How The LA Clippers Ran Out Of Gas In Memphis

How The LA Clippers Ran Out Of Gas In Memphis

On today’s show, the LA Clippers tried to make it two in a row, but fell short in the second half. Really, the last couple of minutes of the game against the Memphis Grizzlies. What went so wrong at the end of this one? Going to be talking about it all on today’s Locked On Clippers. [Music] You are Locked on Clippers, your daily Los Angeles Clippers podcast, part of the Locked On Network. your team every day. [Music] Yes sir, you were locking in with the clips. Thank you for making Locked on Clippers the first listen of your day, your team every day. I’m your host, Darian Vizeri, born and raised in LA. Been a Clipper fan for 21 years. Been covering the team on my own YouTube channel, Dime Dropper, for six and four right here on the Locked On Network. Your team every day. Make sure you subscribe and hit the notification bell on YouTube to get us up to 8,000 subscribers before the end of 2025. And of course, you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by FanDuel, America’s number one sorts sports book. Visit fanuel.com and place your NFL live bets all season long. All right, Clipper Nation. Fourth game of our or sorry, third game of our fivegame road trip. This one coming at Memphis, who we just lost to at the Into a Dome without John Morant about a week ago and we were trying to make it two wins in a row. Obviously, it did not happen. Sorry, this was Yeah, this was the third game of the road trip. We lost 107 to 98. I’m going to be talking about what I feel like is becoming a consistent theme for us, especially given the way our roster looks right now. going to be evaluating the performance of the big three and then talking about them young dudes because they surely got some big burn and they’ve been getting big burn lately. So, let’s just begin with, you know, another game without John Morant. And of course, the Grizzlies aren’t just without John Morant, they’re without Scottie Pippen Jr., Tai Jerome, and Brandon Clark this season and or right now at least they haven’t had some of those guys for the whole season. The whole thing with the Grizzlies is where are they going to get their shots from, right? How are they going to create good enough shots? And you would think, even though we’re short-handed too, you know, missing bogey, missing Derek, missing Beal, and then of course now Chris Paul and Brook Lopez have flopped. So you only have seven players, our starters, Nico and Lopez, that you can play from that initial 11 we talked about was so deep before the season. So you got to get contributions from other guys. And in this game, the Clippers played a nine-man rotation with Nico, Kobe Brown, Kobe Sanders, and Cam Christie being those nine guys in addition to the starters. And it’s consistent that the Clippers just don’t really have enough scoring punch around Kawhi Leonard and James Harden to consistently get wins. We have to rely on them so heavily to create shots, the two of them. And going into the season, we thought we had about six shot creators, give or take. Kawawaii, Zoo, Beiel, Harden, Bogey, and Chris Paul, and a little bit of Brook Lope, as you can dump it down to. Right now, it feels like two. With the way Zubots played against Edy last time, you knew that the Clippers weren’t going to look at going to zoo in the post against Edy. So, we knew that was kind of out, which I don’t necessarily agree with, but we can talk about that more in the next segment. Kawawaii and James Harden started out the game really well. You know, I thought defensively we were just okay, but it it was a neckand-neck game for a lot of it. James Harden had 13 points in the first quarter, but at halftime he had 16. Kawawaii had 16, and we were winning by a score of six, sorry, 58 to 54 at halftime. And the thing is, we’ve seen good first halves in the last, you know, couple of weeks, but it’s that second half that kills us. And in this second half, we got outscored 53-40. And I truly do believe that James Harden and Kawhi Leonard run out of gas. They’re older. They are having to carry so much of a burden right now. And you could see Kawi Leonard’s jumpers just starting to miss short. And that’s a consistent thing with Kawhai when he I mean when anyone misses short, you can tell that they don’t have the legs. But Kawhai, you know, just given all the knee injuries and the things that he’s been through, he tends to, you know, get gassed at times at the end of games. And now, you know, he’s off the minutes restriction, but he still is on one. He was he had he played 35 minutes, but he came out and I’m not 100% sure if this is minutes restriction or if it’s just he looked tired, so Tai pulled him out. But the substitution pattern was this. We did the exact same thing as last game where midway through the first quarter, we took out Zoo and kept in Kawawaii, Harden, Chris Dunn, and John Collins at the five. And we put in, I believe, Kobe Sanders for him. And then