Clippers hit rock bottom: Inside arguably the worst month in the franchise’s 56-year history
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — After spending Friday blowing a 16-point lead at Intuit Dome to a Memphis Grizzlies team missing four point guards, the LA Clippers on Saturday hosted a 5-15 Dallas Mavericks team missing their four top bigs: Anthony Davis, P.J. Washington, Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II. The Clippers led by as many as 10 points and blew that lead, too.
Now, the Clippers are the 5-15 team, losers of 13 of 15 games in November. This was arguably the worst month in the 56-year history of the organization.
The Clippers have lost 13 games in a month before. They’ve also had worse 20-game starts. But this isn’t like their inaugural season in Buffalo, when the Braves went 4-15 in December 1970. It isn’t like the San Diego team that was 1-15 in March 1982, nor the 1988-89 team that lost 28 of 29 to begin the 1989 calendar year.
These aren’t the 1994-95 Clippers who started 0-16, with the first 13 of those losses occurring in November. And there was the franchise’s first year playing at Staples Center, when those Clippers lost 27 of 30 games during February and March of 2000.
March 2010 was the last time the Clippers lost 13 games in a month. Blake Griffin, the No. 1 pick in the 2009 NBA Draft, had yet to play a regular-season game for the team. When Griffin suited up for the first time, his 2010-11 Clippers started 4-16.
The Clips haven’t had a losing season since acquiring Chris Paul via trade in December 2011. In fact, the other 29 NBA teams have had at least one losing season since the last time the Clippers’ last one in 2010-11. The only time the Clippers had a 10-loss month between the start of the 2011-12 season and the end of last season was when they went 4-10 in November 2017. That team, coached by Doc Rivers, recovered to win 42 games.
This Clippers team is on track to win 20 games this season, and the context makes it worse. While its the 20th time they’ve lost at least 13 games in a month, these Clippers were expected to maybe win 50, as they did the past two seasons.
The warning signs of this season potentially going sideways were always present. The Clippers fortified their roster with age this offseason. The quietest month in the NBA offseason was dominated by an Aspiration scandal that put chairman Steve Ballmer and star forward Kawhi Leonard in the crosshairs of a league investigation.
Top offseason acquisition Bradley Beal had a knee scope in the offseason, was limited in training camp and didn’t play any preseason games with Leonard or All-NBA point guard James Harden. The Clippers began their season by visiting the Utah Jazz, the worst team in the league last season, and lost by 21 points and trailed by 37 at one point. The following week, the Clippers failed to break 80 points on the road against the Golden State Warriors.
But when November started, the Clippers had a 3-2 record after a Leonard game-winning buzzer beater against the New Orleans Pelicans. Now, the Clippers are already on life support.
Here are 20 thoughts that illustrate the worst month in team history:
1. The only game Harden missed this month was when the Clippers visited the Phoenix Suns on Nov. 6; Harden missed the matchup for personal reasons. In the team’s other 14 outings, Harden averaged 29.8 points, 8.5 assists and 6.3 rebounds in 36.8 minutes per game. It took extraordinary Harden performances for the Clippers to win the two games that they did this month: a 41-point triple-double to escape Dallas in double overtime and a franchise-record 55 points to escape an afternoon start against the Charlotte Hornets.
2. Harden is 36 years old. The plan was never for him to be relied on this much, let alone with his play failing to lead to wins.
Asked James Harden of challenge of getting players who weren’t supposed to be as involved when team was in training camp more involved offensively pic.twitter.com/c27MQe4DoY
— Law Murray ⛲️ (@LawMurrayTheNU) November 30, 2025
3. Leonard played in the first game the Clippers had in November, against a Miami Heat team bringing Norman Powell back to the arena. The Clippers had two days off, while the Heat were on the second night of a back-to-back. Not only did the Clippers blow an 11-point lead, but Leonard also suffered an injury to his right foot that required a 10-game absence and a minutes restriction upon his return.
