Nick Young, that is, the Clippers swingman who ran more or less roughshod through what passed for Thunder defense tonight as the Clips came back from an eleven-point deficit to tie the game at 66 after three quarters and utterly crush Oklahoma City in the fourth, 92-77, winning the season series and clinching a playoff spot in the process.

And Young, who got 19 points on 7-10 shooting, deserves as much credit as you can give him, because the L. A. offense was maybe half a tick better than meh. Still, Chris Paul moves the ball like nobody else — he had ten assists — and Blake Griffin mostly played like Blake Griffin, who scored 17 and retrieved 11 rebounds.

Apart from not being able to guard Young, Oklahoma City’s major problem was the inability to generate any offense in the second half. Kevin Durant, who had 19 points at halftime, finished with 24; Russell Westbrook, who had nine, finished with — nine. And the Thunder missed 11 of 29 free throws and 17 of 22 treys on the way to their worst numbers of the year.

But hey, it’s after midnight. Bring on the Suns. It can’t possibly get any worse. (Famous last words, indeed.)

You’re forgiven if you weren’t thinking of the Los Angeles Clippers as a defense-minded outfit. I mean, yeah, they have Blake Griffin, though he’s known more for dunkaliciousness. But Blake was hauling in the rebounds left and right tonight — he finished with 12 — and Chris Paul, held to seven points in the first half, exploded; the Clips held the Thunder to a mere 13 points in ten minutes and took a five-point lead at the two-minute mark. Then Serge Ibaka did one of his patented Air Congo dunks, and Kevin Durant fired a three-pointer right over Griffin’s scalp, and suddenly with 32 seconds left, it was tied at 98. CP3 was not done yet: he managed to use just over 23 seconds to drive to the rim for a layup, Durant backrimmed a trey, and the Blakers, who always seem to have the Thunder’s number, pulled off a 100-98 win.

By “exploded,” incidentally, I mean “24 points in the second half.” That’s 31 for Paul. Then again, the Clips’ big push in the fourth started with the second unit, while Paul rested for the stretch run. Reserve swingman Nick Young, in fact, had the highest plus/minus of the night: +11. The Clips outshot the Thunder, 47-41 percent, though OKC had two more rebounds. (And the Thunder made 12 of 26 treys, though the question remains: why are they trying 26 treys?) L. A. didn’t get to the foul line that often, but they made 19 of 21, not bad for a team that is known for clanking them. (Even Griffin, arguably the worst, only missed one.)

The problem for OKC was too many shots that didn’t go anywhere useful, although you can probably thank the Clippers for some of that. Durant went 7-21; Russell Westbrook was 3-14. (Westbrook did put up 15 free throws, making 13 of them.) I mean, when your most efficient offense comes from Derek Fisher — 3-5, 2-2 from three, 8 points in less than 15 minutes — someone needs to raise the You’re Doing It Wrong flag. All the role-playing guys played their roles; it’s just that the stars were misaligned, or out of position, or something.

The Kings will be here Friday night. Saturday night, it’s off to Minnesota. As Scott Brooks might say, these guys can play. We’ll see the Clippers once more, at the Staples Center, as if having to play the Lakers there once more wasn’t bad enough.

Last night, as the Thunder were fumbling against the Jazz, I said something to the effect that “It’s hard to see how Derek Fisher would have helped this situation much.” As the phrase goes, I spoke too soon. Fisher was in town today, signed a deal about forty-five seconds after he came off waivers — this would have been just short of 5:01 pm Central — and suited up tonight against the Clippers. Bumped ahead of rookie Reggie Jackson in the rotation, the crafty veteran played nineteen minutes, served up an assist, pulled down a rebound, and sent up three treys, one of which made. Give him a +12 for the night, and credit for scaring the bejesus out of the Clippers while he was out there. The season series is now even, 1-1, as the Thunder got a surprisingly easy 114-91 win.

