The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Zubac says that team needs to be more on the defensive
The Clippers’ Ivica Zubac didn’t hesitate when asked what led to the team’s fivegame losing streak that was halted by a 135-129 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies on Sunday.
The Croatian center simply said what everyone already knows.
“Last couple games we’re doing pretty good offensively, but we just can’t get any stops,” Zubac said. “I think getting back to the team that we were in the beginning of the year when I think we were one of the top three defensive teams in the league — I think that’s who we can be, who we should be if we want to be in a position to win a championship.”
Currently, the Clippers, despite their streak-snapping victory against Memphis, are closer to the playin tournament than an NBA championship. At 34-33, they are eighth in the Western Conference, where only two games separate them from a postseason spot and an early vacation.
“Obviously we have all the pieces,” Zubac said. “We have to put it all together. We better because right now we are not showing that we are a team who can win a championship. Right now, we’re in a play-in spot so there’s obviously a lot of stuff we have to do to improve and be better at.”
And that, Zubac said, is the team’s often-times porous defense, which allowed the Grizzlies to score 51 points in the third quarter before the Clippers buckled down defensively and stopped the bleeding to pull out the victory.
Coach Tyronn Lue has talked ad nauseum about the need to improve defensively. So, instead of just talking about it, he was going to do something about it.
Lue said the focus of Monday’s practice — and several practices over the next two weeks — would be the team’s defense. With only one remaining back-to-back situation at the end of the season, the Clippers have a rare chance to work out the kinks in several areas of their game, especially in protecting the rim and making better decisions in transition from start to finish.
“Just (work on getting) better defensively,” Lue said. “Cleaning up some things. Just getting our new guys on the same page as well, but also just understanding, getting back to our defensive foundation, what we need to do. (Figure out) how we need to be better and clean up a lot of that stuff today and tomorrow.”
While Sunday’s victory boosted the morale of the locker room, Paul George cautioned against thinking it was a cure-all for the team’s recent struggles. One victory, one that included a colossal defensive breakdown, isn’t necessarily going to save the season.
“I mean we’ll see,” George said. “This means nothing if we don’t buy into what we can do and what we can be. So, we’ll see. If we don’t treat the next games with the same (intensity) that we treated that fourth quarter tonight then what are we doing here?”
Lue is hoping that Sunday’s fourth-quarter comeback and the feeling of winning after nine days of losing stays with the Clippers. He said they need to start games with intensity instead of waiting until they are down by double digits.
“We need to be able to defend from start to finish,” Lue said. “We just can’t pick and choose when we want to do it.”