This game was so bad I am not going to bother with even the semblance of a traditional recap. The Clippers’ starters were mostly good, and won their minutes significantly against the Nuggets’ “starters”, who in this game were their bench. The Clippers’ bench was very bad in their first stint in the first half, missing a ton of shots and turning the ball over relentlessly. Between the starters’ dominance in the second quarter and a better bench stint in the third, the game was “over” by the mid-3rd, and full garbage time commenced shortly thereafter.
Notes
PG Ready for Season – Paul George was the only Clipper outside of maybe Ivica Zubac who looked completely alive from beginning to end. After a bit of a slow start on offense, PG cooked for the rest of the first half, ending with 23 points on 9-13 shooting and getting to the line four times. He looks as smooth and silky as ever, and a healthy Paul George to start the season has been a rare sight for Clippers’ fans. Hopefully this form carries into the regular season.
Norm Not Ready: It was another tough preseason outing for Norm Powell, who shot 2-7 from the field and made some bad decisions. Norm is a vet and this is preseason, so it’s not worth worrying about. However… Norm is, historically, a slow starter, and it looks like this year will be no different. Fingers crossed he improves when the games actually matter.
Rotation Stuff – Nic Batum started today at forward after Mann and RoCo started the first two preseason games, and he played well, knocking in two threes, bringing in four rebounds, and playing his usual brand of stifling defense. He’s certainly a great fit with the starters, but so are Mann and RoCo. As Law pointed out on Twitter, the better question might actually be who works best off the bench. It seems like Mann will probably come off the bench, one of Nico and RoCo will start, and the other will be the reserve four – but we will see. Ty Lue has said RoCo and Nico do a lot of the same stuff – which is why RoCo was out of the rotation most of last year – and so far it does seem like they’re being kept exclusively separately.
KJ Small Ball Five – The odd man out of those forward discussions is KJ Martin, who was mentioned early in camp as a possibility to start but has steadily faded away from those conversations. In today’s game, Martin was used almost exclusively as a small-ball center, which was probably due to Mason Plumlee’s rest absence, but also speaks to his real utility as a rim-running, rebounding smaller player. Martin did bring in some boards and had a couple nice buckets, but had several awful turnovers and did not make an impact defensively. My guess is he’s out of the rotation to start the season, but is the 11th man capable of playing across the 3, 4, and 5.