The Clips actually stayed close early on: they shot a lousy 37 percent from the floor, but they managed to make twelve of twenty-six three-balls, which kept them within something resembling striking distance until late. Chris Paul got the only double-double of the night — 13 points, 10 dimes — but he was held to 3 of 12 from the floor. (Telltale statistic: The only consistent Clipper scorer was Randy Foye, who sank five treys and finished with 23 points yet wound up -26.) People love Blake Griffin around here, and they love him even better when he shoots 3 for 11.

But don’t be too impressed by that negative number on Foye. Lazar Hayward, the only Thunderman in the minus zone, played nine minutes and hit two treys. Kevin Durant was back in good form, scoring 32 on 10-18 shooting and all 11 of his free throws; Russell Westbrook tossed up 19; Serge Ibaka 15 and James Harden 10. OKC won most of the numbers: rebounds (49-31), assists (20-19), turnovers (unfortunately) (16-12), and technical fouls. Four T’s: Westbrook, Thabo, Harden and Perkins. (Los Angeles got one, but it was on their coach. Del Negro, please.)

The Spurs are disposing of Minnesota at this writing; whatever remains of the T-Wolves will be here Friday night.

Dan B. at Basketbawful saw this coming:

“The home team won each of the four games in last season’s series, with the Thunder shooting 20.0 percent (8 for 40) from 3-point range and 39.5 percent overall in two defeats at Staples Center.” And that’s against last year’s sad sack Clippers! Not this year’s Super Clippers.

And the home team won this one, big time. The Thunder led 4-0 early on, but that was it: the Clips were up 11 after the first quarter, 18 after the second, and pocketed a 112-100 win.

All five L.A. starters, plus Mo Williams, scored in double figures; Chris Paul had 14 assists, almost as much as than the entire Thunder team. (And DeAndre Jordan had 11 rebounds, so score two double-doubles for the Clips.) Los Angeles kept their shooting percentage over 50 percent all night, and routinely cashed in from beyond the arc (12 of 24). The Thunder did neither of these things, despite 36 (and 13 boards) from Kevin Durant and 31 from Russell Westbrook. (James Harden, starting in place of the ailing Thabo Sefolosha, was held to 7 points.) Scott Brooks threw in the towel at the 1:36 point, and the reserves finished the job.

Next matchup with these guys is in March in OKC. Maybe we’ll have a shot at them then. In the meantime, I’m having a problem trying to figure out how these Clippers managed to lose six of their first 18 games. And the Mavs await in Dallas on Wednesday.

After the Clippers thrashed the Thunder in Los Angeles Saturday night, you might have expected a certain urgency this evening. The first quarter, which ended with the Clips up 31-21, didn’t show a whole lot of it. OKC began battening it down, and worked their way to a twelve-point lead in the fourth quarter. But The Other L. A. Team always does well against the Thunder, and they put together a 10-2 run at the end, topped off with a Blake Griffin dunk, followed by some excellent harassment on the inbound. But it wouldn’t go beyond that, and Oklahoma City officially clinched the Northwest Division title with the 112-108 win.

I think by now we’ve learned that the Clips are a bit more than just Griffin’s backup squad. The Blakester did knock down 35 points, a game high, but five of his teammates broke into double figures, and Los Angeles shot just over 50 percent for the night. And if Griffin has perhaps too much ham in him — the man hangs on the rim like he’s glued there — he works his tail off. (And DeAndre Jordan, who normally doesn’t hang on the rim, lingered a bit too long once and got T’d up for it. Go figure.)

The Thunder offense, as usual, was mostly Kevin Durant (29 points) and Russell Westbrook (26); Serge Ibaka made it to 15. Meanwhile, Kendrick Perkins was pulling down 17 boards, 10 off the offensive glass. While OKC didn’t shoot especially well — 43 percent — they hit 25 of 29 freebies for 86 percent. If you pay attention to plus/minus, the Thunder bench was plus, and so was Westbrook, but everyone else was on the wrong side of the ledger.

So it’s a 2-2 split with the Clips this season. I get the feeling that they’re one season away from contending for a playoff slot — and that they always will be. For now, though, we have to sweat the second rematch of the week: against Denver, albeit here in the Quarter-Mile-High City, a friendlier milieu by far.

