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Chris Paul wasn’t about to let his team lose its 15-game win streak, not like that. So in Utah on Friday night, down 19 points halfway through the third quarter, CP3 broke out the defibrillator and shocked life back into the Clippers. Why’s that impressive? Well, the 16-game streak is the longest since the Celtics had a 19-gamer in 2008. Two, Salt Lake City is not an easy place to play even in the post-Sloan era and the Clippers struggle there — they’ve gone 20-61 there all-time. Three, mental toughness was not something associated with this franchise until recently — oh, about the time CP3 and Chauncey Billups arrived, to be honest. Read More »

On one hand, you have Sunday being defined by a Seahawks team coming out of relative nowhere to crush the 49ers and become the NFL’s hottest team. In the NBA, its best team right now is on just the same kind of roll — 13 straight wins after Sunday — and even though you can say we’ve seen the Los Angeles Clippers coming for a couple of seasons now, it’s still remarkable that they’re the class of the West. Read More »

If you checked out Miami’s 101-92 win against the Hawks last night, then you probably heard this statistic more than once: Atlanta had not allowed a single team to shoot above 50 percent against them all season. Impressive. Fittingly, they went into South Beach and got blitzed by 58 percent shooting from the Heat, including big nights from LeBron James (27 points, six missed shots), Dwyane Wade (26 points, two missed shots) and Norris Cole (10 points and zero missed shots). Read More »

With talent comes the luxury of not always needing to play hard. For the Clippers, this is a gift and a curse. The only thing they’ve really been consistent with this year is being inconsistent, and despite a recent four-game winning streak, their record is still a somewhat pedestrian 12-6 (before yesterday afternoon against Phoenix). L.A.’s on again, off again track record played out pretty convincingly in yesterday’s 117-99 win over the Suns. For three quarters, everyone outside of Blake Griffin (24 points, eight boards) was sleepwalking. Read More »

The Lakers and Pacers tilt last night in L.A. was so bad it was almost comical. There was Dwight Howard missing clutch free throws and laughing about it. There was Joey Crawford making awful calls left and right. There was Indiana fumbling away nearly every opportunity to close the Lakers out. There was Kobe attempting to win the game by himself. In the end, George Hill (19 points) hit one more big shot than Bryant, and Hill’s high underhand shot off the glass that dropped in with .1 seconds left won it for the visitors, 79-77 … Read More »

Today you probably woke up with excitement in your eyes because of the amazing dinner selection that will await most of us later in the day. Thanksgiving is famous because of the turkey, ham and stuffing that we all love to engulf over the holiday. But somewhere in that huge pile of food, we’ve lost what the true meaning of Thanksgiving is. Read More »

Every now and then, we could all use a reminder that this basketball thing isn’t as complicated as we think. Last night’s national TV showdown between the Thunder and Clippers was one of those reminders. Sure, we could get all Hubie Brown-ish and meticulously pick apart and break down every little subtlety, but the game ultimately came down to this: Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook were better than everybody else when it mattered most … Matt Barnes of all people sparked L.A.’s fourth-quarter rally to force overtime, but then KD and Russ took over the extra session and won it for OKC. Read More »

Even after Dallas avoided what could’ve been a knockout punch this summer (hint: Deron Williams) and instead netted some decent talent, I did not expect them to make noise in the West this year. Dirk Nowitzki was going to be out for an early chunk of the season. They had lost a handful of veteran leaders. And they were coming off yet another summer where they failed to land any big names. Mark Cuban‘s philosophy felt like it was in a tailspin, a forever cycle of Plan Bs that weren’t quite good enough. Read More »