Road-weary Kings pushed around in wire-to-wire loss to Clippers

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Certain teams are just bad matchups. The Los Angeles Clippers have been one all season for the Kings, and that was the case again in Sacramento's 122-108 loss on Sunday.

Doc Rivers’ group is long, athletic and they like to push teams around. The veteran club can score the ball and, when they need to, get a defensive stop.

“They’re a lot more physical at this point,” coach Dave Joerger told reporters in Los Angles after the loss. “We’ve just got to grow into our bodies, and get a little bit more physical and get a lot more experience.”

Outside of Oklahoma City’s Steven Adams, very few players in the league are more physical than Clippers big man Montrezl Harrell. The 25-year-old is having a breakout year in his fourth NBA season, and he abused Sacramento’s young front line on Sunday.

Harrell finished the evening with 25 points on 11-of-13 shooting. He hit the glass to come away with five offensive boards, including two in the fourth quarter to help gain separation from the Kings.

“He’s a good player, he’s very active and he had another very good night tonight,” Joerger said of Harrell.

Who was guarding the 6-foot-8, 240-pound ball of muscle? It didn’t really matter.

He threw Sacramento’s bigs around like rag dolls, scoring 10 of his 11 buckets at the rim. His only make that wasn’t a dunk or a lay-up came on a 7-foot bank shot in the first quarter.

Harrell wasn’t the only player to get physical with the Kings. Patrick Beverley and Avery Bradley tried to push Sacramento’s guards around and two-way player Johnathan Motley did damage in his limited minutes.

“They’re just young, they’re just young guys,” Joerger said of his team. “They fly around, trying to use their youthfulness and you’ve got to scrap. But it’s a body-on-body game in the pros and 48 minutes and 82 games, it just takes some time as guys grow up.”

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After trailing by as many as 25 early, the Kings kept fighting. In the third quarter, they cut the Clippers' lead down to seven points, but trailed 87-76 heading to the fourth.

In the fourth, the Kings charged back. They cut the home team’s lead to five on multiple occasions, but couldn’t break through.

“We were just trying to get back in the game,” De’Aaron Fox said. “They weathered the storm. They had an answer for all of our runs and they were able to finish the game off.”

The Clippers hit the Kings with a big time counterpunch in the fourth to take a 19-point lead with two minutes remaining.

“That’s one of the best scoring teams in the league, we’ve kind of had some slow starts, but it’s just hard to stop them once they get rolling offensively,” Fox added.

Playing out the final game of a six-game road trip, the Kings looked like a team ready to get back to Sacramento after nearly two weeks away from home. But, they weren’t making excuses after the loss.

“The credit goes to them, they’re a really good team,” Justin Jackson said. “We fought today, but they just hit some shots.”

The Kings return to Golden 1 Center on Wednesday, when they host the Atlanta Hawks to kick off a six-game homestand. They stumbled to a 2-4 record on the road trip, but they return home at 25-25 with a shot to move back over the .500 mark against the 15-33 Hawks.

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