Why did Los Angeles Clippers head coach Ty Lue calls the team ‘soft?’

Following a 133-116 loss to the Indiana Pacers on Monday night, the Los Angeles Clippers more or less cemented their status as a team in crisis. Not only was it the team’s sixth loss in the last nine games, but it saw them drop below the New Orleans Pelicans in the Western Conference standings to the No. 5 spot. A win would have at the least maintained a little distance between them and the Pelicans while protecting home-court advantage for the postseason.

Ty Lue paints a bleak picture in LA

The Clippers’ loss to the Pelicans on Monday night was a demonstration in a lack of effort. Trailing by as much as 23 points at one point, the Clips seemed to be out of ideas at the best of times and playing the wrong sport at the worst of them. To that end, it was no surprise when head coach Ty Lue essentially threw the team under the bus when he spoke post-game. Indeed, Lue spoke specifically about the lack of fight among his men and he didn’t hold back.

“So identity for us, it’s got to be toughness,” Lue said. “Which means physicality, mental and physical toughness, a high-powered offense - we can score in a lot of different ways - and we got to have a defensive mindset. And so right now, do we have an identity? I think, yeah, we’re soft. That can be an identity if you want to call it that. We gotta be tougher, mentally and physically.”

What’s going on with the Clippers?

When you consider the fact that the Clippers went into the All-Star break as the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference with a record of 36-17, it’s hard to understand how the team has gone 8-10 since then to register the 11th worst record in the West. To be fair, that is something that Lue touched on directly before going on to promise that a change was going to come.

“We have an identity, when we were 26-5 we had a great identity,” Lue said. “You can’t pick and choose when you want to lead. You can’t pick and choose when you want to have an identity. You can’t pick and choose when you want to do things the right way. So just do the right things every night and everything else will fall in order. So, guess we do have an identity, we have to get back to that, because we’ve had it. But when you lose games, it’s easy to go the other way and we’re not gonna do that. I’m not gonna let our team do that. I’m tough-minded, I’ve been through everything and so are these guys. So the only way we’re going to get out of it is playing hard for 48 minutes.”

This brings us to the ‘why?’ of the matter. Why have the Clippers been failing recently? In one word: Defense. Now, while we could review the numbers involved, the simple reality is that the Clippers are the 28th-ranked defense in the NBA. Where the arc is concerned, it’s been particularly bad as evidenced by the silly 60.7% that the Pacers shot from 3-point land on Monday night. Truthfully, if even we give the defense a pass the stats would still tell us that the Clippers have only managed to win against teams with losing records - six of seven victories in March to be precise. At this point, it remains unclear as to whether Lue and Co. can get it together, but with only a few weeks left in the regular season and an almost certain date with the Pelicans in the first round of the playoffs, now would be a good time.