Wes Johnson of the Clippers was 0 of 6 from 3-point range in Sunday’s loss at New Orleans/Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Clippers

One might not think Clippers coach Doc Rivers tries to dissuade his team from taking too many 3-point shots, especially after the Clippers hoisted up 39 of them in Sunday’s 109-105 loss at New Orleans and made just 10 for 25.6 percent.

Judging by his reply when he was asked afterward about his team’s 16-point third quarter, he does.

“Yeah listen, we just couldn’t make a shot,” he said. “You know, they played pretty good D, but I thought we settled a lot tonight. You can see that we played yesterday at 7. … In the third quarter, I said ‘You guys, we played last night and we are getting open shots, we’re getting 3s. Can we please drive the basketball?’ And once we started doing that, the game changed for us. When you lost the night before and you’re trying to fight uphill, you don’t have a lot of energy left. And there’s no room for mistakes. So I was happy with the comeback, I just wasn’t happy with the results.”

The Clippers were down by 14 points at 102-88 with 2:17 left in the game and twice crawled within a point in the final 27 seconds.

The Clippers lost 113-102 a night earlier in Memphis.