We live in an NBA landscape, where playoff success is the end-all, be-all metric of personal and team glory. Kevin Durant, by at least a few accounts, is one of the top three perimeter scorers of all time, in volume and definitely in efficiency. But, until he wins a championship, he's a bum. Add to it the almost misogynistic backlash that he received after joining the best regular season team of all time to achieve that required chip for his legacy, there's really no winning for Durant.
The Los Angeles Clippers have been subjected to the same maniacally idiotic logic, especially in recent years. Imagine this (and suspend your disbelief for this because this analogy is going to be far-fetched): a tech company, that's been mired in putridity, gets a lucky break and their shareholders start to buy in a little. Then, they aggressively commit to one of their products, and when sales go up a little, they realized that their founder is an unabashedly adulterous, self-immolating, racist sack of inferiority complexes. After being forced to be acquired by a bombastic newcomer, they settle into years of performing near the top of the industry, even though their top employees sometimes have extended sabbaticals or punch out the lesser staff. A company that pulls itself out of years of mediocrity, a firm that forges along amidst such turmoil, would lauded in Wired. But the Clippers - well, we only remember when they clip.
Think about where their franchise started. There was a point in time when their owner likened their black GM, Elgin Baylor (conservatively speaking, one of the top 50 NBA players in history), to an Uncle Tom slave overseer (think Sam Jackson in Django Unchained) and their predominantly black roster to a host of cotton-pickers. That's actually true; I'm not exaggerating. After a semi-decent season with Elton Brand and Baron Davis at the helm, they returned to the lottery for years. Their luck turned by drafting Blake Griffin, who they lost for his rookie season, developing DeAndre Jordan, signing Doc Rivers as coach, and trading for Chris Paul and J.J. Redick, rounding out a solid core. Even through Donald Sterling's abject inability to grasp that he's an insignificant blip in the story of the NBA, the franchise has finished in the top fourth of the league for five straight years.
But we don't remember the five straight years of .600+ ball; we remember their collapses against the Thunder in 2014, the Rockets in 2015, and their lack of depth no allowing them to advance past a pretty weak Trailblazers team just last year. We remember Doc Rivers unapologetically touting Jordan as the next Bill Russell, but we fail to realize that Jordan is one of the best four or five centers in the league. Yeah, Blake punched an equipment manager, but over the past three years, can you name ten players who have been consistently better than him? The Clippers have been able to win far above 50 wins a year, often times with a significant piece missing for extended periods of time. So, what's made this team so great, and what can they do to finally get the credit they deserve?
The pick-and-roll Renaissance in the NBA is obviously bred from the 2005 Phoenix Suns, but the Paul-Griffin-Jordan layer stack has breathed new life into the scheme. Look at the screenshot below, and you'll see that it's a simple concept. You have two uber-athletic bigs, one of whom sets an on-ball screen on Paul's defender, while the other hides in the low post for a potential dump-off. The wings on offense can camp out in one of those red circles to give the action some space to develop. Once Paul's defender is slowed down by the screen, Paul either gets free at the elbow to laser off a mid-range jumper with legendary accuracy (greater than 50% in the past three years) or finds the rolling big. The Clippers' pick-and-roll gets much more lethal when Griffin, the best passing big in the game, is the roller. He's a beast at the rim (75% for his career), but he has a knack for finding Jordan for awkward floppy lob passes. And, of course, if the defense collapses on the screen-and-dump action, Paul or Griffin can kick out to the best catch-and-shoot player in the NBA in Redick.
If all else breaks down for the offense, Paul and Jamal Crawford are still capable of breaking down most, if not all, opposing guards off the dribble or Griffin can post anyone and bully his way to the tin. In addition to it all, Austin Rivers is finally an NBA player, which is a phenomenon that we'll revisit later. His finishing ability and shooting touch has finally caught up to his quick first step, grit, and general swagger.
Defensively, the Clippers have always ranked at the top of the league, owing mostly to Paul's versatility and Griffin's and Jordan's mobility. In fact, for the 2015-2016 season, any form of defensive efficiency metric rated the Clippers defense as a top five or six defense. Take a look at how the Clippers team defend the pick-and-roll, shown below. Paul is trailing the action, but Griffin has already hedged space for the downhill driver. They've allowed the rim-running Jusuf Nurkic to essentially spot up beyond the arc, a less than ideal position for him. Both wings are ready to rotate if necessary but are locked in to closing out on their shooters. The key, however, is Jordan. His eyes are on the ball-handler, but he's also hedging for a dump-off to Nikola Jokic. Not only does Jordan protect the rim, he does so without losing position for rebounds, thus ending the possession.
