The Clippers took a 2-1 series lead with a solid game 3 win, and then came out in game 4 ready to take control of the series. LA took a 21-point lead in the first half–and then the Clippers were embarrassed by the Mavericks. In many ways, the Clippers embarrassed themselves.
Now, with the best-of-seven series deadlocked at 2-2, the task in front of the heavily-favored Clippers is simple: get the result. Anything short of winning at least two of the next three games would be an abject failure, an indictment of a team that played lazily all season and wasn’t good enough to flip the switch when things got real. But success–as underwhelming as needing 6 or 7 games in a 2-7 series may be–would leave the team’s critics with a short memory as focus shifts to the second round and beyond.
There’s something to be said for valuing process over results, as hard as it can be to get past disappointment. Sometimes, you do everything right and come up short of expectations, for any number of reasons. A drastic reaction to a Clippers loss in this series would not be the result of such a focus on results over process, but rather an appropriate response to the team’s bad process, all year and here in the first round.
With focus turned towards a pivotal game 5, here are five takeaways from the Clippers’ game 4 debacle:
It’s time for some soul-searching
To overreact to Luka Doncic’s game 4 buzzer-beater as an indictment of the Clippers would be, as I suggested above, to prioritize results over process. This is the NBA Playoffs. Luka is one of the league’s best players, and he made an iconic shot to cap off an iconic performance. That shot–and his play late in the game–says more about him than it does about the Clippers.
The problem with the Clippers in game 4, and throughout this series, is not Luka’s brilliance but their internal miscues. The coach staff has made a number of well-documented tactical mistakes, but even more concerning is this team’s lack of identity. Doc Rivers was right postgame when he called the team “emotionally weak,” saying “you can see the difference in the spirits. They make a run and everybody’s excited. You know, they make a run on us, and we cave-in.”
Even with Luka’s greatness, even with Rivers’ slapshod coaching effort, the Clippers should clearly have the upper hand in this series. They led by as much as 21 points in the first half. But when things stopped going their way, and the Mavericks cut into their lead, the Clippers had a quit moment. They fell behind by as much as 12. They lost aggressiveness offensively and interest defensively as Dallas piled on the points. Their late run to turn the game into a coin flip was admirable, but it never should have gotten to that point.
That quit moment is by far the most worrying thing, and Doc is correct in diagnosing it. There is an underlying issue with this team’s intensity, and while that won’t automatically fix every strategic issue, it will drastically raise the Clippers’ floor if they stop settling for isolations and contested jumpers on offense and stay consistently engaged on defense.
Doc Rivers’ job should be on the line
As I’ve said, it’s normally a mistake to focus on results over process. Just because the Clippers are coming up short of expectations doesn’t necessarily mean that Doc Rivers should be at risk of being replaced as the team’s head coach if they lose this series. But in this case, it’s clear to almost every observer I can find that the problem isn’t unfortunate results, but bad process, with Rivers coaching an abysmal series.
When you’re the head coach of a team as good as the Clippers, and you’ve been given a roster as good as the one Rivers has, there can’t be excuses. Beyond his particularly poor job in this series, Doc generally is responsible for the team’s play. If they aren’t playing hard, it’s his job as the head coach to motivate them. If he can’t get these guys fired up to play in a close playoff series, he’s lost the locker room. If they aren’t getting good shots offensively, it’s his job to have an offensive system and call plays to produce offense. If there’s no system beyond guys trading isolation possessions to take contested off-the-dribble jumpers, he’s responsible for not installing one. If there is, and he’s not calling those plays, he’s responsible for the play-calling. And if he is calling those plays and the guys aren’t running them, again, he’s lost the locker room.
Paul George is in a historically bad playoff slump? Sure sounds like a time when a guy with a noted reputation as a player’s coach could talk to his star wing and get his head right to get a good performance out of him.
Doc may not have created all of these problems, but it’s his job as a coach to prevent them by putting his guys in a position to succeed, and solve them when they arise by making tactical adjustments. Right now, he’s putting his guys in a position to fail and then leaving them out to dry to figure things out for themselves–like when he refused to call a timeout during an 8-minute stretch in the third quarter where the Clippers didn’t make a field goal and allowed a 16-0 Mavs run, flipping an 8-point lead to an 8-point deficit.
