Doc Rivers wants better body language from Clippers

Doc Rivers had seen the hanging of heads, the poor body language and the pouting before, and the Clippers coach didn’t like it then when he first noticed it during training camp.

Rivers saw the same bad posture and attitude in the second and third quarters of Saturday night’s game at Houston.

And just like he did during that training camp practice session, Rivers admonished his team for not sticking with it during those tough moments against the Rockets.

But he also had to build his Clippers players up and encourage them to stay with the cause.

“I think we have a habit…I know I have a bad habit of that when things aren’t going right, to kind of hang my head a little bit,” Blake Griffin said. “But I don’t think anybody does it like they are trying to reflect it on their teammates. It’s just kind of a disappointing thing. We all want to play well. We all want to execute.”

When the Clippers’ starters got down during a scrimmage in training camp, Rivers saw them start to mope. He had to remind his starters that day in October that there was still time left on the clock and that the game wasn’t over.

Against the Rockets, the Clippers got down 12 points in the third and looked mentally out of it.

Again, Rivers reminded his players that the game was far from over.

The Clippers did come back to win that game in Houston.

The Clippers play the Minnesota Timberwolves Monday night at Staples Center and the plan for L.A. is to not drop its collective heads when things aren’t going its way.

“You can just see on film the good body language and bad body language,” Griffin said. “We all know our body language has to be better.”

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broderick.turner@latimes.com

Twitter: BA_Turner