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Clippers Can’t Close Out In Cleveland, Drop 7th Straight

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Two underperforming teams in the early season, the Los Angeles Clippers and Cleveland Cavaliers went to battle Friday night at Quicken Loans Arena.

Injuries continued to plague Los Angeles as three typical starters, Pat Beverly, Danilo Gallinari and Milos Teodosic would all find themselves out.

Injuries or not, this Clippers team came out ready to play in Cleveland. Coming off six consecutive losses Los Angeles looked like they were done with their losing ways and stuck it to the Cavaliers early. DeAndre Jordan in the low post offensively was the team’s game plan against a Cleveland squad that is missing a true Center.

It worked. Jordan has struggled to start off the new season but Friday he was feeling it. Jordan went an impressive 10-12 from the field and dropped in 20 points in the process. The big man looked more comfortable in every facet of his game and was able to snatch 22 rebounds and swat away 3 shots in what was his best game so far in this young season.

Ball movement played a big part in the Clippers success as well. The ball zipped around the court better than it has all season and the stats reflect just that. Los Angeles had 46 field goals and assisted on 29 of them. That ball movement came from everybody but none benefitted more from it than the Clippers Forwards.

Against the Cavs Forward tandem of LeBron James and Jae Crowder, Blake Griffin and Wesley Johnson stood out. Griffin had one of his most well-rounded performances of the season with 23 points to go along with 12 rebounds and 5 assists. Johnson has arguably been the biggest surprise of the Clippers season so far and against a tough matchup in this one he continued to shine. Johnson stepped up on defense and finished with 4 blocks and 3 steals. But it wasn’t just defense where he stepped up. Johnson closed out the game with 15 points going 3-7 from long range.

Los Angeles played a terrific game but they allowed Cleveland to stick around. The Clippers would take a big lead and then let the Cavs get right back into the game and they continued to do this all game long. Up by 14, up by 2. Up by 10, up by 3. Letting a team with the best player in the world hang around is dangerous and Los Angeles found that out the hard way.

This game was tied in the final minute after a great fourth quarter by James that saw him score 16.

That fantastic finish by James helped put this game into Overtime.

And once this one got into Overtime it was the Cavaliers that heated up and the Clippers that cooled off. It took Los Angeles two and a half minutes to get their first bucket of the extra period, Cleveland was already up by 6 at that point. Then Kevin Love started to hit his shot.

The late spurt would be enough to propel Cleveland to a 118-113 win over Los Angeles giving the Clippers their seventh straight defeat.

This was a well played game by the Clippers but they gave away chances late and came up against a team talented enough to take advantage. The Charlotte Hornets are up tomorrow in what seems to be a winnable game for this team.

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