Rather a lot of WTF moments at the Staples Center tonight, starting with a fistful of technicals, including a pair of offsetting Ts (Blake Griffin and Nick Collison) and one to each coach. Of course, one could also ask how it is that the Thunder were up twelve at the half and were down two fourteen minutes later, but that’s a bit more easily explainable: at least once in every game, everything just jells for the Clippers and they put together a seriously impressive run. If they could do that on a consistent basis, they wouldn’t be flirting with the 50-loss mark. Griffin, as almost always, was the top scorer, but Eric Gordon fired a trey with 43 seconds left to break a tie, and after Russell Westbrook fouled out — Serge Ibaka was already gone — Randy Foye iced the game with three out of four from the stripe. It was Clippers 98, Thunder 92, the Other L. A. Team’s second win in three tries over OKC.

In some ways, this game replicated the debacle in Portland the night before: first half good, second half crapola. The Clips outshot the Thunder by three percentage points and got a couple more rebounds, but the X factor here was the general failure of the Thunder starters to execute up to spec. Westbrook hit only one from the floor all night, though he did deliver the ball well (9 dimes); Ibaka scored in double figures, but collected only four boards; Kevin Durant was 10 for 24 and missed all four attempts from beyond the arc.

Meanwhile, Griffin had about his twelve thousandth double-double, and DeAndre Jordan got one too. Moreover, the Clippers put up 38 foul shots and collected on 27 of them. (Griffin went 12-18 from the stripe.) The Thunder, which usually can cash in at the foul line, only got 24 shots, 20 of which went. Add to this a six-point advantage in points in the paint, and you start to wonder how come the Clippers didn’t actually turn this into a blowout.

Six games to go, and the first four will be hairy: at Denver, back home the next night against the Clippers, followed two nights later by the Nuggets, and then off to the Left Coast again, to face the Lakers on Sunday and the Kings on Monday. There’s one last home game — against Milwaukee — but right now, Oklahoma City has more to fear than the Deer.

One thing I have never understood is how come the Clippers always win in Oklahoma City. It’s hard enough for them to win at home most of the time, but they’re always playing above their pay grade here in the Big Breezy.

Then again, I wrote that lead-in before the game was actually finished, so imagine those first few lines being magically erased before your very eyes as the Thunder post a 111-88 win over Blake Griffin and company.

And we mention Griffin first because, well, he was the dominant player tonight: in 33 minutes, he rolled up 28 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists, game-high in all three. If they’d wheeled a sedan under the basket, he’d have dunked over it. And with Griffin catching fire early, the Clips got an early lead; they shot a respectable 46 percent, almost the same from beyond the arc, and actually served up more dimes than the Thunder. But the Blakester can’t do it all, and only reserve guard Eric Bledsoe scored more than a dozen for The Other L.A. Team.

Finding someone to defend against Griffin occupied much of Scott Brooks’ time. Jeff Green got into foul trouble early; Serge Ibaka got into foul trouble slightly less early. Fortunately, Griffin was blah at the stripe (10-17), and Green (22 points) and Ibaka (10 rebounds) were effective elsewhere. (Telltale statistic: Nick Collison, also thrown at Griffin, snagged only two points, but he finished +25 for the night, higher than anyone else.) And after the Thunder closed out the first half with a 13-0 run, the Clips were toast. (Oh, that Durant guy? 21 points. Westbrook had 13.)

All in all, not a bad way to come back from the All-Star break, though tomorrow night in San Antonio will likely be a stiffer challenge, and Friday in Orlando is not exactly a trip to Disney World.

With 4:30 left in the third quarter at the Staples Center, the Thunder were down by 21 points (73-52), and radio guy Matt Pinto solemnly reported that the Clippers had at that point made seven of twelve treys, OKC zero of twelve. He didn’t have to mention that this was a difference of, yes, 21 points.

It wasn’t technically over then — right after that timeout, Daequan Cook actually sank a three-ball, and Russell Westbrook got one on the next possession — but Oklahoma City never pulled within ten points again, and the previously-winless Clippers hung a 107-92 loss on the punchless Thunder, who once again failed to break 40 percent shooting.

