No Easy Answers at Point Guard

While his players took a day off Monday, Coach Mike Dunleavy still has to deal with the question of who’s going to be his point guard.

Tiring of the topic, Dunleavy said last week that it was fruitless to keep asking him about it because he didn’t have any answers.

“I’m going to take the full eight [exhibition] games before I make a decision on my point guard,” he said before Sunday night’s exhibition against the Golden State Warriors, and what transpired in the 93-69 defeat showed why.

On a night when the Clippers made only 33% of their shots, the presumed front-runners at the point, Marko Jaric and Keyon Dooling, combined for no points in 32 minutes, missing all five of their shots. They had five of the club’s nine assists.

“If you’re asking me whether I’d rather have it established, of course I’d rather have all my positions established,” Dunleavy said last week. “On the other hand, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, and I think, for the most part, that is to get our guys to the point where they play the position a little better.”

Adding outside help at this point, he said, was a longshot.

“You’re always looking to better your team,” he said. “If something came up that made clear sense for us, we would do something. But I can tell you, the chances of that happening are slim and none. Nobody is going to say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a really good point over here. Does anybody want him?’

“It doesn’t usually happen that way.”

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Mike Dunleavy Jr. seemed to hold nothing back in helping the Warriors defeat a Clipper team coached by his father, contributing a game-high 19 points and six rebounds to Sunday’s Warrior victory.

Playing for his father, he said, would have been tougher.

The elder Dunleavy had interviewed for the Warrior opening in the spring of 2002 but took himself out of the running after learning that the team planned to draft the oldest of his three sons, a decision applauded by Mike Jr.

“It just would have been awkward -- for myself, for him, for the coaching staff, for the other players on the team,” he said before Sunday’s game. “It would have just been really weird. As a rookie, if I wasn’t playing a lot, people would be saying, ‘He’s treating him too hard,’ and if I were playing, it’d be like, ‘The only reason he’s playing is because his dad’s coaching.’

“And what’s it going to be like when you go into the locker room after the game? Guys are mad at the coach because they’re not playing enough, and they’re talking about my dad? As a rookie or younger player, that would be a little weird.”

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The four injured Clippers who sat out Sunday -- Elton Brand (sprained left ankle), Glen Rice (hyperextended right knee), Quentin Richardson (lower back spasms) and rookie Chris Kaman (strained lower left leg) -- are listed as day to day.... Practice resumes today as the Clippers prepare for exhibitions Thursday against the Lakers at the Arrowhead Pond and Friday against the Warriors at Staples Center.