So the Clippers came down the court, down 106-105 with 9.9 seconds to go, having already decided to play it through and not call a timeout.

Why?

“I did not want to call a timeout. I don’t believe in that,” assistant coach Kim Hughes said. “I’m kind of like Jerry Sloan in that. I think it’s to your advantage to go in transition, without allowing them to get in a set defense.”

OK, so then what happened?

“I thought Baron had a wonderful opportunity to penetrate, he chose not to, which is fine. Marcus was open. I don’t think it was a great shot. I’m sure he doesn’t think it was a great shot. Eric Gordon was wide open up top,” Hughes said. “You can look back, and remember that you didn’t call a timeout. If it was a situation where we should’ve called a timeout, I’ll take the heat for that. But I don’t believe in that.”

And so the Clippers ended up with the ball in Marcus Camby’s hands about 22-feet out with about two seconds left on the clock.

Camby’s not really a 3-point shooter, though he can make them.

“It was right there on line. It just came up short,” Camby said after the game.

What if it would’ve gone in and Camby would’ve beaten his former team?

“I guess that’s just fitting the way our season has gone,” he said. “We had this team last time up 18 at halftime and we let them come back and win the ballgame. I thought the effort was good. We were missing a lot of players. We had two guys sick. Kaman went down. We were without Mike today. His father in law passed. We had a lot of things stacked against us. But I thought the effort was definitely there.”