LA Clippers endure another flat Wednesday home game

The Clippers had some explaining to do following their unlikely 87-81 loss to the lowly Denver Nuggets on Wednesday night at Staples Center. It reminded guard J.J. Redick of another home loss this month to another lousy team on the same night of the week.

“You’re going to have games throughout the season where you come out flat,” he said. “Whether it is energy (or) focus, those games happen. You’re not going to play 82 perfect games. In the second half, we got back into it with our defense. I thought we gave ourselves a chance to win.

“It is nights like tonight where the really great teams figure out how to win. We’ve had some games where we have done that. I mentioned a couple weeks ago, the Atlanta game, the Indiana game.”

Redick was speaking of narrow January road victories.

“But tonight’s game and the (Miesota) Timberwolves game this month, Wednesday night games at home, they are frustrating games to lose,” he said. “We feel like those games, that if we play the right way, we will win.”

The Nuggets are 23-35. The Timberwolves, now 18-40, defeated the Clippers 108-102 on Feb. 3 at Staples Center.

Although coach Doc Rivers indicated his team played with “the right intentions,” point guard Chris Paul was another who suggested there may have been an overall lack of pizzazz.

“It was a tough loss,” said Paul, whose team next plays at 7:30 Friday at Sacramento. “You have to give them a lot of credit for playing hard, but at the same time we have to win games like this.

“I came out before the game started and said, ‘We have to bring our own energy.’ It was kind of flat out there, kind of dead tonight. In these tight games, we have to win.”

3-point woes

Perhaps the main reason the Clippers (37-20) lost to the inferior Nuggets is because they couldn’t get it through their heads that the 3-point shot was not falling. The Clippers took a franchise-record 46 3-point shots. That was more than half of their 85 shots overall.

That wouldn’t have been an issue had the Clippers made a decent percentage, but they made only 13 (28.3 percent). The biggest offender was Wesley Johnson, who tossed up one errant long-distance shot after another, finishing 1 of 7 from beyond the arc.

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“We just have to have a short-term memory and move on to the next game,” Johnson said. “The thing about the NBA is that we have to redeem ourselves the next game.”

Dangerous Kings

Sacramento will enter Friday’s game against the Clippers with a 24-32 record after a 108-92 loss to the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday. But the Kings were in 10th place in the Weste Conference standings before Thursday’s slate of games, just four games out of a playoff spot.

That makes Sacramento a dangerous opponent for the Clippers, who had seven- and five-point wins over the Kings in late October, but lost to them 110-103 on Jan. 16 at Staples Center. That snapped a Clippers 10-game wiing streak.

Sacramento is led by center DeMarcus Cousins, who averages 27.2 points, 11.2 rebounds and 1.3 blocks. Rudy Gay is averaging 17.9 points and point guard Rajon Rondo is doling out 12 assists per game. He had 18 assists Wednesday against the Spurs.

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