Clippers end their 8-game losing streak to Nuggets – Orange County Register

LOS ANGELES — The Clippers couldn’t beat the Denver Nuggets without Nikola Jokic and they certainly have had trouble beating them with the 6-foot-11 center on the floor. There has been no getting around that fact, or him in the past.

But after an inauspicious start, in which they fell behind as many as 15 points, the Clippers took advantage of a rare off night by the two-time league MVP on Wednesday to beat the Nuggets, 111-102, at Crypto.com Arena.

It snapped the Clippers’ eight-game losing streak against the reigning NBA champions and was only their second win in the past 13 meetings.

Since stringing together three wins in a row last month, the Clippers have been stuck on a cycle of a win one, lose one. They hadn’t been able to string together two good games until Wednesday night.

“We just got to play better,” Coach Tyronn Lue said.

The Clippers did play better, in fact, they pushed the Nuggets and kept Jokic off-balance for much of the game. He hit just 9 of his 32 shots for 22 points but had 15 rebounds and 10 assists for another triple-double.

Paul George led the Clippers with 25 points, going 5 for 9 from 3-point range, while James Harden had 20 points and 11 assists and Kawhi Leonard finished with 17 points. Leonard’s back-to-back baskets down the stretch gave the Clippers a 99-93 lead that they never relinquished and secured the unthinkable victory in the process.

Norman Powell added 17 points off the bench and backup center Daniel Theis had 11 rebounds and eight points as the Clippers got back to .500 at 10-10.

The Clippers cranked up the pace of play in the final quarter, never giving the Western Conference-leading Nuggets room to gain traction.

The Nuggets held an 82-79 lead at the start of the final quarter. Russell Westbrook scored the first five points of the period to push the Clippers ahead at 84-82. From there, it was a struggle for both teams to gain more than a three-point advantage.

After sitting out to start the fourth, Jokic came back in, along with Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon. The Clippers countered by bringing Harden and Ivica Zubac back with 7:02 left to play. Neither team was willing to give in.

“We hung in there. We stuck together,” George said in an on-court interview afterward. “We stuck together. We made stops.”

Jokic opened the game by hitting five of his first eight shots, seemingly making up for his absence the last time these teams met at Crypto.com Arena, just last week. He had 12 points and eight rebounds by halftime.

Jokic, along with Murray and Gordon, missed the previous game against the Clippers nine days ago. The Clippers saw it as a chance to end their frustrating streak against the reigning NBA champions. But that didn’t happen. Reggie Jackson and DeAndre Jordan, two former Clippers, picked up the slack left by the trio and handed the Clippers another loss in their head-to-head series, 113-104.

Unlike their previous matchups, though, the Clippers didn’t blink this time. They kept their eye on the possibility of a victory against their Western Conference nemesis and got into a rhythm in the second quarter.

With Jokic on the bench to start the second quarter, the Clippers went to work, outscoring the Nuggets 40-20 to take a 61-57 lead into halftime.