It would be nice not to see him slowed down in any way by playing yesterday and putting up another competitive and solid game, see how he might fare against Lopez, not to mention Giannis, who didn’t play on Monday, or whenever it was. Maybe he sits today, but maybe he’s slowly building back to his old ironman status.

PG’s signature 1v1 D and help D – poetry. 

Kl Pg Jh Np Zu – Death line up. Choose your poison.

Clippers starters since January 28, 1st quarters – I chose that date because Jan 27 was our last game where we performed strongly on BOTH ends and played how we should and I chose 1st quarters to check how big a part the obviously poor starts play):

Offensive rating: tied 25th
Defensive rating: 15th
Net rating: tied 24th
Assist percentage: 28th
Assist/turnover ratio: tied 26th
Turnover percentage: tied 12th
Defensive rebounding %: 29th
Rebounding percentage: 27th
True shooting: tied 7th
Plusminus: 27th

The numbers clearly show what the issues are and aren’t. They are neither skewed by poor shooting nor is the defensive rating worse due to outrageously high turnovers. We simply don’t do basic things: rebounding, box outs, defending in the half court, moving the ball, generating assists, forcing turnovers, running good half court offense. And that’s about 30% of the minutes of our starters (in Mann’s case more). They’re completely wasted and then our best guys need to either rest or play more because we’re in a big hole. So unnecessary, lazy and dumb.

Comparison: from Nov15 (Russ to the bench) to Jan28 those same guys rank 14th in offense, 10th in defense, 10th in net rating while being equally tied for 7th in true shooting. Top10 in the rebounding categories.

I love seeing games that are won on defense primarily.

Bones with a nice game. Zu with a great game.

Related: our rebounding more than held up.

Touches were balanced, shot distribution as well. A first step in the right direction?

We look alright in second halves when we lock in.

The bad:

In spite of the stats and the point made about touches and shot distribution, I was not pleased with Harden’s first half whatsoever for two reasons:

1) He gave up the ball but that’s not playmaking or helping others get good shots. It was reflected in the team’s offensive rating of 82 when Harden was on the court. More pace and good passes in the second half, some drives in transition. Harden was the main reason for our crappy start, I thought Mann and Zu looked good while PG looked okay. Their efforts and the talent was wasted once again by a lack of movement and playmaking.

2) ALL of Harden’s shots were 3s, most of them stepbacks. He converted but is that how we wanna play when it matters, with all the talent and offensive weapons we got, relying on tough jump shots?

Second aspect here is the lack of drives. Harden even turned it down when he was already in the driving lane, with Zubac in good position, a middie, a floater available and an easy path to either a kick-out to the corner or free throws. This lack of aggression is what we usually criticise PG for and it hurts the offense even more when Harden plays like this.

The ugly:

I probably adjust by only watching second halves because I’m so sick and tired of our starting lineup coming out flat, slow and throwing up bad shot after bad shot. Check Clippers’ starters 1st quarter stats since Jan28, especially the advanced stuff like offense, defense, assists, turnovers, plusminus, it’s ugly – and entirely self-inflicted.

Wrote more about the negatives here. However, this was a decent enough win overall. PG had a nice two-way game, Mann, Zu and Bones delivered, Norm was Norm, Harden had a good second half, we played defense. Gotta finally address the playing style though if a) we wanna beat better teams and b) we wanna decrease minutes for our stars.