Oh, yes: Blake Griffin. Definitely puts the “power” in “power forward.” In 32 minutes he contributed 18 points and hauled in nine rebounds, four of them off the offensive glass. Eric Gordon had the game high of 27.

Who led the Thunder scoring? Jeff Green, with 19 points and nine boards. Kevin Durant had sixteen on 6-24 (!) shooting, including an amazing 0-10 from beyond the arc. I’m starting to think that Mathias Murphy is starting to get to him.

The occasionally-erratic Fail Blazers aren’t about to lose to this bunch tomorrow night, especially at the Rose Garden.

After being thoroughly schooled by the Nuggets on Wednesday, the Thunder took out their frustrations on the not-as-hapless-as-you’d-heard Clippers at the Staples Center, 104-87, demonstrating two Great Truths: (1) OKC has some serious resilience, and (2) the Clips really miss Marcus Camby.

Defense was definitely a priority: the Thunder blocked 11 shots, pulled off 13 steals, and held L.A. to 37.2 percent shooting, 28.6 from beyond the arc. The Clips weren’t lacking in offense — both Chris Kaman and reserve forward Craig Smith came up with 19 points, Kaman recording a double-double, and sharpshooter Rasual Butler added 17 more — but OKC kept them from putting together any serious runs.

The Thunder landed five players in double figures, led by Kevin Durant with 32; James Harden got 15 off the bench. Nenad Krstić posted a double-double, and Russell Westbrook was one assist short of getting one of his own. (The Russmeister had seven steals, more than the rest of the team combined.) OKC shot a tolerable 45.6 percent, hitting five of 14 treys.

Oh, and rebounds? There were literally a hundred in this game, and OKC snagged 53 of them.

This finishes off the season series, with the Thunder taking two out of three. Another series will be completed Sunday, at Sacramento.

Sports as a form of religion? Well, maybe, but not quite the way you might have thought:

For me, being a Los Angeles Clippers fan for over twenty years has taught me firsthand about the spiritual dimensions of faith and suffering, and has helped me better understand my own Hindu tradition. According to the Bhagavad Gita, a pan-Hindu theological text, we should act righteously in each moment and relinquish attachment to future rewards. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna counsels Arjuna on the battlefield and instructs him to act in the present moment without being attached to the fruits of his labor. In this context, Hinduism shares an Indian philosophical worldview with Buddhism that focuses on the process as opposed to the goal, the present as opposed to the past, and the journey as opposed to the destination.

The Clippers have long been derided as the paradigmatic bottom-feeding NBA team. Indeed, in a famous cover story, Sports Illustrated called them the worst franchise in sports history. But their perennially disappointing seasons are a powerful lesson in Hindu philosophy for Clippers fans. We have no championship banners, no MVPs, no retired jerseys — we don’t even have our own arena. As Clippers fans, we’ve never been attached to the fruits of our fandom because we don’t have any fruits to be attached to!

Maybe it’s karma. Lakers coach Phil Jackson certainly thinks so:

He astutely stated that the Clippers aren’t cursed but rather they suffer from the negative karma accrued by their ownership and management. In Sanskrit, the word karma means “action,” and as a philosophical term, karma refers to causality. Karma is cause and effect — a metaphysical caveat to Newton’s third law of motion. Given that the Clippers have historically been managed from a business perspective instead of from a basketball perspective, the effect has been a financially profitable franchise with only a handful of winning seasons.

Meanwhile, the Cleveland Cavaliers follow the King James version of things.

(Via TrueHoop.)

Know your geography. The Miami RedHawks are not in Florida. (For that matter, neither are the Oklahoma City RedHawks, but you might have figured that one.)

And note for future reference: Iran and Kazakhstan: not the same place. Not even close.

I blame Mike Baldwin. If he hadn’t brought up that silly Clippers Curse business in this morning’s paper, we might never have seen this little debacle, in which the Thunder was downright flat for the first 25 minutes or so, fought back to even it up and even take a one-point lead, only to see Baron Davis hit a trey with 43 seconds left and ice the game. And Blake Griffin, who won’t be seen here at all this season, didn’t have a thing to do with it. The Clippers won 101-93, payback for their loss at the Staples Center last week.

