Clippers fall to 76ers and Joel Embiid after building a 20-point lead

It was all there — the crisp passes, the elite shooting, the suffocating defense that infused the Clippers with an offseason belief they are championship-caliber.

Just one problem. This was all here, too, for the Clippers in a 119-114 loss Friday inside Wells Fargo Center — the maddening inconsistency, the offensive malaise and an inability to string together a full game, problems that have become a more usual sight than glimpses of their full potential.

Leading by as many as 20 before halftime in perhaps their sharpest half of any game this season, against a Philadelphia 76ers team that had won six in a row, the Clippers instead turned what would have been their most impressive victory into a particularly notable missed opportunity.

“We played the game the right way the first half, we played downhill, we played with pace, we defended — that’s just who we are regardless of who we play,” said wing Paul George, who scored 22 points. “The challenge is doing that for a full game and that’s just, again, where we’re lacking.

“We haven’t yet identified with that, I guess, persona for the team, a team that’s just going to finish you.”

George said as much after a loss at Oklahoma City in the season’s second week. Nearly two months later, what will it take to reach that breakthrough?

“I’m not sure,” George said. “We just have lapses.

“I think we just got to approach the two halves as zero-zero. Hopefully that shift gets us playing a little faster, a little better, a little bit more intense, better focus because I think whether we won the games or not, we’ve been in these positions a lot — too many times this season.”

Philadelphia center Joel Embiid scored 10 of his 44 points in the fourth quarter as “M-V-P” chants echoed during his free throws with 11 seconds left. Guard James Harden not only scored 20 points but dished a career-high 21 assists, while adding 11 rebounds. In all, Harden was responsible for 67 points.

They were brutally effective at times. And, the Clippers felt, they could have been put away.

“We had our chances, we just didn’t play smart the whole game,” coach Tyronn Lue said. “When we got up we made some key mistakes and some bad plays.”

Friday was the 10th game since Kawhi Leonard, who scored 28 points, and George returned from injuries together in a Dec. 5 win against Charlotte. In that span the Clippers had gone 6-3, entering Friday, with a combination of the league’s fourth-best defensive rating and its fourth-best three-point shooting, at 39.9%.

Each was a building block of a first-half lead that grew to 20 with 3:37 remaining in the second quarter. Philadelphia took only three free throws before halftime, eight fewer than its first-half average, the Clippers executing their emphasis of defending without fouling. It also made only four of its 14 three-pointers. Philadelphia turned the ball over only three times, but each was followed by a Clippers basket — a Norman Powell layup after a strip of Embiid, a George layup after he tapped the ball from Harden.

John Wall was held out after spraining his right ankle for the second time in as many weeks — he is hopeful to play Dec. 26, in Detroit — but with the ballhandling handled by committee, the Clippers’ bench unit looked as sharp as it has all season. Reserves made nine of their 13 shots in the first half — an assist leading to every basket but one. Against a Sixers defense that ranked second in the league at limiting opponents’ attempts from deep, the Clippers made 10 of their 19 three-pointers in the first half.

But the final three minutes of the first half were ominous as their lead was cut to 12, reminiscent of the way, Wednesday night, Charlotte methodically cut a 36-point deficit to 14, a rally jump-started in the third quarter, when it outscored the Clippers by eight.

Two days later, Philadelphia won the third quarter by 12 points. Leonard didn’t see parallels between the losses — turnovers were the problem against Charlotte, transition defense the issue Friday, he said. But the change in energy and focus looked the same to George.

When former Clippers coach Doc Rivers ran a second 76ers defender at George and Leonard, the Clippers froze. Fellow starters Marcus Morris Sr. and Reggie Jackson, typical release valves when opponents blitz, shot a combined five of 15.

“We didn’t do a good job of playing smart and playing to our strengths when teams do blitz us,” Lue said.

A corner three-pointer by Nicolas Batum pushed the Clippers into a one-point lead with four minutes to play.

The Clippers never made another basket.

“It’s good that when we get it rolling to see what it really looks like,” said Jackson, who had four points, and was a minus-13. “That’s reassuring, that sticks with me, for sure, but just the way that we keep having these lulls at times, too long of lulls — you’re going to have some throughout the game but we’ve got to find a way to nip it in the bud as soon as possible.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.