The Los Angeles Clippers’ shiny new home at the Intuit Dome has everything from a double-sided 4K scoreboard to high-tech restrooms. All that’s missing is a victory by the home team.
The Clippers are 0-3 at home heading into a matchup against the visiting Oklahoma City Thunder on Saturday in Inglewood, Calif.
Oklahoma City enters the contest with a perfect 5-0 mark for the first time since 2011-12, when the Kevin Durant-led franchise lost in the NBA Finals.
The Thunder remained unbeaten after cruising to a 137-114 win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Friday night.
Oklahoma City has a short turnaround before facing the Clippers, who led by as many as 21 points in the third quarter before losing 125-119 to the Phoenix Suns on Thursday.
James Harden led Los Angeles with 25 points, 10 rebounds and 13 assists for his 78th career triple-double. The Clippers fell to 2-3 after allowing Phoenix to shoot 60.5 percent from the field in the second half, including 52.2 percent from 3-point range.
“I mean, we’ve just got to learn from it,” Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said. “We’ve got to continue to keep getting better. We’ve got to close games better and just something to keep learning from. All five of our games have been close, come down to the wire. We’ve been fortunate to win two of them, but in any of those games, we could be 0-5. We could be 5-0.
“So, just staying the course, understanding that our margin for error is very slim. So, we can’t turn the basketball over. We can’t have defensive breakdowns, we can’t allow offensive rebounds, and then we’ve got to take good shots and be good offensively.”
Norman Powell is averaging a team-high 25.4 points for Los Angeles, which has lost its past two games by a combined total of seven points. The Clippers’ three season losses are by a combined 10 points.
“I think it’s going to be a lot of close games and we’ve just got to find ways to execute and win ’em,” Harden said. “The last two were tough, but we’ll get there sooner than later.”
Harden spent the first three seasons of his career with Oklahoma City, which turned in another impressive performance on Friday. The Thunder dominated Portland in the second half, outscoring the Blazers by a 69-46 margin.
“It wasn’t just the poise,” Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault said. “We had great intentionality coming out of halftime. We made a decision that our defense really needed to get tightened up and for us to course correct that quickly was very encouraging.”
With centers Jaylin Williams (right hamstring strain) and Isaiah Hartenstein (left hand fracture) both sidelined, Daigneault has moved 6-foot-9 Ousmane Dieng into the rotation.
The third-year forward had 11 points, three rebounds, two assists and one block in 19 minutes off the bench on Friday.
“He’s always had a great feel, but the physicality that he’s bringing to the game is just a huge jump,” Daigneault said. “Developmentally, he’s worked really hard for that. He had a great, great summer.”
The Thunder were able to rest their starters for much of the fourth quarter on Friday with an eye toward the second half of a back-to-back. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 30 points on 12-of-18 shooting in 28 minutes in Friday’s win.
