The Los Angeles Clippers needed momentum heading into the playoffs. What they got instead was a four-game losing streak and a home-and-home sweep at the hands of a New Orleans team playing its best basketball of the season.
Trey Murphy scored 27 points to lead the Pelicans to a 105-99 victory over the Clippers, completing a two-game home sweep and extending New Orleans’ home winning streak to seven straight games.
Saddiq Bey added 20 points and Zion Williamson contributed 15 points as the Pelicans fell behind late in the game before using a decisive closing run, capped by a Williamson basket, to put the game beyond reach.
Los Angeles was severely undermanned and had no good answer. Kawhi Leonard sat out the contest after returning from a sprained ankle the night before, and the Clippers have now dropped four consecutive games entering the final stretch of the regular season. The timing is as bad as it gets. Playoff seeding is not yet locked in, and arriving at the postseason on a four-game slide with your best player managing an ankle is not a formula for confidence.
For New Orleans, the picture looks dramatically different. The Pelicans have now won 10 of their last 14 games, a remarkable run for a team that looked deeply troubled through much of the first half of the season.
Murphy has been one of the most important contributors to that turnaround. His shooting ability as a spacer, combined with his improving two-way versatility, gives the Pelicans an offensive dimension that exploits every defense that loads up on Williamson. When Murphy is hitting from the perimeter at the rate he has been this month, New Orleans is a genuinely difficult team to stop.
The Pelicans are eyeing a play-in position and, depending on how the final two weeks shake out, potentially a direct playoff spot. That was not a realistic conversation two months ago. It is one now.
For the Clippers, the questions are more serious. Can Leonard stay healthy enough to make a meaningful playoff run? Can the team rediscover the defensive consistency that carried them earlier in the year? A four-game losing streak answers nothing and only raises new concerns at the worst possible moment in the calendar.
