Sixers Lose by 45 to Team Wearing T-Shirts
Of all the franchises in the NBA, the Los Angeles Clippers are historically the worst. (They’re kind of like the Phillies of basketball.) Of all the NBA teams, only the 10-year-old Charlotte Bobcats have a worse winning percentage. This is a franchise where notoriously penny-pinching owner Donald Sterling once held a Black History Month event in March. The team has won 1 division title and been to the playoffs only 9 times.
Anyway, the Clippers’ biggest win in franchise history is now over the Sixers.
Last night, the Clippers plastered the 76ers, 123-78,. To make things worse, the Clippers were wearing those stupid new T-shirt jerseys. SI.com surveys the damage.
L.A. held leads of 13-0, 30-5, 46-15 (at the end of the first quarter), 66-23, 69-29 (at halftime), 89-33 and 100-51 (at the end of the third quarter) before coasting to a 123-78 final score. Remarkably, it was worse than it sounds.
30-5! It’s the type of score you’d see in an eight-foot rim in-house league of third graders. Here is a play typical of the evening:
The Clippers had enough points to win the game — 79 — at the 8:14 mark of the third quarter. The Sixers shot 27-for-100, 3-for-28 from three point range and, hey, 21-of-25 from the free throw line. (Minor victory No. 1.) Meanwhile, Los Angeles made 50 of its 89 shots. The Clippers’ starters didn’t play the fourth quarter. (Minor victory No. 2: The Sixers outscored the Clippers’ backups in the 4th, 27-23.) No doubt the Blake Griffin–Chris Paul Clippers are different from the teams of yesteryear, but losing to the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls by this much would still have been embarrassing.
The celebrities attending the game were thrilled.
Is Norristown’s Tommy Lasorda a Sixers fan? We know he hates mascots; maybe he was influential in the killing off of Hip-Hop.
The Sixers (15-37) are 3-16 in their last 19 games and have lost six in a row. (Happy, tankers?) They play Golden State tonight at 10:30.
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