to start the second quarter, we had Nico Kawaii, the Kobes, and Cam Christie. And two buckets in the paint were scored by Memphis. And immediately we went right back to Zoo. So, and when Wizoo was in, that lineup actually did okay, but it was more the second half, right? We changed things up a bit. And I don’t necessarily know if it worked this time because John Collins could not hit an open three. Zoo and Collins were taken out at the same time. So, we had a lineup that was the Kobes, Cam, Nico, and James Harden for I mean, it was Kawhai and then he eventually came out. And right when Kawawaii came out, we had three straight turnovers, several of them by James Harden. And he was lazy getting back two on those turnovers. But regardless, we were only down by three going into the fourth quarter. So all I was thinking at that point was if we just defend at a pretty solid level, we make open threes, our stars bring us home, we’re going to win this game. Well, we defended at a pretty good level. We only allowed 23 points in the fourth, but we scored a putrid, a measly 17 points in the fourth quarter. And every single team knows that Kawhi Leonard and James Harden are the only players that you can say are having a good season right now on our on our team. They know that we’re consistently shooting 31 32% from downtown. So, they’re going to pack the paint and force these guys to kick it out. And I thought for the most part they were making the right plays, but guys just could not hit shots, which has been a theme of this season for us. Whether it be John Collins or Cam Christie or Kobe Brown, but Kobe Brown was three for seven from I’m sorry, never mind. Yeah, he was two for six from three. As a team, we shot 14 for 44 from downtown, which was 32%. The Grizzlies shot 10 for 28, 36%. The Grizzlies also shot better from the field at 54% to our 44%. Which is nuts just given that you know Jiren Jackson Jr. is their best player and he scored 13 points. But they got a lot of contributions from other guys. You want to talk about next manup mentality? Jaylen Wells had 17. Cedric Coward had 23 and 14. Those 14 rebounds were a careerhigh and they got 17 points off the bench to go along with five rebounds and seven assists from Cam Spencer. So Cam Spencer had 17 points by himself and they as a bench had 41 points to our 30. So that was basically the difference in the game was their bench. So I mean but here’s the thing. I’m not here to argue whether the Grizzlies are deeper than us. They are a little bit deeper than us. But we got to get the job done. You know what I’m saying? And you know John Collins two for eight from three. Nico two for seven from three. Kobe Brown two for six. Cam Christie one for three. The only role player that shot well from three really was Kobe Sanders two for four. these guys just aren’t making shots consistently and it’s really hurting us because you know Kawawaii when one of Harden or Kawhai need to be in at all times and in the beginning of that fourth quarter like like basically Harden right now is playing the entire first and third quarter right so when you look at the stats I’m looking at the box score right now James Harden played the entire first quarter alongside John Collins and then in the third quarter he was the only player to play that entire quarter. Kawhi Leonard doesn’t do the same. However, Kawhai played 9 minutes and 14 seconds of the second, 8 minutes and 37 seconds of the third and 8 minutes and 49 seconds of the fourth. So, you don’t get a full quarter out of him, right? Right. And I don’t know if that’s a minutes restriction thing or just that, but you know, when he comes out of the game, when we’re winning by a point with 535 left, and again, I’m not blaming him at all for this. I don’t know. I do not know if this is a Kawaii medical staff thing or if it’s a Clipper medical staff thing. It’s not a coaching staff thing because I know this is above them. I know for a fact from talking to people within the league and within our front uh within our management at summer league that this is above the coaching staff. But but actually, you know what? I’m not even going to guarantee that cuz you never know. Maybe it is. I don’t put I think it’s a the the Clippers medical staff when it comes to the minutes restriction stuff, not the coaching staff because the coaching staff cannot overrule them. But I mean, they technically can, but they would get a lot of heat for it, especially given the state of the league with injuries. But my point being, your best player checks out of the game with 5 minutes and 35 seconds left when you’re up a point. And granted, when he came back in, we’re only down by two, but we lost a bit of momentum there in those minutes already. And the reality is James Harden had 13 points in the first quarter and he only ended with 18. He ran out of gas. He didn’t even look like he wanted the ball towards the end of the game, which is very rare for him. And here’s what he does know as well, and this was