The visiting Indiana Pacers and Los Angeles Clippers will bring impressive defensive credentials into the first of two matchups between the teams this month when they face off Thursday at Inglewood, Calif.
The Clippers are third in the NBA through Tuesday with 107.5 points allowed per game as well as opponents’ offensive rebounds allowed at 10.0. The Pacers are near the bottom third of the league in both categories, but they do have the Eastern Conference Defensive Player of the Month for January in Andrew Nembhard.
Yet, both teams will have to pick up the pieces defensively after absorbing losses Tuesday.
While the Clippers fell 122-97 at home against the Los Angeles Lakers in a game that never was competitive, the Pacers saw a four-game winning streak come to an end in a 112-89 road loss to the Portland Trail Blazers.
The Pacers still have won 12 of 15 games since the start of January after starting the new year two games under .500. The run of success has helped Indiana into the fourth spot of the Eastern Conference standings.
But the Pacers have yet to find their legs on a West Coast trip. Before the loss at Portland, they edged the Utah Jazz 112-111 on Monday in a game where they were a comfortable favorite.
Nembhard scored 17 points on 6-of-10 shooting at Portland. The rest of his Pacers teammates went a combined 28 of 71 (39.4 percent) overall in the second game of a back-to-back.
Indiana was held under 90 points for just the second time this season and the first since Nov. 8.
“(The Blazers) created a situation where the tempo and the physicality was dictated by them,” Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle said after his team’s six-game road winning streak ended. “We were behind the curve. We’ve simply got to be better. We’ve got to be more persistent, we’ve got to play with more attitude, and we didn’t do it.”
The Clippers also ran into a tempo buzzsaw Tuesday when the Lakers picked up their offensive pace and never relented. It was the eighth time this season that the Clippers gave up at least 122 points.
Just over 15 minutes into the game, the Clippers were already down by 24 points and never cut the deficit under 13 the rest of the way. Norman Powell scored 20 points, while Kawhi Leonard had 11, the lowest total over his past nine games, and James Harden scored just seven.
Leonard has played just 12 games, making his season debut Jan. 4 after dealing with knee soreness.
“Kawhi’s not Kawhi yet,” Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue said. “He’s on limited minutes. And so, if we don’t do what we’ve been doing all year, it’s going to be a long season for us.
“We got to play harder every night. We got to compete every single night to be in these games and if we don’t, we can get beat by anybody.”
The Clippers and Pacers have split each of the past three season series. Last season, the Pacers won on the road against the Clippers for the first time since April 1, 2018.