The major issue with the Clippers has, and still is, the lack of a playable small forward. The best they've had is Matt Barnes, and his periodic lack of shooting touch and defensive tenacity epitomizes the Clippers' problems at that position. Right now, they through Luc Richard Mbah Moute as the starter and Wesley Johnson as his backup. They're both below average shooters, even though they're both at least league-average defenders. Rivers has been able to mitigate Mbah Moute's shooting woes by hiding him in the strong side corner and pushing Redick to roam between the weak side corner and wing. Even if Mbah Moute's defender sags off him, he's been able to duck in from the corner for mid-range jumpers or lay-ins. He's also a willing and capable ball-mover, so even if Paul or Griffin needs to be bailed out by a kickout to Mbah Moute, he'll swing the ball around instantly.
The Clippers' best lineup, optimized for both offense and defense now, is sliding Austin Rivers into the small forward position and hoping that Rivers's improved on-ball defense is enough to hound the best wing on the other team. But, regardless of the added shooting and offensive creativity Rivers gives over Mbah Moute or Johnson, Rivers is best suited as a sixth man with the ball in his hands. And the size limitations on defense will always give them a low ceiling against teams with big wings, like the Spurs or the Warriors, their biggest competition in the conference.
The Clippers have been flirting with breaking up their core if this season doesn't go well; what the organization's definition of well is hard to place. But, they have some subtle roster moves that can potentially improve their chances against the Warriors and the Spurs. Essentially, they need a DeMarre Carroll or even a Tony Snell, who ironically was on the trading block recently. Perhaps a swap of Alan Anderson for Robert Covington and absorbing the rest of the salary into the trade exception for C.J. Wilcox will give them the space-providing, big wing body that they've always needed. Or maybe they can consider trading o ff Brice Johnson, their jumpy, young power forward for Justin Anderson, giving the Mavs some much needed big man depth. But, given Austin Rivers' emergence, Crawford's position on this team, coupled with his defensive ineptness, has rendered him obsolete. It might be time to call up Vlade to see if Rudy Gay for Crawford is viable. Gay might not be the perfect complimentary piece, but hopefully he can realize that as the fourth scorer on a great team, he can finally contend for a ring. His days with Memphis, as their primary scorer, showed that he can play with ball-dominant players, but go get buckets when plays break down.
But perhaps, the best move might be breaking up the triumvirate of Paul, Jordan, and Griffin. On paper, it's true that the Clippers have performed at the top of the league on both sides of the ball. But, in the past five years, every single championship team has featured some form of small ball that's worked both offensively and defensively. After a year with Griffin missing a significant number of games and the Clippers barely missing a beat and the recency bias of Paul's 20-20 game without turnovers with Griffin resting his knee, it might make sense to shop the power forward. Griffin might have very good on-off numbers, but he's also the most enviable trade commodity for the Clippers. Consider the following trade: Blake Griffin and Raymond Felton to the Celtics for Amir Johnson, Jae Crowder, Marcus Smart, and the 2018 Brooklyn pick. The Celtics can get their primary scorer, who can play pick-and-roll with Isaiah Thomas, and allow Horford to be a secondary playmaker. The Clippers can space the floor and improve on defense by finally have a viable wing defender. How about this more extravagant shake-up? Clippers trade Blake and Wesley Johnson to the Nuggets, the Nuggets trade Danilo Gallinari and Wilson Chandler to the Clippers. The Nuggets can also cajole the Nets to absorb the Kenneth Faried contract with a first round pick. The Clippers would gain two lesser combo forwards, both of whom are above average shooters and decent rebounders. The Nuggets can create a lethal rotation of bigs, all of whom are capable playmakers, and the Nets can give Faried a fresh start as a focal point on a team.
If all goes well, trades or not, the Clippers will probably fight the Spurs really hard in the second round of the playoffs and again fail to make the Conference Finals. Even if they do get there, there's no possible way they'll bust through both the Spurs and the Warriors, in some order, to get to the Finals. After a certain while, it might be time for the organization and journalists to take a step back and realize that playoff failures, often due to freak injuries to their two best players, do not define this team. They've shown resilience, they've shown ingenuity on and off the court, and they've been one of the league's best examples of consistency over the past half-decade. They're most likely going down in the books like the late 80s to early 90s Atlanta Hawks, led by Dominique Wilkins - always challenging the top powers in their conference without pushing through to the later rounds. It's high time that basketball Twitter realize that winning 55 games a year, having likable players that pursue careers outside basketball, and giving us entertaining storylines all season is a good thing for the NBA, an NBA that is simultaneously applauded and heckled for its lack of parity. There's always going to be a place for the Clippers in the lore of basketball history, even if they're destined to overperform in the regular season, only to clip in the playoffs.
