We missed a lot of paint shots and only took 4 3PAs in Q1. We simply did not use paint touches to get better looks at the 3 pt line or secondary rotations back to our primary stars where they could operate in more space. If you notice the best highlights from PG/Kawhi/Harden, they had a lot of space to roam as the ball rotated to a spot where they had a defender on an island. But this game isn’t the only time we’ve seen this. Our shot attempts for our role players are down of late and that’s due to a lack of ball movement with purpose.

Most of all, we need to re-tool the offense to swing the ball more and get Zu/Mann more involved in touches and shot attempts. One thing I hope the team learned is they absolutely need the athleticism of Mann on the court. His defense against Edwards and his loose ball play were excellent, but when you don’t involve him or Zu in the offense, you play 3 v 5, and Minnesota’s length makes that an impossible task.

Coffey and Norm need more shots than Russ, period. Speeding the game up, getting more passes and shots up, moving the ball from side to side will really work. For this opponent, we got a lot of quality paint touches but then we didn’t move it to the corner/sideline to get 3 ball attempts.

GSW is a small team but I don’t think they would’ve had any problem playing a competitive game against Minnesota. OKC is a smallish team and they’ve beaten Minnesota on the road. I don’t think either team would’ve gotten blown out like this. It’s about your offensive strategy and approach. Clips need to adjust theirs. We’re not optimizing what we have.

Lots of folks have on the thread have talked about the lack of size. While I think that is an issue, my big takeaway is that the lack of strategy is what exposed the team, not necessarily the lack of size.

It struck me as I watched the ebb and flow of the game that the nickname ‘Tinkering Ty’ which Lue earned in Cleveland (and it wasn’t intended to be flattering) was much closer to the truth. He just does random stuff out there. Sometimes it works for a bit, but the quality teams tend to figure it out. It’s more gimmickry than real strategy.

The biggest issue is that we don’t have a strategy that optimizes the entire roster, particularly on the offensive side of the ball, or addresses the matchup we face. We’re not dictating to the other team. We’re reading and reacting and relying on individual ability.

On offense, as a smallish team that has good shooters and scorers, we’re not shifting the defense, putting them in rotation or exploiting match ups. We’re not moving the ball from side to side, using a paint touch to hit the corner, the high elbow 3, or the backdoor. It’s about letting Kawhi/PG or Harden pound the ball to get their 1 v 1 match up to let them get into the game. Any good team is going to key on that. The way we started out the first and second half was almost exactly the same: slow plodding offense, getting trapped and forced to get the ball to one of the stars and expect them to make an individual move, often late in the clock or under duress. A seriously run offense would be whipping that ball to the corner/sideline, use cutting or screening to find a hole in the quasi zone that a lot of teams run today, and letting the ball find the exploitable match up or the hot hand, even if that hand belongs to someone not named Kawhi/PG/Harden. We’ve gotten into a lot of bad habits lately, but not getting Zu/Norm/Mann/Coffey enough touches and shots has made our offense very predictable. Ty goes small to shake off that rust, but it’s not an actual answer to the problem with our offense.

Defensively, we rebounded the ball very well today and out rebounded the Wolves in the first half. But you can’t just say we’re not going to play with a center and think it’s going to work against a big team that will exploit that match up to get easy buckets.

We have PJ Tucker, Kobe Brown, Theis to play at the backup #4. We have Bones to help stretch the defense. We have the ability to swing the ball. We can get Mann more than 2 shots in a game or Coffey more than like 4-5. Russ doesn’t need to take 11 shots only to miss 8 to where the audience knows that he’s about to blow a dunk or layup before he does.

A lineup like Harden, Mann, Coffey, Theis, Plumlee might be playable for short stretches but we’ll never know if Ty never tinkers. I’m not saying this loss is on Ty (far from it), but Ty’s tinkering has always been biased in the direction of smallball.