Clippers Shrivel After Coming Close to Beating Suns

Sherman Douglas had the ball near the top of the key and the 24-second clock was close to running out on the Clippers. He dribbled to his left and made a nice spin to shake Phoenix guard Jason Kidd and then slid by the Suns’ Cliff Robinson for a layup.

It was a play Douglas could not have made when the teams met two months ago, but now his conditioning has improved, he’s starting to play like the point guard the Clippers had envisioned when he signed a day before their opener.

But other than that, not much has changed since the Suns defeated the Clippers twice within the first nine days of the season.

Phoenix proved that Tuesday night by spotting the Clippers, who played without leading scorer Maurice Taylor, a lead for more than three quarters before riding the open-court skills of Kidd to an 88-83 victory before 6,450 at the Sports Arena.

Despite playing without two injured key players in Tom Gugliotta, who did not make the trip because of a hyper-extended right knee, and Rex Chapman, on the injured listwith a toe problem, all the Suns needed was Kidd to get things rolling and to wait for the fragile and selfish Clippers to fall apart under pressure.

“On this team, when we see a guy go out of the context of our offense, it kind of throws a whack into things,” said Douglas, who had seven points and seven assists with three turnovers. “When you see a guy jack up a shot it kind of snowballs.”

Kidd, who had a season-high 10 turnovers, was having one of his worst games of the year until Phoenix Coach Danny Ainge was ejected for arguing a non-call with official Ron Olesiak late in the third quarter.

Kidd already had thrown at least two passes deep into the crowd instead of to a teammate, but then took the game into his hands. He finished with 22 points on nine-for-16 shooting and added eight rebounds and six assists.

With the Clippers holding a five-point lead early in the fourth quarter, Kidd turned two length-of-the-floor drives into consecutive three-point plays.

In between his scores, Darrick Martin shot an airball from beyond the arc and failed to foul Kidd on his drive before he made the layup. Clipper Coach Chris Ford tried his best to hide his frustration with Martin’s sequence of miscues.

“You hate to point the finger at one play,” Ford said. “But that certainly let the air out.”

For most of the game, the Clippers looked like they were headed for their fourth win. It wasn’t as if they were playing great basketball, but they were doing enough to stay in front of a flat Phoenix team.

Behind Eric Piatkowski, who tied a career high with 29 points, the Clippers led, 50-40, at halftime. They were getting the ball inside to their big men, and perimeter players like Piatkowski and Lamond Murray, who had 10 points off the bench, were knocking down their shots.

That all began to change in the third quarter when Phoenix went to a halfcourt press to try to take the ball out of the hands of the Clipper guards. This tactic worked. Even before Ainge’s ejection, the Suns had cut the Clipper lead to one.

“We just didn’t handle the press,” Ford said. “It took a while for our guys to realize where they needed to be. We needed to attack the press and we just didn’t do that.”

The Clippers still led, 65-62, heading into the fourth but early in the quarter, Martin--who may have been hit on his attempt--shot the airball.

From there, the Clippers folded like they have most of the season when play got tight.

“We didn’t respond the way we should have responded,” Douglas said. “When the tough get going, we gotta get tough too. We weren’t aggressive like we were in the first three quarters.”

Robinson added 22 points and George McCloud and Danny Manning each had 13 off the bench for Phoenix.