A Big One Gets Away

What moderate success the Clippers have enjoyed this season has mostly come at the expense of Eastern Conference opponents.

But the East, though usually least, sometimes bites back.

In Sunday’s 100-88 loss to the Detroit Pistons in front of 18,775 in Staples Center, the Clippers seemed to be cruising to their sixth consecutive home victory before the Pistons hit them with a head-turning, game-deciding 32-9 run.

A rash of Clipper turnovers and missed shots turned a nine-point lead with 3 1/2 minutes to play in the third quarter into a 14-point deficit over the next 12 1/2 minutes, sending the crowd streaming toward the exits.

“I’m not happy about this,” Coach Mike Dunleavy said. “Usually, we’ve played pretty well in fourth quarters and done some good things, but we let this one slip away. We just didn’t react....

“We just didn’t have the toughness, the mental toughness, that we needed. And when they turned up the pressure, we didn’t respond.”

The Clippers, 25-33 overall, are 14-12 outside the far more demanding Western Conference, but they’re 0-4 against the Eastern Conference elite -- the Pistons, Indiana Pacers and New Jersey Nets.

Still, they led through the first three quarters Sunday, taking advantage of four technical fouls on the Pistons in the first quarter, two leading to the ejection of Coach Larry Brown, to forge an early cushion.

Their advantage reached 12 points midway through the second quarter. And they still led, 70-61, after Quentin Richardson made a baseline jumper with 3:50 to play in the third quarter, capping a 9-2 run that seemed to put the Clippers in control.

But then came the collapse.

A jump shot by Elton Brand late in the third quarter was their only field goal over the next nine minutes, the Pistons outscoring the Clippers, 20-3, before a Chris Wilcox dunk ended a 12-1 Piston run to start the fourth quarter.

“Their intensity stepped up,” Brand said of the Pistons. “We played soft, we didn’t protect the ball.... Maybe we got too comfortable, because we didn’t have the attention to detail that we needed to have.”

Against the top defensive team in the East, the Clippers made 50% of their shots through the first three quarters. In the fourth, they made six of 24.

Eight of their 15 turnovers came in the last 14 minutes.

The Pistons, meanwhile, made 60% of their shots in the fourth quarter, after making 45.3% in the first three. Rasheed Wallace, who had missed 11 of 12 shots to that point, made four of five in the fourth quarter.

Richard Hamilton, who had missed eight of 13, was three for three in the fourth quarter.

“We didn’t execute offensively, turned the ball over too many times and created opportunities for them to gain some momentum, and they started making shots,” Dunleavy said.

“When you play a team that’s a pretty good defensive team, which they are, and you make turnovers that lead to fastbreak layups and dunks, momentum can shift in a hurry, and that’s pretty much what happened.”

Chauncey Billups led the Pistons with 28 points and seven assists, making seven of 11 shots, 12 of 14 free throws and badly outplaying Marko Jaric, who had two points and eight assists and missed six of seven shots.

Hamilton scored 21 points, and Wallace had 15 points and 10 rebounds. Ben Wallace had 13 points and 13 rebounds, most in the second half.

Brand led the Clippers with 23 points, making 12 of 23 shots. He and Richardson each had 10 rebounds. Corey Maggette scored 19 points.