NBA: Separating Championship Contenders From Pretenders
Los Angeles Clippers 9-5
ORating 110.3 (5th), DRating 107.1 (19th), Point Differential +3.0 (10th), SOS 10th, Title odds +1100
The Los Angeles Clippers are another team that has caused a few Internet trees to get cut down to print all the negative themed stories surrounding this club. Most of those stories have focused on the “look” or the “feel” of the team, that the Clippers were somehow “off”. We will be focusing on the numbers to make our objective assessment.
The Clippers do have troubles and they start on the defensive side of the ball. A season after having the ninth best defense in the league, the Clippers have plummeted to 19th, with a very similar personnel grouping. The Clippers defense is objectively worse than than last season, particularly on the wing, and even allowing for small sample sizes. The Clippers two most frequently used 5-man units both have negative plus / minuses and defensive efficiency ratings of 111 and 118, numbers that would rank 28th and dead last behind even the Los Angeles Lakers. This is a potentially fatal flaw and needs to be addressed either internally or externally if the Clippers are to contend for a title.
The overall negativity surrounding the Clippers permeates through to an offense, that despite ranking fifth in defensive rating, is not immune to criticism. The rhetoric around the Clippers offense is that they have “fallen in love with the jumpshot”. A greater percentage of the Clippers field goal attempts are three-pointers (29.1% to 32.1%), which partly explains why the average distance of a Clippers field goal attempt is 14’8″, the longest in the NBA and a full foot longer than last season when they ranked third. This change is not unexpected as more analytics driven head offices preach the underutilization of the trey, however of more concern is Blake Griffen. Just a year after figuring in the MVP discussion, the Clippers All-Star power forward is playing a different game. Griffen was getting to the rim much more frequently last year (40.7% of FGA compared to just 31.8% this year), whereas this year he is taking more than 45% of his attempts from ten feet and beyond compared to only 34% last year; his average shot distance climbing from 8’8″ to 10’3″ as his eFG% plummets from 53.3% to 47.1%.
The Clippers have lost five of eight against teams above .500 and are 2-4 against other “contending” teams from this list. Despite all this negativity the Clippers still rank as the 11th best team by SRS and their problems, whilst serious are fixable, however until they are addressed they will remain on the outside looking in.
Status – Pretenders
Next: Chicago Bulls