a smart strategy for Memphis. Even with Zack Edy, they were hedging on the ball screens. And the reason for that being is that they get the ball to Harden’s hands and now you can funnel the ball to the shooters that you want to some degree, which you could also do in drop coverage, but you’re also letting Harden get downhill a little bit, which is a little dangerous. Um, so they know, oh, just rotate o over to Zubots and make him kick it out to these open shooters or just pre-rotate before they even get the ball to Zubots and makes and make James or Kawhai pass to these shooters and we’re going to live with them shooting. And that was a good strategy that ended up working out for them because our guys could not make threes and it’s been a consistent theme throughout this season. So 10798, our stars couldn’t bring us home. They got guys good shots, but we didn’t hit them. John Collins, I have to say, you know, I thought he got off to a good start in this game with nine points in the first quarter, but I kept saying he needs to hit his open threes cuz it’s going to come back to bite us. And they did. He had 16 points on six for 14 shooting and was benched in the fourth quarter of this game. He did not play one minute in the fourth quarter, which do you agree with that decision, Clipper Nation? Let me know in the comments. He wasn’t hitting threes. Granted, he was our third leading scorer behind Kawawaii and James, but two for eight from three and he’s getting scored on by everyone by the way, whether it be Santi Alama, Jaylen Wells, you know, he’s getting scored on by everybody right now. So not and not only that he doesn’t play smart defense like there was one time where he was rotating at the rim to Edy and then when he was get when Zoo had recovered to Edy he did not go to the correct man that was open he went to a guy that Qua was already guarding so we have two on a guy and he left Jaylen Wells who had just scored five points wide open that’s just IQ stuff just court awareness so I don’t know disappointing in John Collins right now for sure but coming up going to talk about if the big three themselves Kawhi Leonard James Harden, Evita Zubots. Could they have done more? Going to be talking about that coming up. I got to tell you a little something about Door Dash. The season’s heating up and Door Dash has a way to keep fans in their bag the whole way through. Whether you’re watching the highlights, the tunnel fits, or just your favorite player, Door Dash makes the entire season more fun because every player has their bag. With Door Dash, fans have one, too. 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All right, Clipper Nation, we were trying to hopefully extend the good vibes and see if Chris Paul really was the problem in this game, but we lost to the Memphis Grizzlies and we are now 0 and2 against them this season. 107 to 98 was the final from the FedEx forum. We are now 1 and2 on this road trip. And even though our defense looks a little better without Chris Paul, as I said, a good Chris Paul was important for us. he was looking a little bit better. You know, we need some shot creation, but at the same time, if he was that toxic that the team was willing to take a PR hit that bad to get rid of him, then it must have been really bad. However, we’re going to do a follow-up episode on Chris Paul because more information is now coming out and more people are speaking out about it. So, we’re going to talk about that on Saturday or Sunday. So, stay tuned for that because there’s so that’s that’s the talk of the town right now no matter what is the Chris Paul thing. But anyway, you know, let’s talk about the big three. I talked about the young or not the young guys, but the role players not making open shots. You know, we’re just not a very good three-point shooting team right now. We don’t have Brook Lopez that we’re not playing. And I still believe we should play him even though our defense is looking a little better. But we do miss a backup center. If not Brook Lopez, play Yannik. Like, why not? You’re already playing those other young guys. might as well play Yannik because those lineups like even though they’re a couple minutes when we don’t have when we have Nico at this age playing the five, I do not agree with that. Like that’s too risky in my opinion and you’re not going to be always playing against these short-handed teams. Eventually, we’re going to play against good teams. Look no further than next game when we play against the Wolves. So, I don’t know about that strategy. Uh, I still think Brook Lopez, especially with our lack of three-point shooting right now, even though he was kind of onedimensional and that’s all he was doing. We might need that because we’re not hitting open shots and eventually Kawi and Harden are going to need these guys to knock down something. We’re already without Beal and of course Bdonovich who’s a high volume three-point shooter. But it is what it is. Now, looking at the big three, I thought