Clipper Loss Is Like Clockwork

Alvin Gentry’s brow furrowed. He stamped the floor with his right foot. He smacked his hands together. He drew a technical foul.

Chaos reigned Friday night at the Pepsi Center and Gentry was powerless to stop it.

The Clippers and Denver Nuggets played out a basketball theater of the absurd, with the Clippers squandering a 16-point fourth-quarter lead en route to an unsettling 72-70 loss that ended the Nuggets’ five-game losing streak.

James Posey’s 18-foot jump shot from the left-hand corner at the buzzer capped the Nuggets’ comeback from a 66-50 deficit. Denver outscored the Clippers, 23-8, in the fourth quarter, including by 14-0 during a pivotal stretch midway through the period that got the Nuggets back in the game.

Posey scored 16 points and Juwan Howard had 18 for the Nuggets (3-9). Clipper point guard Andre Miller had 25 and assisted on Michael Olowokandi’s hook shot that tied the score, 70-70, with 11.9 seconds remaining.

“We stunk up the place,” Gentry said after the Clippers’ ninth loss in 13 games. “I guess that’s on me. I’m the coach. That’s the bottom line. They [the Nuggets] deserved to win. That’s the bottom line.”

Clipper guard Eric Piatkowski disagreed that it was Gentry’s fault. He did not disagree with Gentry’s opinion of the team’s performance.

“That’s horrible,” Piatkowski said. “In all my [nine] years with the Clippers, we’ve managed to do that a few times. I don’t remember any recently, though. That was a meltdown in the fourth quarter. I don’t know if you could say it was [Gentry’s fault]. We had a 10-man rotation tonight. It’s on the 10 guys who played.”

Before the game, Gentry was asked if he was worried about his future with the team.

“I’m only worried about one thing: getting this team playing at the level it is capable of playing,” he said.

His contract is up after this season, but the team has an option on next season.

“We have a chance to have a special season here,” Gentry added. “The only thing I’m worried about is getting our team playing well, seeing these guys having fun and playing at a high level.

“I’m not down. I’m not negative. I know we’re not where we should be right now, but we’ve still got 70 games to play [69 now]. We’ve got to find a way to win eight out of nine or seven out of 10. And I think that’s what we’re going to do.

“We’ve got to be teachers and correct their errors. We can demand they play hard and demand they execute. That’s what you do.

“I’m fine. We put in a lot of hours. I am who I am. I’m not going to change who I am. We’re going to work our [tails] off and cover every angle we can to get this thing turned around. I still believe in this team. I won’t stop believing in this team.

“I have faith in them.”

Before the game, the Clippers activated reserve guard Quentin Richardson from the injured list. They didn’t get much from him, but they weren’t expecting him to snap three-pointers through the net and throw down dunks in his first game after sitting out six because of a sprained right knee.

Before the game, Gentry had placed no time limit on Richardson’s play.

After Richardson had three shots fall short of the mark in nine minutes in the second quarter, he took a seat on the bench. He finished the game scoreless in 18 minutes.

The rest of the first half was a forgettable display of stumbles, bumbles, bad passes and missed shots. Still, the Clippers managed to take a 38-33 lead by halftime.

On the surface, the Clippers have much to showcase to a national audience, even to one nodding off by halftime of a 10:30 p.m. start on the East Coast.

But, after 24 minutes, the brain trust back at ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, Conn., might have wanted to rethink future broadcasts of Clipper-Nugget games.

Yet, there’s always the story line that won’t go away: the future of all those free agents at season’s end and the impact all that uncertainty might or might not have on the team’s play in 2002-03.