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Austin Rivers says the Clippers 'gotta figure (stuff) out' following its loss in Philadelphia

Kelly Dwyer
Austin and Doc Rivers talk their way through winter. (Getty Images)
Austin and Doc Rivers talk their way through winter. (Getty Images)

Austin Rivers thinks his Los Angeles Clippers need to “figure [stuff] out.” If they asked our advice we’d probably start with getting the away from the idea that the Los Angeles Clippers are Austin Rivers’ team, and that he should be asked to speak for the club following either its letdowns or triumphs.

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This isn’t a shot at Rivers, the son of (illness-felled) coach Doc Rivers, nor the club itself. This is just what happens when you play a long season, when notable leaders like Chris Paul (injured) or Blake Griffin (just returning from injury, only getting his feet wet after one game) are sidelined and shielded from the glare.

And this is what happens when you lose a game you were once up 19 in, to a Philadelphia 76ers team that was designed to lose (transcription via Dane Carbaugh at Pro Basketball Talk):

“Should have won the game. Didn’t win the game. We got a lot of s–t that we got to clean up man, within our team. We gotta figure s–t out. We was up 19. Supposed to squash them … They kept fighting, doing what they are supposed to do. They don’t have the talent we have …”

“They,” in this instance, is the Philadelphia 76ers. A team whose two notable offseason signings have barely played all year, and a club with a hoped-for savior in No. 1 overall pick Ben Simmons that hasn’t played a second in 2016-17 while recovering from a foot injury. The team’s actual savior, technical rookie and possible All-Star Joel Embiid, actually sat out Tuesday night’s win over Los Angeles due to a bum knee, and the 76ers still outscored the Clippers by 30 over the last 21 minutes of play, winning by a 121-110 score.


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It’s true that the Clippers played the night before, winning in Atlanta on Monday, the same Hawks club that just downed the 76ers (with Embiid) by 17 in Georgia. No amount of “scheduled losses” in the second strike of a back-to-back, though, can argue away poor effort.

Presuming the Clippers actually gave a poor effort, of course. We’d ask coach Doc Rivers about as much, but he had to take Tuesday night off due to an illness. Something about being on the road for half of a season that stretches between early October and, the Clippers hope, late June.

The Los Angeles Clippers, notoriously, are routinely felled by injuries. Griffin missed 18 games prior to Tuesday night after right knee sugery, a year after missing a strong chunk of the season in 2015-16 due to a quadriceps injury and a broken shooting hand after getting into a regretted scuffle with a former team employee. In the playoffs, he re-injured his left quadriceps muscle (on the same leg that he underwent surgery on in 2009, forcing him to miss all of the 2009-10 campaign) around the same time that Chris Paul fractured his right hand while defending Gerald Henderson. Both were knocked out of the 2016 postseason.

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Chris Paul is also out, for potentially another two months, after the NBA’s leader amongst active players in all-time steals went grabby earlier in January. Austin Rivers, yet again, was packed in as a starter against the Sixers, and while the team’s offense played well (Rivers managed 20 points, though just three assists), the Clippers didn’t have enough to stop a Sixers team still tinkering with its rotation (Dario Saric helps) from dropping 121.

It’s also January.

Game 47, of which the Clippers have lost just 17 while only featuring Griffin for 27 and Paul for 36. Then again, that’s the typical roulade the Clippers tend to sing us when after we catch glimpse of another injury-plagued defeat.

It’s a long, long season, and whether we want to believe it or not the NBA’s playoff order is more or less in place by this time of the year. Teams have to keep playing, though, in order to justify those massive salaries between games No. 50 and 82, and this is where the angst tends to come in.

The Clippers would just like to stem the bleeding, which is why the team has gone all out to replenish its medical and training staff in the wake of the crossover between former owner Donald Sterling, and new’ish owner Steve Ballmer.

Of course, anything could look like an upgrade in comparison to the parsimonious (to be rather kind) reign of the disgraced Donald, and there’s always the fear that these sorts addition may have come a season or two too late. No amount of good cheer, shout-y bits on ‘Conan’ and uniform changes can help you get away from the fact that, damn, Blake and CP3 are hurt again.

Doc Rivers talked about the changes in a feature by ESPN’s Tom Haberstroh recently:

“People don’t realize Steve [Ballmer] bought the team and in the first year, he was just trying to get things going. It was this summer where we could sit him down … and talk to him about all the things we need to add and get going. Last year, it was too quick of a turnaround.”

[…]

“We want to be a world-class organization,” Rivers says.

The trick, Rivers points out, is getting to these things before they get to you:

“Medically speaking, in the United States, we fix injuries,” Rivers said. “But in some other countries, they try to prevent injuries.”

And in some cultures, they just try to rise above. Like these Clippers, once again (according to ManGamesLost.com, via ESPN) have lost more games from high-end players than anyone else this season.

One would think a bit of rest, with nearly three months (!) still to go between now and the postseason, would be in order. Doc?

“We’re still going to do it,” Rivers says. “We’re going to rest guys. It’d be nice in these next 41 games to put everybody in and just play them to get everyone playing in rhythm. But health is more important. And we’re going to stick to this thing.”

“This thing,” however, is about to get nastier.

Our Dan Devine pointed out on Monday that the Clippers have done well in circling the wagons, at least prior to the 76ers loss, taking 10 of 18 contests in Griffin’s absence. The team is already three games into its current road trip, though, and it still has a ridiculous eight of its next ten to play away from Los Angeles.

Starting, in Saturday, against Golden State. In Golden State. Also, the road trip wraps up on Feb. 23, in the first game after the All-Star break, in Golden State.

The team’s two home games during that span? One against Atlanta, still shooting to make a dent in the East and smarting from the 115 Griffin-and-CP3-less points the Clippers put on them on Monday night. The other home contest comes against, you guessed it, the Golden State Warriors.

This is a long way of saying that even with Griffin (who led the Clippers in assists on Tuesday, with five dimes) back, the Clippers may never again see the 14-games-over-.500 mark that they earned following the win over the Hawks. Yes, the team has a cross-country trip and three “off” days to prepare for its next game, but that’s cold comfort when the next game features your team playing in the Warriors’ building.

[Stuff], indeed, does need figuring out.

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!