Kawawaii was pretty aggressive. He had some really good moments, especially in that beginning of the second quarter where he had a layup. He had a steal that led to a dunk and then an interception that led to a Cam We had an interception that led to a Cam Christie three in consecutive possessions that forced a timeout and when we were up 40 to 34, I thought and we ended the second quarter with Kawi on the bench by the way because he played that long stretch. So, like when he plays those long stretches, like I don’t know if he can physically play the entire fourth quarter, I don’t know. Like I don’t know what conversations are going on when it comes to like, oh, Kawhai saying I can stay in versus the coaching staff or the medical staff saying no or Kawhai’s actually feeling the heat because yes, he’s working hard. Kawhai’s not the type of guy this to slack off in games frequently. And if it happens, you get on him a lot because it’s rare. But in this game, I felt like he was playing hard and in the fourth quarter, he was, you know, kind of going vintage to start the fourth. He was making plays. He was getting in his mid-range. But and like the nonh hardened minutes, right, have been a thing for us all season that without James Harden in the game, we have struggled to create offense. But since Kawhi Leonard has come back, it’s actually been the non Kawawaii minutes that have really hurt us. Now again, Tailoo keeps kind of, you know, experimenting with the lineups because nothing has really worked. So, we’re still kind of seeing new lineups. So, I wouldn’t, you know, make huge have huge takeaways. But all I can tell you is that recently in the last couple of games without uh the non Kawawaii minutes have been very difficult to work around. And Joey Lynn tweeted this. Our good friend Joey Lynn said, “James Harden has shot 38% from the field and 28% from three since Kawhai got back from injury. And the Clippers have been outscored by 47 points in his minutes and are 1 and six in these games. So right now the non So James Harden’s by the way, nobody on the Clippers except for Nico Batum was a positive in the plus minus. So again, single game plus minus. Like we’re not going to sit here and act like Nico played the best, but James Harden was a team worst minus 17. And he played awesome in my opinion in the whole first half. He was making all the right plays. He was getting by his man. He was finding Zoo around the basket. He was finding John Collins around the basket. He was scoring himself in the first quarter, knocking down threes. But it just kind of felt like he ran out of gas. And here’s the thing, we knew that James Harden could run out of gas a couple weeks ago because of the weight that he’s been carrying. So, I have to cut him some slack. Now, I will say this though. I’m going to go back to Kawhai first. I don’t have much to say about Kawhai except for that his three ball wasn’t falling and he took maybe one or two bad ones, but for the most part, I had no problem with the shot selection. And then again, I don’t know if it’s a minutes restriction or not, but it’s hard to try to come in with 2 minutes left and regain your rhythm to win your team a game, you know, as opposed to playing a consecutive 8-minute stretch or something like that. Or in this case, like we can’t play him 12 minutes. It feels like in the fourth quarter of this game, Kawhi Leonard and James Harden combined for two for seven from the field. Six of those seven shots were Kawhi. James Harden only got one shot off in the fourth. Now granted, he he came in with 5 minutes and 35 seconds left because we were playing well without him and Tai was like, let me honestly give him even more rest, but he didn’t even look aggressive when he came back in. And in those 5 minutes and 35 seconds, we were a minus 10 with James Harden on the court. So, I’m not listen I’m not pinning this game all on Harden because if I were, I would have started with him and not with the role players. I do cut Harden some slack because he’s been carrying us all season long. But there are just basketball things that happen in this game like him not rebounding and boxing out Pat Spencer or Cam Spencer and then he hits a three with Harden not even putting a hand up late in the game. There was several times when Harden turned the ball over, he did not get back in transition. He was not finding a body. He was not making an effort to sprint back into the play and and get to a body. And those things matter. And like no matter how much weight you’re carrying offensively, this basketball is a two-way sport. You know what I’m saying? And you you’re going to have to like I can’t be the host of this show and analyze the game properly without mentioning this stuff. You know what I’m saying? No matter whose feelings it hurts. And then Kawhai, I mean two for six in the fourth. He finished with 24 points, eight rebounds, four assists, one steal, one block, one turnover on 10 for 23 shooting, two for nine from three, and made both