If Nicolas Batum hadn’t shown up to Staples Center on Friday, his teammates would have understood.
The Clippers forward’s wife delivered the couple’s second child, a daughter named Nayeli, earlier in the day, and he tweeted the news less than two hours before tipoff, signaling a chance the French forward would understandably miss the game.
Then he showed up for the team’s 120-105 win over Oklahoma City, and had he not broken his own news, it would have been difficult to tell his mind was anywhere but the game — Batum made all four three-pointers he took and five of his six shots overall to score 14 points.