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Clippers bounce back with blowout beatdown of LeBron's lifeless Cavs

Dan Devine
Senior NBA writer

After seeing their white-hot start to the 2016-17 NBA season stall with three straight losses, capped by a wild Tuesday night defeat that saw them blow an 18-point lead to the Brooklyn Nets, we’ve spent the last week wondering what’s wrong with the Los Angeles Clippers. On Thursday, in a marquee nationally televised matchup against the defending champion Cleveland Cavaliers, Doc Rivers’ team offered their answer: not a damn thing.

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The Clippers waltzed into Quicken Loans Arena on Thursday night and smacked the Cavs around, dominating the game in the second and third quarters en route to a breezy 113-94 win that had the Northeast Ohio streaming toward the exits early in the fourth. With J.J. Redick shooting the lights out, Blake Griffin and Chris Paul setting the table, and DeAndre Jordan dominating the boards, the Clippers blitzed Cleveland on either side of halftime, leading by as many as 27 points in sending the Cavs to their worst defeat of the season, and ending a fairly remarkable little streak in the process:

Redick came out of the gates red hot, tormenting J.R. Smith with his off-ball movement and making eight of his first 10 shots on his way to 21 first-half points. (He’d finish with 23 on 9-for-13 shooting, including a 4-for-6 mark from 3-point land.) Despite his dead-eye shooting, though, the Cavs hung close for most of the first half thanks to the attacking of Kyrie Irving and LeBron James, who combined for 30 points and 14 free-throw attempts before intermission.

A pair of late-second-quarter 3s by Redick helped stake the Clips to an eight-point halftime lead. L.A. broke the game open early in the third, forcing turnovers leading to runout layups on Cleveland’s first two possessions before forcing a pair of stops that led to fast breaks finished by big Jordan dunks. After seeing their stellar early-season defensive work slip in losses to the Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers and Nets, the Clippers were more active, attentive and aggressive, holding the Cavs scoreless for nearly four minutes to open the second half; by the time Kevin Love finally got a jumper to go, the Cavs were already down 16 and the Clips were off to the races.

Griffin struggled with his shot, missing 10 of his 14 field-goal attempts and three of eight free throws to produce just 13 points. But the All-Star power forward more than made up for that by taking advantage of mismatches and switches, drawing extra defensive attention and whipping the ball around to his open teammates for a career-high-tying 11 assists. The Clippers moved the ball beautifully all night long, finishing with a season-high 33 assists on 42 made field goals, against 12 turnovers. The Cavs, on the other hand, racked up just 12 assists while coughing the ball up 18 times, leading to 21 Clipper points.

Jordan took Love, Tristan Thompson and the rest of the Cavs’ frontcourt to the woodshed on the glass. He beasted for 15 total rebounds, including eight offensive boards — compared to just six for Cleveland as a team — to extend possessions and fuel a 19-6 edge in second-chance points.

Paul scored 11 of his 16 points in the decisive third quarter, and finished with nine assists, six rebounds and a steal in just 25 minutes of composed, controlling work. Austin Rivers and Jamal Crawford each added a dozen points off the pine for the Clips, who improved to 15-5 on the season.

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While the Clippers returned to form after a recent slide, the Cavs continued their own, falling to 13-4.

Cleveland followed up a cruise-control Sunday win over the lowly Philadelphia 76ers with an embarrassing outing against the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday. Rather than coming off that with renewed focus and a stronger sense of purpose against one of the league’s other elite teams, the Cavs committed a slew of careless turnovers, got bullied on the boards, shot just 40.6 percent from the field as a team, and failed to produce much positive play after the midpoint of the second quarter.

The result is something no LeBron-led team has experienced in more than 4 1/2 years, according to ESPN Stats and Information:

The last time LeBron James lost back-to-back regular season games by at least 15 points each: March 25-26 of 2012 when he was a member of the Heat. Those losses came against the Thunder and Pacers. – Thunder still had James Harden on the team. – Pacers leading scorer that game (and that season) was Danny Granger.

James — who had an uncharacteristically quiet night with just 16 points, five rebounds, five assists and five turnovers in 34 minutes, thanks in part to a stout defensive effort by Luc Richard Mbah a Moute — hasn’t loved what he’s seen from his team of late. With a chance to get the bad taste out of their month on Friday against the division rival Chicago Bulls, now led by James’ former Miami running buddy Dwyane Wade, though, the four-time NBA MVP and three-time champion’s not ready to push the panic button quite yet.

“Two pretty poor games for sure,” he said after the game, according to Tom Withers of The Associated Press. “You’re hoping they’re not back-to-back, but it happens. Now, three games in a row? That’s something to talk about. We need to figure it out.”

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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!

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