Seriously, Trez can’t play against Boban… and maybe not at all
I hate to beat a dead horse, but if the same match-up keeps on swinging games, then we have to keep talking about it. Let’s just establish that Boban being a bad match-up for Trez isn’t a secret–I wrote about it in my series preview before game 1:
If Dallas is going to counter the Clippers’ second-unit, Boban’s ability to be an x-factor (and use his length to bother Montrezl Harrell) could be what swings a game their way.
I don’t really know how much more obvious this could be for Doc Rivers. Montrezl Harrell played 17 minutes tonight, all in regulation. The Clippers lost those 17 minutes by 19 points. The game was tied after 48 minutes and went to overtime.
Marjanovic, for his part, was +11 in 15 minutes–his +/- set back in the minutes he played against Zubac, who outplayed him.
In the first quarter, Harrell and Boban entered the game at the same time, and while the Clippers held on to their lead due to some good shooting elsewhere in the lineup, Trez had a horrid stretch, being outscored 6-2 by Boban (who made effortless shots over his shorter defender) and logging a turnover. The drop-off on help defense when Harrell enters the game is huge as well, as Dallas suddenly becomes able to score at the rim. Watch when Harrell enters the game and immediately you’ll notice Maverick guards, especially Doncic, approach the rim with more confidence as they finish over the diminutive center.
Harrell re-entered the game with 6:49 to play in the second quarter; Carlisle responded with Boban at 5:20. Trez entered with a 20-point lead. It was down to 13 when Marjanovic entered (with the Clippers at the line stretching it to 15). When Trez checked out with 2:41 to play, after just two minutes and thirty-nine seconds on the court with Boban, LA’s lead was down to 8.
Paul George’s confidence is shot
The takeaway here isn’t just that George is playing poorly (though he’s been awful in this series), but that he’s clearly in his own head. He’s not just having a bad shooting stretch–he’s having the worst playoff shooting stretch since 1948, which is the last time a player shot under 25% for three straight playoff games while taking 14 or more shots in each game.
His on-court demeanor isn’t great, as he becomes shockingly timid on offense, settling for jumpers and looking scared when he surprisingly finds himself with the ball around the rim. In the second half tonight, George was 0-4 from the field with two turnovers. That’s not, as he has suggested after games, the result of of shots not falling–it’s confidence waning for a player who has failed all series to take an aggressive first step and drive downhill to the rim. To get himself going, that’s exactly what he has to do: put the ball on the floor, put his head down, and get to the rim. Whether it’s a dunk, foul, turnover, or miss, something’s gonna happen. Missing more off-the-dribble jumpers isn’t going to do anything for anyone.
The Clippers need Patrick Beverley
It’s a hard position to be in. Of course, we all know Pat wants to be out on the floor as badly as anyone, and there is no doubt here that if he was able to play in games 2-4, he would have. As much as LA has missed Pat in these few games, it won’t do them any good to rush him back and have him reinsure himself.
So, this isn’t a call for Pat to play through the pain, or “tough it out.” That all-too-common discourse in sports is both toxic and counterproductive, as it results in more games lost to injury than proper caution and recovery.
It’s just a note that without Beverley, the Clippers play 5 perimeter players: Reggie Jackson, Lou Williams, Landry Shamet, Kawhi Leonard, and Paul George. Three of those five guys are poor defenders. That makes it a pretty tall task for Rivers to build 48 minutes’ worth of lineups without playing two poor defenders together–in fact, it’s an impossible task unless Leonard and George each play 48 minutes.
Now, Doc could be a little more creative than he has been–Rodney McGruder could see spot minutes to bridge between different lineups, or Marcus Morris could play some SF minutes with JaMychal Green picking up the extra time at power forward. But as long as Patrick Beverley is out, Rivers will be hard-pressed to find a rotation that doesn’t force the Clippers to endure some minutes with two of those aforementioned three guys sharing the floor–part of the recipe that has left LAC open to being torched by players like Seth Curry and Trey Burke in this series.
One thing to keep an eye on: if the Clippers have to play two of these guards together for stretches, they can at least stagger Montrezl Harrell’s minutes so that Harrell is on the floor with just one of these guards and the starting wing unit of George, Leonard, and Morris. Ivica Zubac has a defensive rating of 104 in this series–the best on the team among guys who have played regularly. Harrell has a miserable 134.6, only better than JaMychal Green (who has had the misfortune of sharing a defensive second unit with Harrell and the aforementioned guards). Through the series, the Clippers are +35 in Zubac’s 92 minutes and -46 in Harrell’s 72. Despite playing 20 fewer minutes, the Clippers have allowed more points when Montrezl is on the floor than Zu (210-208). Enough is enough.
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