When the L.A. Clippers lost both of their top point guards and then lost Blake Griffin and went on a skid, we wrote them off. It turns out that was premature. L.A. has won six of seven and is just a game out of the playoffs in the West!
The Clippers are back from the dead
We have that and more in Wednesday’s NBA newsletter.
Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
What happened? One of those point guards — Milos Teodosic — came back, for starters. The Clippers are 9-3 when he plays and 8-16 when he’s been out. Griffin too is back in action, playing well in three games since coming back from a month-long knee injury recovery.
But perhaps the biggest reason for L.A.‘s timely turnaround has been Lou Williams, who is scoring like crazy (including 33 on Tuesday in a win over Memphis and 40 the other night against Charlotte) and proving to be one of the best cheap pickups of the summer. Williams is the reigning Western Conference Player of the Week. He’s only making $7 million this year. (We should note that Austin Rivers was playing quite well before injury claimed him, too.)
Griffin and the Clippers are now knocking on the Pelicans’ door for the No. 8 seed. Something tells me that all those DeAndre Jordan trade rumors aren’t coming back this year.
Scores Galore ...
POR 110, CLE 127
SAS 100, NYK 91
ATL 103, PHX 104
CHA 131, SAC 111
MEM 105, LAC 113
... And So Much More
Ladies and gentlemen: Isaiah Thomas is f’n back. Cleveland already loves this dude. His son stole the postgame interview show. Thomas won’t play when the Cavaliers visit Boston Wednesday, and, in fact, has asked the Celtics to not offer up a video tribute (since he isn’t playing).
The end of Suns vs. Hawks was wild. Phoenix was down 10 with less than three minutes to go. They got a lead and Marquese Chriss had an absolutely incredible block on Taurean Prince at the rim — the ground Chriss makes up is eye-popping. Then Dennis Schroder inexplicably took a quick two down three with seconds left and no timeouts. The tank commitment is real.
That was only the second weirdest shot in Spurs vs. Knicks, though: Manu Ginobili accidentally scored a three on a lob, only the refs didn’t notice because it looked so weird and Beasley took off in a fast break when he corralled the ball.
Nathaniel Friedman on DeMarcus Cousins and the doors opened by Allen Iverson.
More evidence that Rich Cho is the most interesting general manager in the NBA. I’m trying to imagine conversations between Cho and his boss, Michael Jordan, about the food blog, though. “So like, you go order some soup and then write about it?” ”... Yeah.”
Speaking of interesting GMs, this is a good Dave McMenamin profile of the Cavs’ personnel boss Koby Altman.
Don’t look now, but DeMar DeRozan is taking and making threes. This changes everything.
Julian Kimble examines coverage of the Latrell Sprewell-P.J. Carlesimo incident 20 years later.
Sneaky Twitter users are giving fugazy dap to rivals to trick fans of those rivals to vote for those sneaky Twitter users’ actual favorite players. Rude and hilarious and so inside baseball that I wouldn’t be surprised if half of you tuned out three words into this entry.
Ultrabusy Wednesday with 12 games ahead. ESPN has the big Cavaliers-Celtics showdown at 8 p.m. ET followed by Thunder-Lakers at 10:30. Full schedule here.
A Cleveland Browns player tweeted original poetry from the Cavs game.
And finally: Spongebob Squarepants uniforms in the G League.
Be excellent to each other.
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