Clippers Get an Early Gift

It was a lucky break for the Clippers, if not the crowd of 12,514 that showed up Monday night at Staples Center expecting to see Tim Duncan.

Hours before tipoff, the San Antonio Spurs’ two-time NBA most valuable player was suspended one game without pay for pushing an official to the floor in Saturday night’s loss to the Golden State Warriors -- a decision Spur Coach Gregg Popovich called “absurd” and “flat-out wrong.”

Minus their All-Star forward, barred from the building per league rules and presumably watching in his hotel room, the defending NBA champions couldn’t stop the Clippers from ending a six-game losing streak with a 91-83 victory.

The Clippers, taking advantage of Duncan’s absence, scored 50 points in the paint and sent the struggling Spurs to their third consecutive loss.

How bad were the Spurs?

Rasho Nesterovic shot two airballs ... on free throws.

They made 36.9% of their shots, barely half their free throws. They scored 83 points against a team that had given up a league-worst average of 102.5. Their guards, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, made six of 27 shots.

The Clippers, meanwhile, made only 39.2% of their shots, the seventh consecutive game in which they’ve made less than 40%, but it was good enough.

Corey Maggette scored 24 points on eight-of-14 shooting and rookie Chris Kaman -- or “Kamman,” as his name was misspelled on the back of his jersey through the first half -- scored a season-high 15 points and took 12 rebounds.

“Obviously, we had a little bit of a break tonight without Duncan,” Clipper Coach Mike Dunleavy said, “but everybody’s had a break with us all year long without Elton [Brand]. It’s part of the deal. Malik Rose did a heck of a job for them.”

Duncan’s replacement had 26 points and 11 rebounds.

Overall, though, this was a far cry from the Spur team that won the NBA championship last spring, as Popovich suggested last week when he said expectations for his club might be too high, considering David Robinson and others are gone.

His words rang hollow, but then the Spurs got blown out by the Lakers on Friday and lost again Saturday to the Warriors, a game in which Duncan collided almost comically with official Jack Nies.

Duncan was running to set a pick near the three-point line as Nies was trying to untangle himself from another player. Near the high post, Duncan put both hands on the official to clear some room, and Nies fell.

The official quickly got up and called a technical foul.

The punishment for the incident, which occurred with 3:35 left in the third quarter, grew Monday into a one-game suspension.

The disbelieving Spurs appealed to the league, arguing that the contact was unintentional and inconsequential. But the NBA stood firm.

“I think all of us who care about this game understand that it’s very important that game officials be protected at all times,” Popovich said. “But having said that, I don’t think that standard can be an absolute, or you’re on dangerous ground. Circumstances and facts have to be considered in each case.

“And I think clearly in this case it’s absolutely obvious that the contact was both inadvertent and accidental. And to be suspended, the rule states it’s got to be intentional contact, which infers willful. Well, that didn’t happen.

“So whether you want to speak intellectually, philosophically, factually, there’s absolutely no support for such a decision. It’s just a bad decision.”

He said Duncan was shocked.

“He almost let out a laugh like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” Popovich said. “Nobody even said anything after the game. There was nothing written. It was like a funny incident to the fans. It was just strange. He was flabbergasted.”

His teammates probably were surprised too by an awful second quarter in which a 24-24 tie turned into a 16-point lead for the Clippers, who hadn’t won since Nov. 15. Outscored in one stretch, 15-3, the Spurs made only six of 21 shots in the quarter and trailed at halftime, 46-32.