The Clips certainly didn’t play like they were cursed: they hit 48 percent of their shots, and Davis, Chris Kaman and Al Thornton all chalked up 20 points or more. Kareem Rush, hitherto unseen this season, put in 29 minutes, scored 9 and blocked two shots, one more than the entire Oklahoma City squad.

In fact, most of the Thunder numbers were not good, including a meager 39 percent from the floor and only 17 assists. Kevin Durant, in the midst of all this, somehow managed to score 40, and Russell Westbrook, more or less inert in the first half, plunked down 17, but really, OKC had only one good quarter: the third, in which they outscored Los Angeles 35-26.

So this makes two years in a row where the Clippers sweep at the Ford. (We play them only three times this year; the last will be in L.A. in March.) And the Thunder drop to 5-5. Then again, last year the fifth loss came in game 6.

This Florida trip is going to be tough, and the Magic, whom we thumped when they were here, will be at something closer to full strength.

This one had the potential to be very, very ugly, and at times it was “agonizing,” as Matt Pinto put it, to behold. But if the Thunder couldn’t shoot, they could (mostly) keep the Clippers from shooting, holding Los Angeles to 10 points in the final quarter to escape the Staples Center with an 83-79 win.

Then again, when Baron Davis had it working, he had it working nicely: the man knows how to work an offense. He dropped in 17 points and served up nine assists; Chris Kaman collected a double-double with 21 points and 11 boards. The Clips managed to hit a meager 35.9 percent from the floor, though they did manage seven treys in twenty attempts.

Speaking of working an offense, Russell Westbrook checked out from that function early, limping off to the locker room; he made it back to the bench, but no farther. This left Kevin Ollie to run the point, and the wily veteran picked up 11 points, as much as the entire L.A. bench. That other guy named Kevin pulled another double-double: Durant had 30 points and 10 rebounds. OKC had a slight edge on the boards, 46-43, and a difference of six personal fouls, by coincidence the number committed by Serge Ibaka in fifteen minutes of pestering the Clips. The Thunder shot only 42.2 percent, but for once that was enough.

So it’s an even split in California. The road trip ends in San Antonio Saturday night; these same Clippers will show up at the Ford on Sunday.

So finally we win one from the Clips. No-longer-interim coach Scott Brooks came up with the idea of starting Shaun Livingston at the two, just in case there was any lingering mental block about coming back to the place where poor Shaun shredded his knee. In his primarily-defensive role, Livingston came up with six points and seven rebounds. And if you thought the Thunder might want to go out with a bang, well, things were certainly incendiary at the Staples Center: Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy decided in the third quarter that he’d seen enough and rolled up two technicals, earning him a free pass to the locker room. Thunder 126, Clippers 85, a blowout by any definition of the word, and a hell of a way to cap off a season.

The Thunder were utterly dominant from start to finish: they shot 53.9 percent, 10 points better than the Clips, and reeled in 49 rebounds versus 31. Two from the OKC bench posted double-doubles: Earl Watson (16 points, 14 assists) and D. J. White (15 points, 11 boards). Nick Collison spent more time in the middle than starter Nenad Krstić and knocked down 17 points. The Big Three? Kevin Durant 26, Jeff Green 19, Russell Westbrook 14, and none of them played as many minutes as Livingston, who logged 33.

Bright spots for L.A. were few and far between, though Mike Taylor’s 60-foot buzzer beater at the end of the third quarter certainly got a rise out of the sellout crowd. And rookie Eric Gordon shot 10 for 15 for 22 points.

So: 23-59. Hollinger actually predicted that, I think. It’s about ten fewer wins than I was anticipating, but then I tend toward the goofily optimistic when it comes to hoops. There will be changes during the summer: two first-round draft picks, a few departing players, and a fair amount of actual cap space, should Sam Presti want a shot at a free agent. But right now, it’s late and it’s a school night.

