They Clippers said they felt no pressure going into Friday’s must-win game, and they weren’t kidding, playing with little sense of urgency and making another early postseason exit.
Clippers star Paul George considers his options as the Dallas Mavericks’ Derrick Jones Jr. defends during the first half of Game 6 of their first-round playoff series on Friday night in Dallas. The Mavericks won, 114-101, to win the series 4-2. Their next home game will be their first at the new Intuit Dome. You can put a period on the 2023-24 season: Friday night’s 114-101 Game 6 loss to the fifth-seeded Dallas Mavericks meant the Clippers won’t ever host another game at Crypto.com Arena.
It all went in accordance with the NBA’s current trend: A young star – Doncic is 25 – with much to prove leading his team past an aging, content contingent past proving much.will spark the Clippers? Maybe the franchise that still, after 54 years, has yet to win a championship will have better aura in its new arena?
Since Leonard and George linked up in L.A., the Clippers exited in the second round in 2020, in the conference finals in 2021, in the play-in in 2022 , and in the first round each of the past two seasons. They told us they felt no pressure going into Friday’s game. Stuff your ‘must-win’ in a dust bin, they said. “The pressure’s on them to win the game,” Harden proclaimed at shootaround Friday morning, echoing George’s comments immediately after the Clippers’ historically lopsided 30-point loss in Game 5: “If you fail, you fail.”All Lue was looking for on his birthday were quick, decisive actions.
Lue said team owner Steve Ballmer stopped by the locker room postgame with some “kind words.” The coach said a few times, “I’m proud of our guys” for taking the season seriously. And, moreover, Lue said he plans to stay put, even if much of L.A. spent the day wishing he would switch teams to take the Lakers’ now-vacant head coaching job.
That makes sense, though, if only because it will be hard to imagine the Clippers able to unwind themselves from their aging stars within the current constraints of roster building in the NBA, especially being so short on tradable draft picks.
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