his free throws in 35 minutes. Here’s what I’ll say. Kawi’s looking a lot better. I like that he shot 20 plus shots. His three ball wasn’t wasn’t falling in this game and we could have used some. He only took one or two bad shots to me, but there are just some times where Kawawaii we have an advantage on the court and he’s like not seeing it. And of course it’s easy for me to see it cuz I’m watching on TV, but I think he’s too good to not survey the floor. Like there was one time where we had there was too many Grizzlies on one side of the floor and we had three numbers on the weak side and he just didn’t swing the ball and then they recovered. So then we had no advantage anymore. Like little things like that are things that Kawhai sometimes like even he got an outlet pass right and he had a chance to go all the way but he like I don’t think he wanted to turn on the jets so then the defense recovered. So like stuff like that that’s the only thing I can be critical of him for but overall I thought he was pretty good. But I just think that Kawi is going to or Tai is going to have to figure out the minutes thing because for him to just like come out abruptly in the middle of the fourth quarter with five and a half minutes left in the game and then come back in 3 minutes later and try to regain rhythm and save the day. It’s just not realistic. It’s very difficult to do. So I’ll put this on Kawhai. Two for six in the fourth. We needed better. Like we’re going to need honestly at this point we’re going to need 30 a game from him because our role players aren’t good. And that partially falls on Lawrence Frank of course. And then in terms of of Harden, he had 13 in the first and then he ran out of gas. Five points the rest of the game is not acceptable given what we need right now. You can cut him the slack for, you know, having carried so much weight and getting tired. But one field goal attempt in the fourth and then the other stuff, it’s the defense, the lack of hustle, like that stuff matters, too. And then Zoo, we knew we weren’t going to go to him against Edy. And I thought he had good moments in this game, but we didn’t even I mean, if we’re going to treat Zoo like an afterthought, then I’ll talk about him like an afterthought. And there is a level of, hey, what about that aggression we saw against Cleveland? What about that aggression we saw against Atlanta? He went back to being, you know, cowering again, just like not even asking for the ball. So, 10 points, six rebounds, one assist, two turnovers, and a steal on four for six shooting, two for two from the free throw line. That’s not enough. You know, you would think he was four for nine the way he’s acting on the court, but he’s four for six. It’s not enough. 10 points in 35 minutes, six shot attempts. It’s the same story. It’s the same story. And like at this point, we’re going to need 20 from Harden every night. We’re going to need Kawawaii getting 30. And we’re going to need at least 15 and 10 from Zoo. Like that’s going to be the bare minimum because our supporting cast is not quite good enough. And it’s unfair to the young guys who I’m going to talk about coming up to ask for them to be what these other old guys were supposed to be. Going to be talking about the young guys coming up. I got to tell you a little something about FanDuel, America’s number one sports book. NFL Sundays move fast. One big play and suddenly everything feels different. That’s what makes live betting with FanDuel so exciting. You’re not just watching the game, you’re reacting to it in real time. With FanDuel, you can place bets as the action unfolds. Every drive, every momentum swing, every highlight moment. Live betting is best when the game starts to shift. A receiver gets hot, a defense tightens up, or the momentum flips after a turnover. FanDuel lets you jump into the moment. Live spreads and money lines adjust instantly. And right now on FanDuel, if you look at the NBA odds, you can go to NFL, NBA. Now, we got the World Cup draw out. So, you can take a look at, you know, you start making World Cup bets. But right now, the Thunder are heavy favorites to win the championship, and SGA is the favorite to win MVP with Nicola Yokic right on his tail. So, if you want to be right in the middle of the action this season, visit fanuel.com and place your NFL live bets all season long. FanDuel, the game moves fast and so can you. All right, so the Clippers losing 107 to 98 to the Memphis Grizzlies after only being down or really being tied at 98 with three and a half minutes left. I have to say in terms of like before I talk about I talked about the role players not making open threes and how that’s been consistent. You know, Collins not being good enough on either end. Chris Dunn was decent in this game, but pretty invisible offensively at least. Zero points, 0 for one from the field, three rebounds, three assists, two steals, and a turnover. I thought his defense was good in this game. I didn’t have any problems with