NBA Season Preview 2017-18: Filling the Chris Paul-sized hole for the Clippers
The 2017-18 Los Angeles Clippers are going to look very different from the team that lost to the Utah Jazz in the playoffs.
The most significant change is the departure The Point God, Chris Paul, and replcaing him is not going to be easy. The Clippers went 313 of 476 games in Paul’s time with them, easily the best era in Clippers history.
Over the six years with Paul, the Clippers have averaged 53.9 wins per 82 games. Comparing that to the rest of Clippers history, the next closest six year period was from 1973-79 when the Buffalo Braves/San Diego Clippers averaged 39.5 wins. That is right, the six years under Paul were the only six-year stretch in which the Clippers have been a winning team.
Paul is the Clippers franchise leader in Win sSares with a total of 78.2. He is the franchise leader in VORP with a total of 34.4. Paul, along with Doc Rivers, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan, turned the Los Angeles Clippers around and made them respectable for the first time ever.
Chris Paul was traded this off-season to the Houston Rockets for a package centered around Patrick Beverly, Lou Williams and Sam Dekker. In losing Paul, the Clippers lost their best play-maker and the central focus of their offense. Everything ran through him.
Over the summer, Nylon Calculus’ own Ben Taylor introduced a statistic called Box Creation. The intent of Box Creation is to measure how a player’s passing, shooting and scoring impact the ability to create offense.
Using Box Creation, we can measure how much offense Chris Paul was responsible for last season. In 2016-17, despite missing 21 games, Paul was responsible for 37.2 percent of the Clippers total box creation. More impressively, Chris Paul was responsible for 76.1 percent of the Clippers total creation during the 1,921 minutes he spent on the court. The next highest total on the Clippers was Blake Griffin at 17.8 percent overall and 33.8 percent in his time on the court.
This trend holds going back previous seasons as well. Over the last three years, Paul has been responsible for a staggering 69.4 percent of the Los Angeles Clippers total offensive creation.
Chris Paul will not be replaced by just one player. The Clippers have four guys who will pick up the slack: Blake Griffin, Milos Teodosic, Patrick Beverly, and Lou Williams.
Blake Griffin has actually been a really great play-maker when Chris Paul has been off the court. Using the NBA’s impact tool, we can see how playing with and without Paul impacts Griffin’s Box Creation for 2016-17. Per Box Creation, Griffin was worth about 6.4 per 100 possessions when playing with Paul and 8.0 per 100 without him. Griffin averaged 8.5 assists per 100 when playing without Paul this past season. For comparison, passing savant Nikola Jokic averaged 8.6 assists per 100 last year.
The biggest key to replacing Paul’s offensive brilliance lies with Milos Teodosic, who is coming over from Europe where he is already known as one of the best passers playing today. Per my player projections, I expect Teodosic to be worth 5.2 box creation per 100 possessions.
Beverly was worth an estimated 3.3 box creation per 100 last season, which I project to increase this upcoming year to 3.8 with his increased offensive load. Similarly for Williams, I project him to be worth 6.1 box creation per 100.
Adding all of Clipper’s projected box creations up for the 2017-18 season results in a total of 1,655. In 2016-17, the Los Angeles Clippers totaled 1,750. Losing The Point God and still maintaining 95 percent of their offensive creation is a testament to how well the Clippers handled their summer.
Next: 25-under-25 -- The best young players in the NBA
All things considered, the Clippers have managed to lose a top-10 player without skipping a beat. They probably are not quite as good this year, although Andrew Johnson might suggest otherwise, but they have a real team.
The Los Angeles Clippers are the deepest team they have been under Doc Rivers. Do not sleep on The Clippers.