The Los Angeles Clippers have been subjected to the same maniacally idiotic logic, especially in recent years. Imagine this (and suspend your disbelief for this because this analogy is going to be far-fetched): a tech company, that's been mired in putridity, gets a lucky break and their shareholders start to buy in a little. Then, they aggressively commit to one of their products, and when sales go up a little, they realized that their founder is an unabashedly adulterous, self-immolating, racist sack of inferiority complexes. After being forced to be acquired by a bombastic newcomer, they settle into years of performing near the top of the industry, even though their top employees sometimes have extended sabbaticals or punch out the lesser staff. A company that pulls itself out of years of mediocrity, a firm that forges along amidst such turmoil, would lauded in Wired. But the Clippers - well, we only remember when they clip.
Think about where their franchise started. There was a point in time when their owner likened their black GM, Elgin Baylor (conservatively speaking, one of the top 50 NBA players in history), to an Uncle Tom slave overseer (think Sam Jackson in Django Unchained) and their predominantly black roster to a host of cotton-pickers. That's actually true; I'm not exaggerating. After a semi-decent season with Elton Brand and Baron Davis at the helm, they returned to the lottery for years. Their luck turned by drafting Blake Griffin, who they lost for his rookie season, developing DeAndre Jordan, signing Doc Rivers as coach, and trading for Chris Paul and J.J. Redick, rounding out a solid core. Even through Donald Sterling's abject inability to grasp that he's an insignificant blip in the story of the NBA, the franchise has finished in the top fourth of the league for five straight years.
But we don't remember the five straight years of .600+ ball; we remember their collapses against the Thunder in 2014, the Rockets in 2015, and their lack of depth no allowing them to advance past a pretty weak Trailblazers team just last year. We remember Doc Rivers unapologetically touting Jordan as the next Bill Russell, but we fail to realize that Jordan is one of the best four or five centers in the league. Yeah, Blake punched an equipment manager, but over the past three years, can you name ten players who have been consistently better than him? The Clippers have been able to win far above 50 wins a year, often times with a significant piece missing for extended periods of time. So, what's made this team so great, and what can they do to finally get the credit they deserve?
The pick-and-roll Renaissance in the NBA is obviously bred from the 2005 Phoenix Suns, but the Paul-Griffin-Jordan layer stack has breathed new life into the scheme. Look at the screenshot below, and you'll see that it's a simple concept. You have two uber-athletic bigs, one of whom sets an on-ball screen on Paul's defender, while the other hides in the low post for a potential dump-off. The wings on offense can camp out in one of those red circles to give the action some space to develop. Once Paul's defender is slowed down by the screen, Paul either gets free at the elbow to laser off a mid-range jumper with legendary accuracy (greater than 50% in the past three years) or finds the rolling big. The Clippers' pick-and-roll gets much more lethal when Griffin, the best passing big in the game, is the roller. He's a beast at the rim (75% for his career), but he has a knack for finding Jordan for awkward floppy lob passes. And, of course, if the defense collapses on the screen-and-dump action, Paul or Griffin can kick out to the best catch-and-shoot player in the NBA in Redick.
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| Clippers pick-and-roll offense |
Defensively, the Clippers have always ranked at the top of the league, owing mostly to Paul's versatility and Griffin's and Jordan's mobility. In fact, for the 2015-2016 season, any form of defensive efficiency metric rated the Clippers defense as a top five or six defense. Take a look at how the Clippers team defend the pick-and-roll, shown below. Paul is trailing the action, but Griffin has already hedged space for the downhill driver. They've allowed the rim-running Jusuf Nurkic to essentially spot up beyond the arc, a less than ideal position for him. Both wings are ready to rotate if necessary but are locked in to closing out on their shooters. The key, however, is Jordan. His eyes are on the ball-handler, but he's also hedging for a dump-off to Nikola Jokic. Not only does Jordan protect the rim, he does so without losing position for rebounds, thus ending the possession.
