TORRANCE TRIBUNE February 8, 2018 Page 5
Tartars Drop Key Game
vs. Leuzinger
By Adam Serrao
It’s getting late in the regular season and
for the Torrance Tartars boys basketball team,
that can only mean one thing. It’s time to
win basketball games and it’s time to win
them now. Winning is something that the
Tartars have been getting used to lately.
With four victories in a row leading into last
Friday night’s game against the Leuzinger
Olympians, head coach Paul Nitake and his
team were beginning to gain confidence at an
ideal time of the year. The Olympians have
been feeding off of other team’s confidence
this season, though, and marched into the
Torrance home gym and did so once again.
With a 69-55 loss, the Tartars fell to Leuzinger
for the second time this year and may have
just lost out on a chance to win this year’s
Pioneer League crown.
For the Torrance Tartars, the end-of-season
playoff run has been in full effect for quite
some time now. After beginning the regular
season with six straight losses, no one gave
this Torrance team much of a chance. All
Nitake’s club has done since, though, is
rattle off wins in 13 of 16 games leading up
to the second matchup of the season with
the Olympians.
The first game between the two league
rivals took overtime to decide the conclusion.
Even so, it was Leuzinger that came
out on top with a huge effort from John
Clausell to seal the win. For the Tartars, the
loss proved to be the team’s only one in the
month of January. It also put them one giant
step behind the Olympians in the race for a
divisional championship.
Fast-forward to last Friday night and even
more was on the line as the two teams met up
for the second time in less than one month.
“Tonight marks the start of the playoffs,”
Leuzinger coach Arturo Jones explained. “This
was the start of our playoffs. We were both
6-1. We got this win.” Perhaps the biggest
reason that the Olympians got the win, as
Jones explained, was because they came out
of the gates believing that it was a playoff
game. Leuzinger outscored Torrance by eight
points in the first quarter and 10 points in
the second to take an 18-point lead heading
into halftime.
When Leuzinger made three straight threepoint
field goals to open the game, it may
have begun to sink in for Nitake that it was
going to be a long night. “They made us turn
the ball over a little bit and they also did a
good job of knocking down shots,” Nitake
said after the game. “A lot of guys stepped up
for them.” One of those guys was the same
player who stepped up for the Olympians in
game one versus Torrance. Claussel showed
up once again, this time pouring in 14 points.
His teammates Amound Anderson and Devon
Brown put in 19 and 14 respectively. “This
game we came out with a point to prove,”
Brown explained emphatically.
For Torrance, Abdul Ahmad tried to keep
his team in the battle and wound up scoring
seven of the Tartars’ 12 first quarter and
14 first half points. That’s right, Torrance
scored just two points in the second quarter.
Even though the Tartars outscored Leuzinger
in the second half of play (41-37), their 32-
14 deficit at the half was simply too much
to overcome.
The loss has just about sealed Torrance’s
(14-11, 6-2) fate as at least a runner-up in
the Pioneer League standings. To even attain
that status, however, the team will have to
get past a West High Warriors (18-6, 6-2)
squad that has been solid all year long. The
game this Thursday night at Torrance High
will settle this year’s league standings once
and for all.
West High vs. South High
Two rivals took the court last Friday
night at West High when the Warriors took
on the South High Spartans. It has been a
tale of two different seasons for the two
schools, as West has consistently competed
for a league championship all year long,
while South on the other hand has simply
competed to stay out of last place. The box
score of the game expressed as much when
the Warriors jumped out to a 25-8 lead after
just one quarter of play. A 39-21 halftime
lead for West told all in attendance just how
the game would end.
Ken Asai chipped in 16 points for his team
in the eventual 76-44 victory. Nick Snyder
also had a nice game with 12 points of his
own to go with six assists. The Warriors
remain in a battle with both Leuzinger and
Torrance in the Pioneer League standings.
West (18-6, 6-2) will round out the regular
season schedule this week with games against
the Olympians and the Tartars in matchups
that will clearly determine the end-of-season
standings. South (8-17, 1-7) rounds out its
regular season with a game against the Centennial
Apaches.
North High
The North High Saxons will wrap up
their disappointing season with a matchup
against the Torrance Tartars this week.
North, with a record of 2-18 on the year
and 0-7 in league play, has lost its last 10
games in a row. With just five seniors currently
on the 14-man roster, the Saxons
should be back and ready to put up much
better numbers next season.
– Aserrao6@yahoo.com •
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Trade of Griffin Signals
End for Clippers
By Adam Serrao
If being a fan of the Los Angeles Lakers
has taught anyone anything over the course
of the past few years, it’s that if you’re not
going to field a competitive team, at least
try to field an entertaining one. Perhaps
it’s fitting to begin an article about Blake
Griffin and the Los Angeles Clippers by
talking about the Lakers. The Lakers have,
incidentally, always been L.A.’s team, no
matter how much relative success the Clippers
have gained. With the trade of Griffin to the
Detroit Pistons just over one week ago, the
Clippers did once again what the Clippers
seemingly always tend to do – shoot themselves
in the theoretical foot. Now, a team
that was already struggling to compete in a
loaded Western Conference not only just got
worse, but also lost the face of the franchise
that a dwindling Clipper fan base still came
to the Staples Center to see.
