Sacramento's Bench Knocks Clippers Out Of The Playoffs

Looks like the Kings' coach even thought about playing these two today.

With Golden State's big win and the Clippers' big loss, the Warriors now control their own destiny in their quest to make the playoffs. This was a painful loss for the Clips, and Bob Baker who writes the Clippers' blog in the L.A. Times summed it up best:

The Clippers played like a guy who wakes up groggy, has a cup of coffee and almost kills three people on the road waiting for the caffeine to kick in. Most of the fans responded in the same way-sluggishly, as Sacramento raced away with the game. It was like sitting in a morgue. This was the worst loss of the year, supplanting the Feb. 15 home loss to hapless Atlanta, when the Clips were outscored by the Hawks 34-18 in the fourth quarter, losing 96-93. And don't tell me about any valiant comeback attempt. I thought we had learned how to play a full 48 minutes.

Yeah, this one hurt. The Clippers started off surprisingly flat considering what was at stake, and were unable to recover from a 23-point deficit, even though Sacramento played only one of their starters (Artest) the entire fourth quarter.

You read that last part correctly. For some strange reason, the Kings went the entire fourth quarter with the likes of Francisco Garcia, John Salmons, Quincy Douby, and Justin Williams. Now I couldn't watch the game, but the L.A. radio guys were killing Sacramento for not trying to win with their best players. I'm sure the Golden State people won't be too thrilled to hear about this either. We'll have to wait for some answers from the Kings as to why they rested their starters in the fourth, I'm guessing we'll get some line about "seeing who they've got" for next year. But between this, the questionable Garnett injury, and the blatant tanking in Boston, the league really needs to do something about teams that are out of the playoffs just mailing it in for the rest of the regular season.