NBA

Clippers Continue Slide Into 2017 With Sixth Straight Loss, 114-88, to Thunder

The Clippers celebrated New Year's Eve about as disastrous as Mariah Carey did, with a season-high 26-point loss, 114-88, to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Saturday night.

Goodbye, 2016, and good riddance.

The Los Angeles Clippers are among the many that are happy to say goodbye to the old year as they welcome in the new.

The Clippers celebrated New Year's Eve about as disastrous as Mariah Carey did, with a season-high 26-point loss, 114-88, to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Saturday night.

"2016 is over, so hopefully, going into 2017 we can transform it," said Clippers center Mo Speights. "We have a home stretch, so that will hopefully help us get back playing our brand of basketball."

Russell Westbrook had one of the quickest triple doubles we've ever seen when he tallied 11 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists at the half. He finished with 17 points, 12 rebounds and 14 assists in just 29 minutes.

The MVP front runner is finishes 2016 averaging a triple double with 23.6 points, 10.5 rebounds and 10.7 assists and is on pace to break Oscar Robertson's single-season record of 41 triple doubles. Westbrook concludes the year with 16.

"I think we did a good job of, like you said, playing fast on both sides," said Westbrook. "Defending, getting out in transitioning, getting easy buckets All of that was good for us."

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The loss was the worst of the season for the suddenly free-falling Clippers and came on the heels of a 24-point beat down by the Houston Rockets just 24 hours earlier. 

"I know it's going to be a struggle right now, you can see it. I'm not coaching for tomorrow. I'm coaching for the end of the year, and that's why I kept calling timeouts and making them run stuff; forcing us to run offense," said Clippers head coach Doc Rivers after the game. "Because you can lose your spirit in this. We haven't done that, but you can. So, my job right now is to get us through this. This is a heavy hit for us." 

As Lob City withered away under the power of Westbrook, they closed out 2016 on an NBA-worst six-game losing streak, the longest the franchise has ever had in the Chris Paul era.

Speaking of Paul, he missed his second consecutive game with a strained hamstring and has not played in six of the team's last seven contests. His backcourt mate, J.J. Redick is still recovering from a sore left hamstring, and superstar Blake Griffin is out until at least February after undergoing knee surgery.

To add insult to injury—literally—Clippers center DeAndre Jordan also went down with a left hip and ankle injury in the game, but stayed on the court despite limping noticeably. 

The Clippers current slide looks eerily similar to how they exited the 2016 NBA Playoffs in May. The Clippers dominated the Portland Trail Blazers in their first two games of the best-of-seven series only to see Paul and Griffin go down in Game 3 within minutes of each other.

Both stars were lost for the remainder of the playoffs, and the Clippers would lose the next four games leading to another early exit from the postseason. 

The basketball Gods have bestowed their curse upon the club and proven that without Paul and Griffin, the Clippers are among the minnows of the NBA. Nothing has been working for L.A. as they've trotted out five different starting lineups in the past five games to no avail.

The Clippers had the best record in the NBA through the first 16 games of the season, but are just 8-12 since, and have dropped from first to seventh in the Western Conference Standings.

"We're losing games. We're dropping in the standings, but at the end of the day, it's all good. It really is," Rivers said, doing his best to brighten the mood around the team. "We have to get through this. Learn something. Learn something from each other, too. You can learn a lot about your team when you're struggling." 

Here's toasting to good health for one of the NBA's most entertaining teams in 2017.

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