<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Now, now, get a hold of yourself. OK, you were a bit rash. Jumped into this thing like you hadn't learned a lesson from that time in the second grade when sweet pretty Suzy dumped your butt for the new kid. You just have to be so careful about who you give your heart to. I mean, the Clippers were just so adorable last season. They were everybody's darlings. You just wanted to pinch their little cheeks. Now they make you want to hold your nose. The current Clippers are, in a word, terrible. Bad and seemingly getting worse. And they are in very real trouble. The kind where you look at the calendar and worry that their season could be slipping away in December. For the second time this season, the Clippers have lost five consecutive games. Tonight they begin a three-game road trip at Dallas, Houston and Utah, and are staring down the barrel of an eight-game losing streak. The Clippers, of course, are a weak-kneed 1-8 on the road this year. They are 10-14 overall, last in the Pacific Division, and tied for 12th in the Western Conference. It's not Clipper Nation, it's Alien Nation. They are strangers on the floor. They're almost exactly the same team that last year won your hearts with its aggressive, determined play. It's like in that "Space Jam" movie in which the players have their talent zapped from their bodies. Same names, strangely different games. It's crushing, I know. Just when you were beginning to believe, the Clippers have gone all retro on you and started playing like all those other Clippers teams. The turnaround from a team that was a Game 7 victory away from playing for the Western Conference title to a team that can't even win at home against a lousy Toronto team that was playing without its only real player, the night after losing in Phoenix almost defies description. "They played harder than us," was the only explanation offered. That would make the Raptors different than the rest of the NBA, how?</div> Source
