halves of his three-year NBA career with 14 points.

Unfortunately for Olowokandi, he got off only five more shots in the second half, made one, and finished with 16 points.

The 76ers never surrendered their halftime lead.

“We played a great game,” Brown said afterward. “We beat a talented young team that is extremely well coached. I was really proud of them.”