At Clippers home games, you generally wouldn’t use the word “rockin’” to describe the atmosphere. With that, the Los Angeles Clippers are a good team at home, but not a whole lot better than they are on the road. Last season the Clippers won 29 games at Staples Center, 24 away from home. The season before they won 30 at home. The Clippers don’t defend their home court like other elite teams: The past two seasons combined the Clippers have won 19 fewer home games than the Warriors, 15 fewer than the Spurs, five less than the Cavaliers.
Chris Paul wants that to change.
Staples Center can get loud — it has for Kobe Bryant and the Lakers. Chris Paul isn’t laying the blame on the building or Clippers game operations, he told Dan Woike of the Orange County Register it’s on the players to give the fans something to cheer about.“One of the biggest things for us is our home court hasn’t really been a home court,” Paul said. “I don’t know. For some reason we just haven’t made it a tough place to play.
“ … Obviously it’s our mentality. We’re the ones playing. We have to give our crowd something to cheer about, something to get behind. We’ve got to make Staples Center, for our home games, a tough place to play.”
“I feel like sometimes we’re a better road team than we are a home team, and that’s not good,” center DeAndre Jordan said. “I mean it’s good, but we want to be a great team at home and a really, really, really good team on the road. We need to figure out how to transition that, and we’ll be fine, but we’ve got to pick it up at home.”
Los Angeles is a city visiting players circle on the schedule — there’s a lot of fun to be had in the City of Angels. That can have opposing players less focused and not at 100 percent when they take the floor for the game, but the Clippers don’t seem to have that advantage. Do the Clippers relax more at home? Are they too comfortable?
The Clippers are an elite team, but if they are going to advance to the Western Conference Finals it’s not going to be one big thing but a lot of little ones that take them to the next level. Having Staples Center become a real house of horrors for opponents is one of those things. We’ll see if things are different for the Clippers this year.
