No, no, no, no! Gotta give credit where credit's due. They tanked purely and simply to lose and avoid the Lakers. Rest was just a bonus. Of their 5 starters against Dallas last night, Leonard, George and Morris didn't play against OKC. Zubac played 6 seconds so that he could say he played in every game and Reggie Jackson played 7 minutes but hit 2 threes in that time so they yanked his ass. This removal of players who were putting up decent numbers continued throughout until they got to a point in the 4th quarter where the only proviso for staying in the game it seemed was that you had to have taken more shots than scored points. Patterson was 4-11 with 10 points, Scrubb was 7-17 with 14 points, Kennard was 6-14 with 13 points and the "star" of the show was Daniel Oturu who managed to go 5-21 with 13 points. The fifth player Yogi Ferrell I think was only out there because you have to play 5 and even though he had 14 points on 12 shots they just told him to keep taking 3s to minimize his chance of actually putting the ball in the hoop.
.....and even then they couldn't seem to lose. So at that point in the last minute of the game with the score 112-110 OKC they started running plays for just Patterson and Oturu thinking this would get them home. But lo and behold, even with Patterson shooting a solid 30% from the field he then went and made the damn shot with an assist from Oturu. However, all was not lost for the Clippers. Fortunately for them, Pokusevski came to the rescue hitting a three to put OKC up 115-112.
.....and then Ty Lue played his trump card, his masterstroke - he gave it to Daniel. Not taking any chances though he had him shoot a long 2 just in case the unthinkable happened and it went in to tie the game. Oturu of course missed and after some pitiful defense allowing Brown to dunk the ball to finish them off the Clippers were home.
