LOS ANGELES — There are losses and then there are games like the Clippers’ 145-108 defeat against the Boston Celtics on Saturday afternoon.
So complete was the defeat, there wasn’t one statistical category Boston didn’t control, from field goal shooting to rebounds and assists.
Still, Clippers coach Tyronn Lue didn’t see the 37-point loss as a setback from the progress they had made the past three weeks when they went on a nine-game winning streak. He said the combination of Kawhi Leonard’s absence, a tough road trip and early start played a role in their second consecutive loss.
“We knew it was going to be a challenge, but we didn’t want to use it as an excuse,” Lue said. “To start the game, I thought we were OK, I think it’s 14-12, 16-14, something like that. And then we kind of let the game get away from us with that 3-point barrage.
“We just got to be better. We will and we’re not going to get discouraged by these last two games. We built a lot of good things and so just come back on Tuesday (against the Charlotte Hornets) and hopefully get back on the winning track.”
Of all the advantages the Celtics held at the end, the most notable was from 3-point range. Boston made 25 of 53 3-point attempts at a 47.2% clip, accounting for the large disparity. By comparison, the Clippers attempted just 34 long-range shots, making 11 (32.4%).
Boston leads the league in 3-point attempts with 2,427.
“They just, that’s just how they play, and I wouldn’t say it necessarily have caught us by surprise but it was definitely a team that was hot,” Clippers All-Star Paul George said.
The bad vibes began before tipoff, when Terance Mann addressed the crowd, wishing everyone in attendance a happy holiday before looking up into the stands and added, “I see a lot of green. I don’t like it.”
He wasn’t talking about the holiday colors that dotted Crypto.com Arena.
The green belonged to the large contingent of Celtics fans, who delighted in the lopsided loss, eliciting at times “Let’s go, Celtics!” chants. The color and cheers only seemed to elevate the Clippers’ frustrations throughout the afternoon, largely due in part to Jayson Tatum, who returned to the lineup after missing one game because of a left ankle sprain, and Jaylen Brown.
The rest was their own undoing.
The Clippers were coming off a three-game trip in which they saw their league-tying winning streak end in Oklahoma City. Like that game, the Clippers didn’t have Leonard on Sunday. He was ruled out shortly before the matinee tipoff because of a hip injury suffered Wednesday against the Dallas Mavericks. And without their leading scorer, the Clippers seemed lost.
They were disjointed on defense, allowing Boston to score inside and out, dominated on the glass, outshot from the field and outhustled on everything else.
Whatever progress the Clippers had made defensively during their nine-game winning streak wasn’t evident against the Eastern Conference’s top team.
“Hopefully we will get back healthy and we just try to see what takeaways from the last two games and go from there,” George said.
“We’re in a great spot. We won nine leading up to the two losses. It’s the NBA. Every team is going to be a challenge. We played two of the better teams in the NBA. Doesn’t derail from where we’re headed and where we’re trying to get to.”
They stumbled, though, against the Celtics (22-6).
Boston keyed on the Clippers’ soft perimeter defense, burying 15 3-pointers before halftime, and lack of offensive rebounds to build a commanding lead that swelled to 28 points.
The Celtics sealed the game less than two minutes into the third quarter with a 10-2 run, turning a 68-51 halftime lead into a 25-point advantage. The Clippers never came close to catching the Celtics.
Tatum, who came into the game averaging 26.8 points, led all scorers with 30 points on 9-of-16 shooting, including five 3-pointers, and sat the entire fourth quarter. Brown added 24 points and six rebounds, while Jrue Holiday had 20 points, six rebounds and seven assists.
Overall, the Celtics shot 52.1% from the field, compared to the Clippers’ 46.1%
For their part, the Clippers were led by George’s 21 points and Ivica Zubac’s 16 points and 10 rebounds. James Harden finished with 14 points and nine assists, but they got little from their other two starters.
Amir Coffey scored just two points in 17 minutes and Mann missed all 10 of his shots.
Before the game, Lue said his game plan to avoid a 3-point shooting contest was to either attack the paint and get to the basket, or if that failed, spray the shots out to the corners and “drive and attack again.”
“We just can’t get caught up in their game,” Lue said.
It wasn’t a contest. The Celtics connected on 15 shots from 3-point range in the first 24 minutes, equaling the Clippers’ total number of attempts. And that was without Boston big man Kristaps Porzingis, who missed the game because of a sprained ankle, and its other center Luke Kornet (abductor strain).
“For sure every game there is a bunch of stuff you can learn from, and Ty is always looking at ways to improve and the stuff we can implement in our game,” Zubac said. “He’s always trying out stuff in the games so you can take away a lot from this game and get better from it.”
