Clippers erase 24-point deficit to beat the 76ers

Once it was over, a second comeback of at least 24 points in the last 10 days complete, Clippers point guard Reggie Jackson rounded the corner into the visitor’s locker room inside Wells Fargo Center and screamed.

“Keep fighting!” Jackson yelled. “Keep f— fighting!”

One of the NBA’s most mercurial teams struck again Friday, erasing a 24-point deficit with 19 minutes to play for a a 102-101 victory behind 19 points from Jackson, Nicolas Batum’s 15 points and a motto that coach Tyronn Lue said has become their defining cry.

“Scrap to the finish,” Lue said.

On the heels of their 25-point second-half comeback against Denver on Jan. 11, this is now the sixth time a team has won two games in a season after trailing by at least 24 points. And it came against their former coach, Doc Rivers, handing him the kind of stunning loss that marked the end of his Clippers tenure in 2020. Rivers shot back when asked after the game what part of the defeat he attributed to coaching.

“Would you ask Pop that question?” he said, referring to San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich.

The Clippers produced one of their best first quarters of this month followed by their worst second quarter, and saw Joel Embiid score 40 points two nights after he scored 50. But with the 6-foot-8 Batum helping to deny and disrupt the 7-foot Embiid’s play in the second half, the Clippers chipped away and turned the ball over only twice after halftime. Leading by one with nine seconds to play, Marcus Morris Sr. missed two free throws, a sequence that nearly allowed his pair of fourth-quarter three-pointers to be forgotten had the Clippers lost.

But Tyrese Maxey’s running 14-foot shot over Jackson’s outstretched right arm missed to the right of the rim, and Jackson slapped his hands on the court, then popped the Clippers nameplate on his jersey to the section of the crowd that was cheering his name.

Two nights after needing only 27 minutes to score 50 points, the Clippers rushed a second defender over to Embiid when he caught a pass on the opening possession. Minutes later another double-team awaited on another catch. Even with two fouls sending Ivica Zubac to the bench after only six minutes, and Lue tapping Serge Ibaka as his replacement, the 76ers were outscored by nine in Embiid’s first 11 minutes.

Batum made his first three shots in his first game since scoring 32 points in the second half of Monday’s victory — his absence Wednesday was the result of an inconclusive COVID test, Lue said. In a matchup of two of the league’s five worst rebounding teams, the Clippers grabbed nine more in only the opening quarter. But as a 14-point lead was building in just 10 minutes, the first signs of trouble were emerging, paradoxically, after Embiid went to the bench. He wasn’t their toughest opponent. For long stretches this season, the Clippers are their own foe.

A lost dribble by Eric Bledsoe. A shot-clock violation by a hesitating Terance Mann. Mann leaping into the air on a fastbreak without a clear idea of what to do, his desperate pass away from the basket easily intercepted. Turnovers, Lue said before tipoff, are at the root of so many of their scoring droughts.

“You turn the basketball over, it’s hard to get your defense set, it’s hard to get back and make them play in a half court set,” he had said, presciently. In the first half’s final 15:11, the Clippers were outscored 43-16, with five turnovers plus a shot-clock violation accelerating the collapse.

76ers center Joel Embiid, who had 40 points and 13 rebounds, goes up for a shot over Clippers forward Nicolas Batum on Friday night in Philadelphia.

(Matt Slocum / Associated Press)

Even amid a month that has seen the 12 minutes before halftime become Clippers quicksand, with opponents outscoring them by double digits in second quarters already five times, Friday proved to be the nadir after Philadelphia outscored them by 21 in the quarter. Embiid was no longer invisible, his soft jump shots and a rim-bending dunk pushing him to 12 points in only six second-quarter minutes.

Their hole was so big that when a smaller Clippers lineup scored 10 unanswered points in the third quarter, they still trailed by 14.

They kept chipping away until they trailed by only two, and with three minutes remaining the tie seemed almost assured when Batum skipped a pass into Zubac, all alone under the basket. But Embiid covered 20 feet in only a couple steps, blocking the layup and then making a three-pointer at the other end, the Clippers’ hole suddenly six.

Playing in his home city, and only two nights after the death of a close friend he memorialized on social media, Morris Sr. made a three-pointer to forge a tie with 1:50 to play, and then Zubac found revenge, sprinting past Embiid after a stop to score a go-ahead layup.

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