Griffin has put Clippers into NBA title contender conversation

The Los Angeles Clippers lost 110-100 on the road to the Denver Nuggets last Monday, but not too much should be read into the result.

No, the Nuggets are not good this year, but Denver, at its mile-high elevation, is always a difficult venue for visiting NBA teams. Moreover, over the course of an 82-game season, bad teams beat good teams, now and then.

What made it notable, instead, was how long it had been since the Clippers had suffered a defeat.

They went nearly a month without losing, from February 21 until that loss in Denver on March 17. In between, they won 11 in succession, orchestrating one of the more impressive runs of any team this season.

The streak allowed the Clippers to put themselves into position to become the top team in the strong Western Conference, if a few things break right. They also announced their arrival as an NBA title contender.

The surge included victories over Oklahoma City, Houston and Golden State. The Clippers also beat Phoenix and New Orleans twice and faced little trouble from a handful of Eastern Conference opponents.

Though the Clippers lack the cachet of clubs such as the Miami Heat, their plus-7.2 points-per-game differential this season is the second-best in the league, ahead of the Thunder and behind only the San Antonio Spurs. The winning streak also changed some minds on their 25-year-old forward, Blake Griffin, long lazily criticised as a flashy, dunks-only kind of player.

This season, those assessments have been exploded as myths. The power forward, who turned 25 last week, has posted career-best scoring (24.4 points per game) and free-throw (70.4 per cent) rates this season, while also offering much-improved defence and a radically underrated passing game.

His “Lob City” alley-oop partner, Chris Paul, is healthy again and steadily continues as the best point guard in basketball.

The Clippers also are getting significant contributions from the centre DeAndre Jordan, who has solidified his inside game (13.7 rebounds and 2.4 blocks per game, 66.5 field-goal percentage), and the perennially inefficient scorer Jamal Crawford has played some of the best basketball of his 13-year career while leading the team’s second unit.

The addition of the veteran forward Danny Granger, who arrived as a trade-deadline castoff from Indiana, by way of Philadelphia, has strengthened the team, as well.

With JJ Redick, the three-point specialist, set to return soon, the Clippers will be that much more well-rounded.

Among the West’s elite teams, the Clippers have a physical edge on Kevin Durant’s Thunder and an energy advantage over Tim Duncan’s Spurs.

It would be presumptuous to label them favourites, given that Clippers, historically inept, have never survived the second round of the play-offs. But they are shaping up as the league’s championship dark horse.

jraymond@thenational.ae

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