The Los Angeles Clippers fell in a close and hard-game against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Thursday in a 94-88 loss and while the Clippers battled throughout the game and made it interesting near the end, a fourth quarter collapse put the game out of reach.

The Clippers fell behind early and trailed by six at the half following a brutal second quarter for both teams that was characterized by tenacious defense and just a combined 26 points between two teams, less than either scored in the first half. 

Then in the third quarter, the Clippers came back out hot. They outscored the Timberwolves 30-19 in the third quarter and jumped ahead to a five point lead with just one more quarter to go. The Clippers defense had seemingly locked in, holding Minnesota to just 34 points in the middle two quarters.

Doing that against an offense as formidable as the Timberwolves offense is represents a huge accomplishment for the Clippers and it boded well for how they would perform in the fourth, but that's when the trouble began.

The Timberwolves outscored the Clippers 31-20 in the fourth quarter to sneak by with the win. a 31 point quarter may stand out in such a low-scoring game and it was the most points that Minnesota had scored in a single quarter the entire game, but it's still not a massive amount of points or reflects that poorly on the Clippers' defense. 

The true collapse for the Clippers in the fourth quarter was their lack of offense paired with a lapse in defense. Los Angeles struggled to get shots up in the fourth quarter and it resulted in their second-lowest scoring quarter behind the grudge match that was the second. 

The fact that it paired with their worst defense of the game in the last quarter where they had a chance to win the game was the worst possible timing for the Clippers and it led to their defeat in the end. 

“It always starts on the defensive end, I think we did a great job all night, just on the defense end, bringing in energy, offensively, we couldn't really find something down the stretch, so just get back in the lab and figure out what we got to fix," Kobe Sanders said to the media. 

The Clippers have been in a skid lately and Thursday's loss was their third-straight. Their offense crumbling, especially late in the game, has been a running trend in those losses and as Sanders said, it's something that needs to be addressed if the Clippers want to get back on the right track again.