OAKLAND — Double yikes.
A Times columnist suggests the Lakers might have been looking past Philadelphia to a date with the Clippers in explaining the loss to the 76ers the other night.
And now here we are in Oracle Arena for a “Warriors WhiteOut,” everyone in the place given a white T-shirt and placard like this is going to be some kind of playoff game with the Clippers.
The Clippers!
It makes sense. Why waste such emotion on the Lakers?
“It’s big. Big,” Clippers Coach Vinny Del Negro says with more than a hint of sarcasm. “It’s Jan. 2, I believe. But that’s good.”
So was Del Negro going to advise his players they were in for a big game?
“No, I probably won’t bring it up,” Del Negro says. “They would laugh at that.”
Who is laughing now?
The Warriors ran out to a 26-8 lead, 82-64 after three quarters and a TV blackout back home might be the only thing to save the Clippers’ dignity.
“We are just terrible; we just didn’t match their intensity,” Chris Paul says. “They hit us in the mouth and we reacted instead of being the aggressor.”
It was obvious the young Warriors were here to make a statement, and the Clippers were more than willing to oblige them.
Golden State’s Richard Jefferson was credited in the morning newspaper here as saying, “This situation doesn’t come along often in this league, where a team that is red hot and a team that’s rolling collide.
“You’ve got to embrace it, capitalize on it and be ready.”
The Warriors called it the “Golden State Showdown,” the first of three remaining games with the Clippers as if these were the Yankees taking on the Red Sox.
The Clippers, meanwhile, played it like they did against Denver and folded.
They opted not to play defense, Del Negro warning them earlier in the day that’s how they have achieved their success and they might want to employ some against the Warriors.
“But it wasn’t there,” Del Negro says when the Warriors go on to score 115 points and win by 21.
It’s understood the Clippers built a 17-game winning streak by taking advantage of a soft schedule, but how about a little sign of life when matched against teams that think they are playing one of the better teams in the league?
Over the decades most teams have saved their best shot for the arriving Lakers. It’s what happens with good teams.