There’s got to be some explanation for this. The Los Angeles Clippers’ bench was conspicuous by its lack of bench players, most of whom had to start, what with Chris Kaman, Zach Randolph, Marcus Camby and Baron Davis all sidelined with injuries. What’s more, Mardy Collins went down with a pulled hamstring in the first quarter, leaving a total of eight to fill out 48 minutes. And none of that mattered: the M*A*S*H-unit atmosphere of the Staples Center evidently inspired the battered Clippers to play way above their pay grade, as Eric Gordon tossed in 41 points, his career high, and Al Thornton 34 more to give their hometown crowd a 107-104 victory, the third time the Clips have had the Thunder’s number this season.

It’s not like Oklahoma City didn’t bring out the big guns, either: the Kevin Durant Show was good for 46 points, a total he’s never seen before. What’s more, KD outshot the entire L.A. squad at the charity stripe, sinking 24 of 26, and he pulled down 15 rebounds to boot. But Jeff Green and Russell Westbrook both had off nights, and nobody on the team could hold on to the ball: the Thunder committed 18 turnovers, which you can’t do on a night when the opponents only give up seven.

The Clips admittedly didn’t rebound much, but they had other assets: wily veteran Ricky Davis, while he only scored one point, managed to serve up 11 assists, and L.A. knocked down 11 of 19 treys, a better percentage than they managed for their two-point shots. Then there was little-used Cheikh Samb, the Senegalese center who’d played maybe nine minutes all year; in 22 minutes he blocked three shots, hauled in 8 boards, and even scored a bucket. No doubt he was happy to get the time.

So concludes this West Coast trip, at 1-1. Back to the Ford on Monday for the Nets, and Wednesday for the under-new-management Grizzlies, and we won’t have to see the Clippers again until the last game of the season.

The Clippers may actually have gotten to the point where they’re not awful: they’d won two straight, and in their previous win (over the Rockets) all five of the starters had scored in double figures. They did it again tonight. You might think that this doesn’t leave a lot for the bench, and it didn’t — the Clips’ reserves contributed a mere ten points — but what counted in this game was defense, and three quarters out of four the Clippers did a bang-up job of keeping the Thunder from scoring. Final: Los Angeles 98, Oklahoma City 88.

It should be noted that the Thunder did a pretty efficient job of keeping themselves from scoring: they gave up twenty turnovers and missed 10 of 24 free throws. And while the OKC bench did yeoman work, scoring 38, sometimes I wondered what the deal was with the starters. The Kevin Durant Show was good for the usual 25, and Chris Wilcox, who was supposed to be out for another couple of games, had a semi-hot hand, scoring 13. Earl Watson remains the Dime King, serving up 12 assists. Neither Jeff Green nor Russell Westbrook worked miracles, though both scored in double figures.

The Clips’ Eric Gordon had an unusually-hot night, with 22 points; Zach Randolph had a typically-hot night, with 22 points. Baron Davis stole the ball five times and pulled off some seemingly-impossible shots on the way to a 19-point game.

Two more games at home before hitting the road again: the on-again-off-again Raptors, and the apparently-always-on Cavs.

With the T-Wolves sliding past the 76ers tonight, it became a two-team race to the cellar, and the Clippers, down as many as 15 in the second quarter and trailing by three at the half, picked up the Thunder by the scruff of their youngish necks and unceremoniously threw them down the stairs, holding OKC to a meager 16 points in the third quarter and twenty in the fourth, winning 108-88 and dropping the Thunder to 1-11.

All five Clipper starters finished in double figures. Cuttino Mobley was lethal, with 23 points and seven steals; Chris Kaman had 25 points and 14 rebounds. The Clips’ bench didn’t contribute much, but then they didn’t have to.

On the upside for Oklahoma City, they’ve figured out how to work the charity stripe: the team missed none of its 23 foul shots. Still, they were only .400 from the floor, despite four first-half treys, and both Kevin Durant and Jeff Green were held to below their season averages. The bench was mostly punchless except for Damien Wilkins, who is getting minutes in the absence of Desmond Mason; DW had 17 points, second only to Durant’s 18. The Thunder were competitive on the boards, but turned the ball over twenty times; the Clips gave it up only ten. And Chris Wilcox was back; he provided some muscle in the middle, but only four points.

The Hornets will be here Friday, and I expect there will be some nattering about The Ones Who Got Away. It won’t be from me, I hope.