his defense. But zero points from a starter, you’re going to need more. You know, that has to be something has to be said about that. Zero points, you’re getting 21 minutes, bro. Anyway, let’s talk about the young guys because in my opinion, it’s very unfair to ask them. Even though we have no choice right now, it’s very unfair to ask them. By the way, Ray Dennis was picked up. Jamil Telford was was waved and we got Ray Dennis now. But here’s what I’ll say. They were not supposed to be rotation pieces this year. They were not. And are they ready to be rot rotation pieces in the NBA? Sure. Not with a team, not for a team that’s trying to make the playoffs in my opinion. Maybe Kobe Sanders, but that’s it. Cam Christie, Kobe Brown, and even Kobe Sanders, like they’re committing illegal screens the end of the game. Kobe Brown is doesn’t even see the shot clock. Like these are what we call young player mistakes. I mean, I know rookie mistakes, but they’re not really rookies. The problem is these guys have not got it gotten, and the key word here is extended. extended burn for a for a long period of time throughout the course of a season because every single time we’ve played guys like Jordan Miller or Kobe Brown, we’re like, “Oh, they’re not good enough to contribute yet to this win now team, so we’re going to bench them again.” So, you’re never going to find out what their value is or how good they really are as NBA players. Like, for example, I said Kobe Brown’s not an NBA player and I’ve said that consistently. But in this game, he said, “Slow down, D. Slow down, bro.” He got a steal and yammed it on top of Santi Alama’s head and I was just like, whoa, did not see that coming. And he made two threes in the fourth quarter for what it’s worth. But in the end, he missed. And I don’t want to just say he missed more than he made cuz that doesn’t that doesn’t mean you shot badly, but two for six is 33%. That’s Let me ask you a question, Clipper Nation, in the comment section. What is your gauge? Like when does it hit good percentage from three for you? Like when do you cuz for me I don’t know what it is 36% to 37% feels like a huge difference. I don’t know why but I think if you shot if you shoot 37% from three that’s where I start saying you’re shooting good from three. You’re shooting well. 36 eh 35 eh 34 not so great. You know that’s that’s just my opinion. But like I would like to hear what everybody else how everybody else feels about that. So Kobe Brown, like I thought he did some really good things, but he got taken out of the game at the end for for a reason. When Kawhai came back in, he had 13 points, four rebounds, one assist, three steals, and one turnover on three for seven shooting, two for six from three, and five for six on the foul line. Cam Christie, he only played 10 minutes. I’m trying to check, did he even play in the second half? Okay, he did. He played 3 minutes and 23 seconds in the second half, but he was he was very quick. He had three points, two rebounds on one for three shooting, and all those shots were threes that came in the first half. He made the third one. Nico, six points, three rebounds, four assists, one steal, two turnovers on two for seven shooting, and all his shots were threes. I mean, we could have used some some more makes there truthfully, but and and he played 31 minutes, by the way, more than John Collins and more than Chris Dunn. And then Kobe Sanders, he’s been awesome lately in my opinion. Tons of great shot contests defensively, making good plays like getting in the paint, finding the open man. Eight points for him. Three for six on the field, two for four from three. Missed his one free throw that he got on the N1 dunk that he had. That was very timely, by the way. Nearly got a double double. 8.7 rebounds, two assists, I’m sorry, two steals, two turnovers. I love Kobe Sanders. I think that he’s the one guy that could be a rotation piece right now for like a good team because his catch and shoot three-point ability is good. But I would just like to see truthfully Kobe Sanders just like get the keys to the car. Like, you know, at this point, it just feels like a lot of things have to go right for us to even win one game. And that’s when you know you’re not a good team. And it hasn’t been like that for the Clippers like over the last 15 years. You know, usually like with Chris Paul and like with Lob City, it’s like we were favored most games. Even in 2019, we were finding a way to win games. Last year, we were finding a way to win games because our defense was so good. We’d give Harden and Norman Pal and Zoo a chance. But this year, even with Kawhi Leonard, we’re struggling to even win a game. Is the minutes restriction officially off? I don’t know. Oh, but Tai’s going to have to figure something out there. And at the end of the day, our stars need to be better than this. I don’t care how like, well, it’s not that I don’t care. It’s that the reality is if James Harden and Kawhi Leonard are our best players