4. Leonard missed a potential game-winning field goal against the Heat, and the Clippers haven’t won with him since. Even though Leonard is a two-time Defensive Player of the Year, he’s not that caliber of defender now, as he loses his man off the ball, gets beaten in the rare instances he is attacked and is shielded from defending primary scorers often. Remember the Jim Mora playoffs rant? “We gotta worry about winning a game right now, first, before we think about any type of championship,” Leonard said.
Clippers haven’t been able to survive after halftime with Kawhi Leonard on bench
Kawhi emphasized that team should be closing games out.
Asked if teams are finding it easy to play Clippers
“When we lose like it feels like they executed the game plan better” pic.twitter.com/SeBPdl2TIC
— Law Murray ⛲️ (@LawMurrayTheNU) November 30, 2025
5. Center Ivica Zubac was an All-Defensive Team selection after anchoring last season’s third-ranked Clippers defense. Now, the Clippers have plummeted to a bottom-five defense despite the presence of Zubac. The Clippers don’t get back on defense, don’t defend 3s well, don’t force turnovers and don’t rebound.
6. Beal was already frustrated with the start of his season because of a minute restriction that kept him from playing 25 minutes and being held out of a back-to-back. When he started in Phoenix without Harden or Leonard, Beal missed 12 of 14 shots. The very next game — also against the Suns — Beal injured his right hip.
7. Four days later, it was revealed that Beal’s new injury was a freak incident, a season-ending fracture that required surgery. The player that was essentially guaranteed a starting job upon his arrival — and one that was heavily recruited by Harden — will now have never played a fourth quarter for the Clippers this season.
8. Beal’s injury had a domino effect. The most obvious was the insertion of John Collins in the starting lineup. As much as fans clamored for Collins to immediately be a starter coming out of camp, head coach Tyronn Lue and his staff correctly identified the need for Collins to be put in lineups that would allow him to be comfortable offensively while not being as relied upon defensively.
9. Collins had to start once Beal’s injury was serious. In 11 games as a starter, Collins has only two assists while making only 8 of 32 3-pointers (25 percent). Additionally, a Clippers team that led the league in defensive rebounding percentage last season is down to 24th in that category this season, with Collins averaging a career-low 4.9 rebounds per game.
10. Brook Lopez was the Clippers’ biggest free-agent acquisition, as he was supposed to be a legitimate backup to Zubac while providing spacing offensively and rim protection defensively. To a degree, Lopez has done that. Among Clippers, only Harden, Nicolas Batum and Leonard have made more 3s than Lopez this season, while only Zubac and Derrick Jones Jr. blocked more shots.
11. But Lopez’s lack of foot speed, combined with the offense’s complete lack of variety, exposed the 37-year-old as a one-dimensional player on both ends of the floor who contributed to the league’s worst fast-break situation. After the Clippers were outscored by 24 points in Lopez’ minutes against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Lue removed Lopez from the rotation in favor of Kobe Brown, a 2023 first-round pick who had his fourth-year option declined and is a career 27 percent 3-point shooter.
12. Chris Paul was the last of the four veterans brought in to upgrade the Clippers. But after the Clippers were outscored by 24 points in Paul’s minutes against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Nov. 4, Paul was phased out of the rotation, not playing at all in five consecutive games.
13. Paul posted on social media the morning before the Charlotte game that he was on his last ride. The Clippers won that afternoon and headed to Ohio to finish the road trip. Paul was not made available to reporters. The Clippers then lost in downtown Los Angeles against the Lakers and then suffered back-to-back losses against the Memphis Grizzlies and the Mavericks. They don’t play at home again until Dec. 15.
14. Jones played 40 minutes in the double-overtime win in Dallas. The next game in Boston, Jaylen Brown dove for a loose ball and hit an airborne Jones, injuring Jones’ right knee. It was revealed that Jones sprained his MCL, an injury that carries a six-week timetable.
