DeAndre Jordan has figured out why the Los Angeles Clippers are struggling of late.
They like to sniff themselves too much.
As he said after Tuesday night’s double-overtime loss to the Brooklyn Nets, per ESPN.com’s Ohm Youngmisuk:
DeAndre Jordan on what has happened to the Clippers, who have lost three straight on the road, including this double overtime loss to the Jeremy Lin-less Nets: “I think we are smelling ourselves a little bit. We haven’t done —-. Nothing. We were number one in the West for a couple of weeks? That don’t mean nothing. At all. I feel like we took that for granted. We thought we were a lot better than we really are. We got to continue to get better and have respect for the game.”
This might be true. The Clippers were the best team in the NBA for a while, appearing as if they were primed to overtake the San Antonio Spurs as the Western Conference’s second-best team and make a run at the Golden State Warriors.
That might still be true, too. The Clippers aren’t in dire straights record-wise or anything. Their defense has just slipped a bit after starting out as the NBA’s best.
That this drop has come over the last 10 or 11 games, against mostly cupcake offenses, is a nod to Jordan’s belief that the Clippers are feeling full of themselves. Or maybe it’s just that their bench isn’t as good as some of the early-season numbers suggest.
At any rate, the Clippers have now lost three straight tilts, all on the road, versus inferior teams. Blake Griffin didn’t play against the Nets, and the Clippers are too good to think this bump in the road is something more sinister. Still, this isn’t a malaise they want to enable much longer.