and they’re only the only two real stars on this team, Harden’s going to have to score more than even if he scores 30 points in the first quarter, he’s going to need to score more than five the rest of the game. This team just does not have the offensive creation or shotmaking to make up for that. And of course, everybody else has to do better. But like Collins is the one that really needs to step up cuz he’s getting paid 26 million and we traded Norman Powell for him. But the but he’s not going to change who he is defensively. He’s he’s not like he is who he is on that end of the floor. He’s just got to make open threes and I think that will change a lot for us truthfully. But Kawhai, we’re going to need like 30 consistently. James Harden, we’re going to need at least 20 and we’re going to need him to be better in second halfs cuz that’s been a consistent theme throughout this season that he’s kind of flamed out. And of course it’s usage, but also I’ve always said this about James Harden is the way he plays basketball, but no one wants to talk about that. So we’re not gonna we’re just gonna ignore that and table that for another time. Um because I’ve already, you know, mentioned it ad nauseium over the course of my time being a content creator. Um you know, but he’s been our best player this season, so I’m not going to go at him too much. And then Zubots. Oh, Zubots. I don’t know, man. I don’t think as long as Ty Louu is here, I don’t know if I Tubat is ever going to reach his full potential. I’m just going to put it that way. And then of course when it comes to Tailoo and them, you know, there’s been so much news coming out about the Chris Paul stuff, what people are saying, what people are hearing. I’ll talk about that in the next episode, but I’ll just say this. We’re six and 17. We’re one and two on this road trip. We’re three and 10 on the road. We didn’t even score 100 points. We’re not a good basketball team right now. We’re banged up big time. I think Bogey and Derek truly would do actually a lot right now for us. But we’re in 13th place and we’re three games behind the 10 seed. We’re two and eight in our last 10 games. I’m pretty sure we’ve only won three out of our last like what is it? Three out of our last like 17 games or something. I mean, it’s bad. And as I said, I hope Kawhai, James, and Zuki playing well because let’s get that trade value up. I just want Lawrence Frank gone. I’m very adamant about this. Like, we need to get him out. Tyoo can come next because I don’t even think Tailoo is bad a bad coach. I think he’s been dealt a bad hand. But I’m just also kind of like it’s if it’s time for a change, I think that the coaching change would be, you know, kind of part of that change just because I think that it’s run, you know, his time is his time is up now. And I I’m not going to kick him out like, you know, you know, like Glenn Rivers the way I tried to like push for that. But it is what it is. I’m proud of Kobe Sanders. I’m happy with what he’s doing. Um, it’s good to see Kawhi Leonard look like himself again, but what do you want me to say? It’s time for change. It’s just a matter of when Bomber is going to have the balls to do it. Can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at dimedropper pod. Subscribe. Well, not just the balls, but also like we don’t know what’s being offered or if if the phone’s even being ranged. You know what I mean? Or if if the phone is even being used by the Clippers front office to try to look what these guys market value is. I don’t know. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Dimeropper Pod. Subscribe to my own YouTube channel, Dimeropper, where I’ll be live to talk about this game on Saturday morning, as well as the World Cup draw reaction. And of course, you can subscribe to this channel, Locked on Clippers, and hit the notification bell so you can get us up to 8,000 subscribers before the end of 2025. And of course, you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. The age-old proverb continues. Go Clippers.

Los Angeles Clippers falter late as Kawhi Leonard and James Harden run out of steam against the Memphis Grizzlies. Is LA’s playoff hope slipping away?

Darian Vaziri breaks down the Clippers’ tough 107-98 loss, spotlighting the Big Three’s heavy workload and the role players’ shooting woes. With critical minutes restrictions, a lack of scoring punch beyond Leonard and Harden, and John Collins struggling on both ends, the conversation shifts to the young prospects forced into key rotation roles. The episode tackles questions about Ty Lue’s substitution patterns, the effect of missing veterans like Bogdanović and Derrick, and rising trade speculation.

Will Clippers GM Lawrence Frank and the front office finally pull the trigger on overdue roster changes? With the team sliding to 13th place and facing mounting pressure, how long until the Clippers shake things up—or is time running out for this core?

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