Clippers Take a Standings 9-Count

This one will sting a little bit. The Clippers will wake up this morning, take a gander at the Western Conference standings and notice they are worse off today than they were Saturday.

They have only themselves to blame.

At their absolute best Saturday against the Phoenix Suns, the Clippers were uneven--brilliant at one moment and brutal at another. At their worst, they were just plain bad.

In the end, they deserved a 97-94 loss to the Suns before a sellout crowd of 19,455 that seemed poised to celebrate the Clippers’ third consecutive victory. Instead, the fans trudged to the parking lots wondering what this will mean to the Clippers’ playoff hopes.

Good question.

Matters are far from settled in the West, but the ninth-place Clippers are 21/2 games out of the eighth and final spot with 12 games to play. They were 11/2 games behind Utah, but the Jazz defeated Golden State and the Clippers performed a belly-flop against the Suns.

“The bottom line is, we play Utah two more times,” Eric Piatkowski said, trying his best to put a positive spin on Saturday’s events. “We’re not going to get too down. It stinks that we lost. But by no means are we out of it. If we play good ball from here on out, we will be in good shape.”

The Clippers did not play good enough Saturday and paid the price.

They led only twice, the last time at 8-7. They drew even at 64-all late in the third quarter, but Phoenix regained the lead soon after Elton Brand’s tying basket and kept it until the end.

Piatkowski’s three-point basket with 8.5 seconds to play got the Clippers to within 95-94. But Stephon Marbury made two free throws with 8.0 remaining, and Piatkowski’s off-balance three-point try missed the mark.

“There is no margin of error for us,” Coach Alvin Gentry had said before the game.

After the game, he added, “That’s a huge loss for us.... At this stage, you can’t afford to have games like this. It’s going to cost us.”

The Clippers didn’t need to be perfect Saturday. But they also couldn’t get by with a clunker and expect to win. Like it or not, they are a target now. Teams like the Suns will be looking to play the role of spoiler against them.

And while that says a great deal about how far the Clippers have come, it doesn’t make up for a hideous first half that left them trailing by 16 points at one point.

Phoenix forward Shawn Marion made an early jump shot and the Clippers seemed to offer nothing more than a collective shrug as resistance.

Then Marion made another.

And another.

The 10th consecutive sellout crowd at Staples Center groaned.

Meanwhile, the Clippers appeared content to watch Marion shoot from the outside and dash past for easy dunks. By the end of the half, Marion had torched them for 18 points on eight-of-17 shooting. By game’s end, he had 32 points.

But there was more to the Suns’ 49-40 halftime lead than Marion’s hot shooting. They outhustled the Clippers to loose balls, getting 17 second-chance points to only two for the Clippers. The Suns also played stout defense and forced turnovers and, in general, looked like a team marching toward the playoffs.

“Two things we look at are second-chance points and points off turnovers,” Gentry said. “They had 17 second-chance points and 15 points off turnovers. That’s 32 hustle points as we call them. We never got them stopped. Every time they needed a basket, they got it. We didn’t play with the sense of urgency that’s necessary.”

The Clippers looked like a team heading toward an early vacation for most of the opening minutes. Brand, who had 30 points in Thursday’s 20-point rout of the Golden State Warriors, didn’t score his first point until sinking a free throw with 1:13 left in the half.

If not for center Michael Olowokandi, who had eight of their first 10 points, and Quentin Richardson, who scored 14 points in 16 minutes, the Clippers would have been buried long before halftime. Olowokandi and Richardson each made five of nine shots. The rest of the Clippers combined to miss 17 of 21 shots.

Richardson would lead the Clippers with 20 points and Jeff McInnis added 18.