LOS ANGELES -- Nearly 20 minutes after the Los Angeles Clippers had lost to the Atlanta Hawks 107-98 on Monday, the Clippers' locker room was still closed. Normally, win or lose, Doc Rivers at this point has already talked to the media and is back in the office with his kids, but on Monday his kids were still lined up outside the locker room waiting to see their dad while a group of reporters waited for him in the adjacent news conference room.

“We don’t like losing,” Rivers said. “When we lose a game, we’re pissed by it. We talk about it and I had to talk with a couple of guys, you watch film tomorrow and you move to the next game. It’s a long season.”

Rivers wouldn’t classify the delay as a “closed door meeting” but it’s clear that the team was in need of some tough love after another lackluster performance against a contending team. The Clippers are now 7-10 this season against teams above .500 and have lost their previous two games against winning teams at home.

“I don’t even know what our record is, it’s probably not great,” Chris Paul said. “I don’t think it matters with us right now whether it’s a winning team or a losing team. We just have to play better. If you play the right way it doesn’t matter who you’re playing against.”

Rivers has remained calm despite the Clippers’ 23-12 record, which currently puts them in sixth place in the West and five games behind the Warriors in the Pacific division. He doesn’t view signature wins or big losses in the regular season as anything that affects postseason results.

“I don’t like using history but I think the Spurs had the worst win-loss record against their opponents going into the playoffs last year,” Rivers said. “I think we’re going to be a good team. We just have to go through the whole season. A lot of teams have struggled in the West against good teams. That’s just the way it is.”

The problem with Rivers’ analogy is the Clippers are not the Spurs. They have not won five championships and played in six Finals since 1999. They are also not Rivers’ old Celtics teams, which played in two Finals and won one. As much as Rivers may like this group and their potential, he admits the flaw in his analogy when pressed on it.

“When we play well we have a gear every once in a while that is amazing,” Rivers said. “But are we [the Spurs or Celtics]? No. The difference between us and the Spurs and the Celtics is they had a title to lean back on and they knew how to do that. We don’t know how to do that yet.

“If I had a concern it would be that, at times we go back and forth. Teams that have that title experience they have an unshakable confidence. You see how a team that wins it, the way it plays the following year. They could be playing awful but they know they’re good and they know it’s going to come. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team that hasn’t won it, do that and have that unshakable confidence.”

The Clippers are about as far from having unshakable confidence as you can get at the moment, especially on the defensive end.

“Defensively we have no presence right now,” Paul said. “On the ball, off the ball and we’re late in rotations. A lot of that is on me trying to contain these guards on the ball. We just have to get better all around. ... We just have to be more consistent. We play well in stretches but the good teams stick to what they do, defensively and offensively, and we haven’t done that.”

The defensive captain of the team is DeAndre Jordan and he simply shook his head when he looked at the box score after Monday’s game. He had previously leaned on the fact the season was still young, but nearly midway through the season and into the New Year, he knew he could no longer do that.

“I can’t say that it’s still early,” Jordan said. “I just feel like we need to do it for 48 minutes. You see it in spurts of us having the right tools to be a great defensive team but then there are times where we look like we don’t know what we’re doing. I feel like that starts with me and a lot of the guys who have been here before. It’s not like this is something new we’re putting in. I feel like we’re a second late on everything.”

While the Clippers haven’t quite hit the panic button yet, they understand they’re going to have to start finding answers to their questions on offense or defense. Simply pointing at stats from struggling championship teams and ignoring regular-season results aren’t going to cut it when the postseason rolls around.

“It is probably too soon [for concern],” Blake Griffin said. “We’ve got a lot of basketball left to play and a lot of time. We still have three and a half months left and a lot of basketball, like I said. This moment in December is not the time to give up and think that we are really in trouble. We just have to find it.

“We’re just searching. Everybody can feel it and everybody knows we have an opportunity to be better and can be better and I think that’s the positive thing. Guys want to be better and we’re searching for it.”