DeAndre Jordan And Clippers Slam Sixers Into Oblivion 130-99

Despite leading for most of the first quarter, the Sixers found themselves blown out, demolished, and torn apart by the Clippers culminating in a 130-99 final score. Once the Clippers pulled ahead it was ugly, and you probably stopped watching sometime between halftime and the end of the third quarter, unless you live on the West Coast and/or you are a masochist. But that's okay, we have a recap for you anyway! To the bullet points, we go!

• The Sixers ended the first quarter by attempting 11 more shots than the Clippers and avoiding turnovers almost completely, turning it over once in the whole quarter. But while the Sixers were attempting 50 first half shots and 89 for the game, the Clippers were being significantly more efficient with their shots and eventually pulled ahead with a lead they would never relinquish once their shot volume began to match their shot efficiency.
• DeAndre Jordan finished the game 9-10 from the field and all nine of his made baskets were dunks. He was in video game mode all-night long, but his highlight dunk of the evening came when he accepted a lob from Chris Paul and launched himself over poor JaKarr Sampson. Non-zero chance JaKarr had his reality permanently altered as a result of that dunk.
• Brett Brown opted to start Jahlil Okafor on the bench with Nerlens Noel at center and Jerami Grant at power forward, however to start the second half Brown brought in Okafor and Noel together and surrounded them with Ish Smith, Sampson, and Grant. Noel and Okafor are a tire fire together as is, but surrounding them with zero shooting ability is just asking for a host of bad things to happen. Less of that in the future, please.
• Austin Rivers led all scoring with 26 points on 11-16 shooting. Let's agree to never speak of this again.
• At the point the first half ended, the Clippers had attempted 22 free throws to a meager 5 for the Sixers. In addition to employing a Hack-a-DeAndre strategy in the second quarter, the Sixers found themselves frequently fouling the Clippers guards. Eventually free throws leveled off a bit in the 2nd half and the Clippers only finished with eight more free throw attempts than the Sixers, though perhaps part of that could be attributed to the blowout nature of the game.
• All of the above sounds bad, mainly because when a team loses by 31 points there are bad things to point out, but also some positives emerged from this game that are worth talking about. The first is Jahlil Okafor, who finished the game 10-14 shooting for 23 points. That's very good, and he even had some mid-range jumpers thrown in there as well for good measure. If Okafor can work on his pick-and-roll play, improve his defense while continuing to improve his offensive output, his value and contributions to the Sixers will surge exponentially.
• The much-maligned Nik Stauskas also had himself a rather strong game. Sauce Castillo finished the game 6-8 from beyond the arc landing him a grand total of 18 points on the evening. Stauskas's shooting this season can best be described as disappointing thus far so to see him have such a solid evening shooting is certainly encouraging. Hopefully it's a sign of things to come rather than a one-night anomaly.
• Back to pointing out bad things, in the span of 24 hours Philadelphia played thrice in Staples Center against three different Los Angeles sports teams. The Lakers beat the Sixers last night, the Los Angeles Kings beat the Flyers this afternoon, and the Clippers beat the Sixers tonight. Let's refrain from visiting Staples Center for a good while, Philadelphia sports.

Up next for the Sixers, they return home from their annual holiday road trip and will do battle with Andrew Wiggins and the Minnesota Timberwolves. In the meantime for more on this game, check out the work from the fine folks at Clips Nation for the Clippers perspective on this evening's proceedings.