There weren’t a lot of positives the Los Angeles Clippers could take away from Game 1 against the San
Antonio Spurs. Aside from a few solid individual performances from Eric Bledsoe and Caron Butler, the team struggled in all aspects.
Despite the 16-point loss, the Clippers are trying to look at the positives, mainly that they can play a lot better.
“It would be tough if it was like, ‘Man, we did everything right and we did everything we wanted to do and we couldn’t beat them,'” said Chris Paul.
Paul was downright awful in Game 1, shooting 3-13 from the floor and turning the ball over an uncharacteristic 5 times. How much of that was from a lack of rest and his groin injury and how much of that was the Spurs’ game plan? I guess we’ll see as the series goes forward, but the Clippers are not going to win even one game in this series if CP3 doesn’t get it together.
While it’s good for the Clippers to not panic after losing only one game on the road, I think it’s foolish not to be worried. The Spurs outplayed them all over the court, and that doesn’t just magically change in the between games.
The Spurs may see a better Clippers team tonight in Game 2, but not the best one. They’ll have had a full day of rest, something that’s invaluable at this point, but they will still be far from 100%. Injuries don’t heal overnight and Paul, Blake Griffin and a few other players are still recovering. Even if we could say that the Clippers at full strength could hang with the Spurs, which I still don’t think is the case, we may not see that Clippers team during this series.