First it was Chris Paul and now Blake Griffin?
After Griffin signed a five-year contract
for $173 million in July, it was clear that the
Clippers were trying to make a statement.
Griffin would be the face of the franchise
not only now, but also in the years to come.
Well, somebody in the organization changed
his mind and it caught Griffin off guard just
as much as it caught fans of the NBA off
guard. “Basketball is a business, the NBA is
a business and they made a decision,” Griffin
told ESPN after finding out that he had been
traded by Clippers through Twitter. “The only
thing, I just wish I had known or had the
opportunity to talk to somebody beforehand.
Finding out through Twitter, through other
people, is a tough way to find out when
you’ve been with a franchise for so long.”
Well, that’s the Clippers for you and now,
besides DeAndre Jordan and maybe Lou
Williams, the rest of the roster is somewhat
unrecognizable. That’s before the likes of
Avery Bradley, Tobias Harris and Boban
Marjanovic arrived through the trade. Those
players and first and second round draft
picks were all part of the return for the
Clippers, who fittingly lost their first game
after the trade to the Portland Trailblazers.
It’s rather difficult to evaluate trades in the
NBA these days, but as of last weekend the
Clippers were positioned narrowly outside of
playoff contention in the Western Conference
standings with now seemingly little hope of
ascending up the ranks.
Even with Griffin on their side – and
Chris Paul, for that matter – the Clippers
weren’t getting anywhere near sniffing the
competitive levels of the Golden State Warriors,
Cleveland Cavaliers or even the San
Antonio Spurs. Likely, that was the main
reason in the team’s front office changing
its philosophy so hastily. Whether the pieces
that the Clippers received in return for Griffin
pan out or not, getting a team to take
on the humungous salary that was given to
Los Angeles’s former first round pick less
than a year ago opens things up, if you’re
an optimist. Now, the Clippers have enough
cap space to go out and sign LeBron James,
Paul George or any other big-name free agent
in the offseason. With that flexibility, it may
not be long before the team returns back to
the rim-rocking “Clip City” team of years
past that formerly (almost) filled the arena
to capacity on a night-in and night-out basis.
The one flaw in that reasoning or philosophy
change comes in understanding the fact that
most, if not all, big-name free agents who want
to come play in Los Angeles will likely
choose to play for the Lakers (who will
also have enormous amounts of cap space)
instead of the Clippers. Unfortunately for the
Clippers, aside from Jerry West now having
some unknown role in the front office, there
is nothing alluring about the team. Sure, unloading
an injury-prone player in Griffin who
was owed a ton of money may have been the
best thing that the Clippers could have done
from a business perspective. From a fan and
team perspective, however, the move could
have just locked the Clippers into becoming
a team that will now be stuck in mediocrity
for years to come.
Speaking of mediocrity, ever since the
Pistons beat the Lakers in the 2004 NBA
Finals, the former team has failed in multiple
attempts to set the rest of the league on
fire. In this latest attempt, it is clear that the
Pistons received the best player in the trade,
but even in a less talented Eastern Conference,
Griffin’s arrival may fail to do more
than move Detroit up a spot or two in the
standings to the eighth seed, at best. While
the Pistons may not all of a sudden transform
into a championship team overnight, though,
they’ll at least have a player who is worthy
of putting fans in the seats.
As it currently stands, Clipper fans are
clinging to optimism and cite Jerry West as
their savior. Hopes filled with Paul George
and LeBron chants ring eternal. George did,
after all, root for the Clippers as a child,
right? But why play in a dimly-lit Staples
Center on Clippers game nights when you
could don the purple and gold and have
movie stars from all over Hollywood in the
stands watching your every move under the
bright lights of “La La Land?” Why go out
of your way to say that Jerry West will save
the day when just down the hallway, Magic
Johnson is showcasing that bright-eyed smile
and the promise of “Showtime” returning to
the Staples Center floor as he stands in front
of 16 polished and glistening championship
trophies?
Now that all of the dust from the trade
that caught everyone off guard has officially
settled, Clippers fans can continue banking
on the future. That’s what true fans do. An
increased amount of cap space now brings
with it the hope and opportunity of landing
a prized free agent to come and represent the
Los Angeles Clippers. With that hope better
also come faith that the Clippers can do
something that the franchise has seemingly
never done before, even with Griffin in Paul
sporting the logo across their chests. That one
thing the team has never done is succeed.
– Aserrao6@yahoo.com •
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