15. Jones earned a starting job because of his point-of-attack defense, his ability to weaponize his athleticism and his adequate 3-point shooting (34.8 percent on 3.5 attempts per game this season). But his energy as one of the few reliable players on the team under the age of 30 was perhaps his most indispensable trait, something even opponents like Orlando Magic point guard Jalen Suggs noticed was missing from the soulless Clippers moving forward.
When I asked Jalen Suggs about what makes the Clippers different now compared to when he played them a year ago, the first player Suggs mentioned was Derrick Jones Jr. pic.twitter.com/0WwyfMbFII
— Law Murray ⛲️ (@LawMurrayTheNU) November 21, 2025
16. Even with Jones, the Clippers have not been as good at the point of attack defensively as they were the season before. It’s something that has been pointed out by Lue, Zubac and other players. Kris Dunn was excellent in that role with the Clippers last season while providing ballhandling relief. But Beal was brought in specifically to keep Dunn in a reserve role, which would minimize the impact of Dunn’s occasional challenges of providing threatening offense.
17. Now, Dunn is starting again because of Beal and Jones’ injuries. While Dunn still collects steals, he has been less reliable on and off the ball defensively while continuing to give opposing defenses a player to ignore while they make Harden’s offensive efforts as challenging as possible. The Clippers have been outscored by 100 points in Dunn’s minutes this season, the worst on the team.
18. Bogdan Bogdanović began the season as the odd man out of the Clippers’ rotation of 11 veterans. He was simply behind everyone else as he dealt with previously unrevealed knee and ankle injuries in the 2025 playoffs that required a month off, a multi-week hamstring ailment from EuroBasket in the summer and back woes in the preseason opener. Now, Bogdanović is dealing with a hip contusion that has cost him five straight games.
19. The absence of Bogdanović compounds the Beal injury, as the Clippers have a complete lack of dribble-pass-shoot options beyond Harden and Leonard. The available young players have unsurprisingly struggled to make an impact. Two-way contract rookie Kobe Sanders has been given the most opportunity, even starting games with Leonard out, due to his comfort shooting the ball and playing through contact. But the more Sanders has played, the more the NBA has taken advantage of him. Jordan Miller missed 12 of 15 games in November because of injury, while Cam Christie made only 31.6 percent of his 3s in November despite being billed as a shooter.
20. Due to injury, the five Clippers who played the most in November are Harden, Zubac, Collins, Dunn and Batum. Lue will always find a spot for Batum because he understands where to be and defends multiple positions. But Batum struggles to rebound, has made only two shots inside the 3-point line all season and had more turnovers than assists in November.
It has been a particularly bad month for Lue, who has seen his team lose five games after holding leads of more than 10 points this month. Seven of the 15 games the Clippers have lost this season have been against teams they swept last season. Only three teams had a worse third-quarter point differential this month than the Clippers. The team allowed five players to score at least 35 points, culminating with this year’s No. 1 pick Cooper Flagg recording his first career 30-point game.
The Clippers were embarrassed by a Denver Nuggets team that ended their season. They were embarrassed by a Thunder team that owns their 2026 first-round pick. They were embarrassed by a Lakers team that they share the city with. Lue suggested that “Next Man Up” is more difficult when a two-way contract is replacing Kawhi Leonard, but his team blew huge leads at home to teams starting Keaton Wallace in place of Trae Young and Vince Williams in place of Ja Morant. When the Clippers are down more than 15 points, they stay down; they are 0-10 when they trail by more than 15, a far cry from Clippers teams that used to hit comebacks.
Ballmer told The Athletic that he speaks with Lue and basketball president Lawrence Frank about how to turn things around. Ballmer also made it clear that the job to turn it around is on Lue and Frank. Only five teams have started 5-15 or worse and made the playoffs since the field expanded to 16 teams for the 1983-84 season. But one of those teams was a 4-16 Pelicans team that knocked the Clippers out of the Play-In Tournament in 2022.
That precedent is about the only hope the Clippers have, and they are being led by a group of stars and a head coach who have never been down this bad.
