Clippers still in search of 'identity' amid hectic stretch of games

Published Dec. 21, 2014 3:38 a.m. ET

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The Los Angeles Clippers are in the midst of one of the toughest stretches of basketball any NBA team will venture on this season.

The Clippers have played 11 games in the first 20 days of December, capped off by a 106-102 win Saturday over the Milwaukee Bucks. To finish the month, the Clippers will play six games over the final 11 days.

Playing so many games in such close proximity to one another has left the Clippers with very little time to practice, which is something head coach Doc Rivers says has hurt his team in the form of slow starts on the defensive end.

"What we can do better is come into the game and have a defensive mindset," Rivers said after the game. "I think because we score so much, I think a lot of times we come into games and feel like, 'let's just go blow them out with our offense.'"

The Clippers have trailed by at least nine points at halftime in three of the previous seven games, all three of which resulted in losses. Saturday night against Milwaukee, the Clippers found themselves in a similar position, down nine points with a shade over one minute to play.

Three defensive stops and seven points later, the Clippers found themselves only down two at halftime.

"I'm trying to convince them that the way you get the ball is with your defense," Rivers said. "When we get multiple stops, we score a lot of points."

After allowing the Bucks to shoot 65 percent from the field in the third quarter, the Clippers clamped down in the fourth and held the Jason Kidd-coached team to just 44 percent shooting (19 points on 18 shots).

"For us, [the difference in the game] was our defense in the fourth quarter," J.J. Redick said a 23-point game. "We talked before the game about having a good defensive mindset and coming out with a better defensive effort."

Now, the Clippers shot just 37.5 percent from the field in the fourth quarter. What helped Los Angeles pull ahead was hitting 10 of 12 foul shots.

"We are still looking for our identity and still looking for consistency night in and night out, in terms of our effort and our trust," Redick said. "We are not where we want to be, but it is still the middle of December. We still have time but there needs to be a sense of urgency. There is no let up for us and we have to find ourselves in upcoming stretch."

With six games still to play in the final 11 days of this crazy month, the Clippers will have to find their identity during games, without the help of practice time, something Rivers feels has really hurt his team, even more than a lack of rest.

"I think more has to do with we haven't had a practice in a month, so it feels like it," Rivers said. "So you have slippage. 

"You go by your eyes. We have our own internal stats that we try to keep, but it's a guessing game. It's so individual, it really is. I probably learned that in Boston, because I had older players. Kevin (Garnett), he had this minute-in-a-row thing. If he went over a certain amount of minutes in a row, he couldn't recover back .... Paul (Pierce), you could play for 50 minutes. And they're the same age. It's so individual in how they handle it."

While there still is time for Rivers to find time to rest his stars, finding the energy to come back from early deficits on a consistent basis is going to be awfully tough against the best teams in the Western Conference.

"You've got to get through it," Chris Paul said after scoring a game-high 27 points. "Every time we do this, the other team is not feeling sorry for us. Everyone is gunning for us anyway, and especially when you're coming off back-to-backs. The tough teams want to kick you when you're down, rightfully so. We just got to keeping finding a way to use everybody."

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