Clippers Do Fine Without Paul
Basketball is funny. You think it’s a game where better teams beat up on the little guys all the time. For the most part it’s true, but sometimes in an 82 game grind, teams can have off nights or lose focus for a game and you can get some pretty strange results. Take these past couple of days for example. The Orlando Magic were on a 10 game losing streak and were going on the road to face the NBA’s best team, the Los Angeles Clippers. There was no way the Magic would beat the Clippers, right? Wrong.
To make things worse for the Clippers, they lost Chris Paul late in the game with a bruised right knee. And to top it all off, the Clippers were about to embark on a 15 road games in the next 19 stretch, starting with the very tough Memphis Grizzlies. So this looked bad for the Clippers, right? Wrong. The Clippers went to Memphis and held the Grizzlies, who to be fair were without Rudy Gay, to their lowest point total of the season. Jamal Crawford and Matt Barnes led the Clippers with 16 points each. Eric Bledsoe stepped into the starting point guard role and chipped in 14 points. The already very deep Clippers got a bit deeper as Grant Hill is now coming off their bench. The vet scored 8 points in his 17 minutes of action on Monday. The Clippers are now 29-9 and the Grizzlies fell to 24-12
As for the Magic, they beat the Clippers so going to Washington to face the team with the worst record in the league should be no problem, right? Uh, no. The Washington Wizards blew them out 120-91. The Wizards won their third straight on Monday with ease. Emeka Okafor had 19 points and 11 rebounds as they improved to 7-28. They will now go on the road for the next five games. It has helped to get John Wall back as he had 12 points and six rebounds in his 20 minutes as he works his way back into the rotation. The Magic fell to 13-24 on the season and were led by Jameer Nelson with 19 points.
The Miami Heat is embroiled in a bit of controversy after falling to the Utah Jazz on Monday. The Jazz raced out a big first half lead and went into the halftime locker room up by 15. Going into the third quarter the Jazz led by 19. Erik Spoelstra let the bench go out for the fourth quarter and the Heat rallied. As the team drew closer to the Jazz, Spoelstra was left with a decision on whether to bring Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh back into the game. He decided to leave the players on the floor who were rallying. Bosh seemed to have no problem with it, but Wade seemed to be a bit irritated. The Jazz won the game 104-97 to improve to 21-19 while Miami fell to 24-12.
The Boston Celtics remained red hot. They won their sixth game in a row with a 100-89 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. Rajon Rondo recorded a triple double with 17 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists as the Celtics improved to 20-17 on the season. Paul Pierce led Boston with 19 points and Avery Bradley chipped in 16 as they dropped the Cavs to 9-28. Cleveland was led by Hakim Warrick and Ramone Sessions with 16 points each.
