While Orlando was producing as many air-balls as 3-pointers (three), and the Clippers’ lead reached 16, Steve Ballmer watched Tuesday’s first half from a seat five rows up from Staples Center’s midcourt, appearing as relaxed as the team’s animated owner can be.
By the start of the fourth quarter, his location had changed to a baseline seat. He watched, hunched over, as the relative serenity of the first half disappeared into an outcome few could have predicted.
Playing for the fifth time in seven days and missing five players, including four starters, the Clippers’ hold slowly eroded over the course of a second half to forget en route to a 103-96 loss that snapped their six-game winning streak.
What had appeared so easy to begin the first quarter, as the Clippers (32-17) scored the first 10 points, became brutally difficult by the end as the effects of fatigue showed with intercepted passes, clanked 3-pointers and missed boxouts. The Clippers scored just 45 points after halftime and shot 32% on 3-pointers, their worst since March 17.
Even still, coach Tyronn Lue didn’t accept attrition as the deciding factor. After allowing just 37 points in the first half, the team’s fewest in more than a calendar year, the Clippers allowed Orlando to score 33 points in each of the final two quarters. A Magic (16-31) team, it should be noted, that also played without five players less than a week removed from tearing the roster down to the studs at the NBA’s trade deadline.
“First half, I thought we should have been up at least 25, 26,” Lue said. What followed, he said, were bad decisions and “stupid shots.”
Kawhi Leonard scored a game-high 28 points, the only player in the game to score more than 20.
The Clippers were without Paul George (right foot soreness) and Marcus Morris was a late scratch because of a right calf bruise. Patrick Beverley (right knee) and Serge Ibaka (lower back) continued their injury recovery that has now reached two weeks and Rajon Rondo (adductor) has yet to debut, too.
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