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| Clippers pick-and-roll defense |
The major issue with the Clippers has, and still is, the lack of a playable small forward. The best they've had is Matt Barnes, and his periodic lack of shooting touch and defensive tenacity epitomizes the Clippers' problems at that position. Right now, they through Luc Richard Mbah Moute as the starter and Wesley Johnson as his backup. They're both below average shooters, even though they're both at least league-average defenders. Rivers has been able to mitigate Mbah Moute's shooting woes by hiding him in the strong side corner and pushing Redick to roam between the weak side corner and wing. Even if Mbah Moute's defender sags off him, he's been able to duck in from the corner for mid-range jumpers or lay-ins. He's also a willing and capable ball-mover, so even if Paul or Griffin needs to be bailed out by a kickout to Mbah Moute, he'll swing the ball around instantly.
The Clippers' best lineup, optimized for both offense and defense now, is sliding Austin Rivers into the small forward position and hoping that Rivers's improved on-ball defense is enough to hound the best wing on the other team. But, regardless of the added shooting and offensive creativity Rivers gives over Mbah Moute or Johnson, Rivers is best suited as a sixth man with the ball in his hands. And the size limitations on defense will always give them a low ceiling against teams with big wings, like the Spurs or the Warriors, their biggest competition in the conference.
The Clippers have been flirting with breaking up their core if this season doesn't go well; what the organization's definition of well is hard to place. But, they have some subtle roster moves that can potentially improve their chances against the Warriors and the Spurs. Essentially, they need a DeMarre Carroll or even a Tony Snell, who ironically was on the trading block recently. Perhaps a swap of Alan Anderson for Robert Covington and absorbing the rest of the salary into the trade exception for C.J. Wilcox will give them the space-providing, big wing body that they've always needed. Or maybe they can consider trading o ff Brice Johnson, their jumpy, young power forward for Justin Anderson, giving the Mavs some much needed big man depth. But, given Austin Rivers' emergence, Crawford's position on this team, coupled with his defensive ineptness, has rendered him obsolete. It might be time to call up Vlade to see if Rudy Gay for Crawford is viable. Gay might not be the perfect complimentary piece, but hopefully he can realize that as the fourth scorer on a great team, he can finally contend for a ring. His days with Memphis, as their primary scorer, showed that he can play with ball-dominant players, but go get buckets when plays break down.
But perhaps, the best move might be breaking up the triumvirate of Paul, Jordan, and Griffin. On paper, it's true that the Clippers have performed at the top of the league on both sides of the ball. But, in the past five years, every single championship team has featured some form of small ball that's worked both offensively and defensively. After a year with Griffin missing a significant number of games and the Clippers barely missing a beat and the recency bias of Paul's 20-20 game without turnovers with Griffin resting his knee, it might make sense to shop the power forward. Griffin might have very good on-off numbers, but he's also the most enviable trade commodity for the Clippers. Consider the following trade: Blake Griffin and Raymond Felton to the Celtics for Amir Johnson, Jae Crowder, Marcus Smart, and the 2018 Brooklyn pick. The Celtics can get their primary scorer, who can play pick-and-roll with Isaiah Thomas, and allow Horford to be a secondary playmaker. The Clippers can space the floor and improve on defense by finally have a viable wing defender. How about this more extravagant shake-up? Clippers trade Blake and Wesley Johnson to the Nuggets, the Nuggets trade Danilo Gallinari and Wilson Chandler to the Clippers. The Nuggets can also cajole the Nets to absorb the Kenneth Faried contract with a first round pick. The Clippers would gain two lesser combo forwards, both of whom are above average shooters and decent rebounders. The Nuggets can create a lethal rotation of bigs, all of whom are capable playmakers, and the Nets can give Faried a fresh start as a focal point on a team.
If all goes well, trades or not, the Clippers will probably fight the Spurs really hard in the second round of the playoffs and again fail to make the Conference Finals. Even if they do get there, there's no possible way they'll bust through both the Spurs and the Warriors, in some order, to get to the Finals. After a certain while, it might be time for the organization and journalists to take a step back and realize that playoff failures, often due to freak injuries to their two best players, do not define this team. They've shown resilience, they've shown ingenuity on and off the court, and they've been one of the league's best examples of consistency over the past half-decade. They're most likely going down in the books like the late 80s to early 90s Atlanta Hawks, led by Dominique Wilkins - always challenging the top powers in their conference without pushing through to the later rounds. It's high time that basketball Twitter realize that winning 55 games a year, having likable players that pursue careers outside basketball, and giving us entertaining storylines all season is a good thing for the NBA, an NBA that is simultaneously applauded and heckled for its lack of parity. There's always going to be a place for the Clippers in the lore of basketball history, even if they're destined to overperform in the regular season, only to clip in the playoffs.
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