Clips Three-Point Shooting Carrying the Load

On Friday I discussed how Blake Griffin's individual turnaround has sparked the Clippers' recent surge (despite having lost both games since), but obviously he's not the only player deserving of credit. L.A. has also gotten a tremendous boost from its role players, most notably J.J. Redick.

How Shot Selection Has Turned Blake Griffin's Season Around

Last season, we saw a transformation in Blake Griffin. Those of us that have actually watched him closely over the years already knew the "nothing but a dunker" narrative was bogus in the first place, but from year one to year three, his game really hadn't changed all that much. He was a guy that primarily did his damage on the inside by using his athleticism and strength to his advantage, but wasn't much of a threat from the perimeter.

CP3 for MVP?

Over the last couple of games, the Clippers' TV guys, Ralph Lawler and Mike Smith, have made it a point to tell us that Chris Paul is currently playing the best basketball of his career. High praise, indeed, considering he's a perennial MVP candidate and appears to be on the Hall of Fame track. However, despite playing in a huge market on a team with realistic championship aspirations, CP3 actually seems to have been flying under-the-radar a bit this season.

Clips' Transition Offense is True Game-Changer

The L.A. Clippers got off to a surprisingly sluggish start to this season, but finally started to look like the team we thought they'd be during their recent road trip. The Clips were away from Staples Center for seven straight games, six of which turned out to be wins for the good guys. Save for a thrashing at the hands of the 15-2 Memphis Grizzlies, L.A. looked excellent over the course of the trip, which concluded with an impressive back-to-back through Houston and Utah.

How Can the Clippers Make DeAndre Jordan a Better Defender?

There are lots of misconceptions about basketball and the way it's played, and most of those misconceptions seem to center around what "good" defense really is. Rather than really diving into the true effectiveness of a player on that end, it seems as though the Defensive Player of the Year is often just handed out to the guy that blocks the most shots, gets a bunch of steals or grabs a lot of rebounds.

Clippers to Sport Ugly Sweaters on Christmas Day

The NBA on Christmas has become a league tradition in recent years, with the league having five showcase games on major networks essentially all day long. The league tends to put its hottest commodities onto the Christmas Day slate, and the Clippers have certainly attained that status over the last few years.

Can the Clippers knock-off the unbeaten Warriors?

The L.A. Clippers are off to a 3-1 start despite being largely unimpressive in any of their games to this point. I suppose winning games in which you play poorly is the mark of a great team, but the Clippers have a long way to go before they can be considered "great".

The Clippers Have a Rebounding Problem

I touched on this in the Thunder preview from last Thursday, but the Clippers have a rebounding problem, you guys. It's obviously waaaaay too early to be panicking with just three games gone, but we kinda saw it coming.

Oklahoma City Thunder (0-1) @ Los Angeles Clippers (0-0) Preview: 5 Keys

Tonight is the night. Finally. It's been quite a few months for the Los Angeles Clippers, but thankfully it's time to see them in action. The Clips' 2014-15 season opener tips-off at 7:30 PT tonight when they host the wounded Oklahoma City Thunder at Staples Center.

Why not the Clippers in 2015?

The 2014-15 NBA regular season officially tips-off Tuesday night with a trio of games, including a TNT doubleheader. Most of the rest of the league gets going on Wednesday, with two teams having to wait until Thursday to get things underway. Unfortunately, the L.A. Clippers are one of those (the other is the Cavs) that has to wait until Thursday to begin play. THE AGONY.

But Thursday will be here soon enough, and we are all of the excited. But we still have to kill time between now-and-then, and what better way to do so than with a nice preview?

Looking at the Blake Griffin/Chris Paul Two-Man Game

The Clippers fell to 0-3 in the preseason with Monday night's 102-89 loss to the Jazz, but who cares? It's preseason. However, that's not to say that there aren't things that actually do matter that take place during the preseason, because there most certainly are. The fact that the Clippers seem vulnerable to dribble penetration from the wing seems fairly concerning, but it's early yet.

Blake Griffin: Long Distance Threat?

Blake Griffin didn't win the NBA's Most Improved Player Award last season, but a viable argument can be made that no player made a bigger leap from 2012 to 2013. Based on one preseason game, however (huge sample size, I know), it appears that Griffin could be in-store for yet another step forward in 2014.

Clips sign Australian forward Joe Ingles

The Clippers haven't made a ton of headlines this summer (other than, ya know, selling for $2 billion), but a series of small moves have seemingly increased their 2015 titles hopes. Additions like Spencer Hawes, Jordan Farmar and Ekpe Udoh give the Clips some depth they lacked sorely a year ago, but their biggest bargain may have been their latest pickup.

L.A. has reportedly agreed to terms with Australian forward Joe Ingles, who impressed many at last month's FIBA World Cup, on a one-year, non-guaranteed deal. While his Australian side only lasted five games in the tourney, Ingles did enough to draw interest from several NBA teams. He averaged 11.4 points on blistering 67 percent shooting from three-point range, and also ran the majority of Australia's offense himself.

Considering he's a 6'8" forward, that last bit is what piqued the interest of NBA clubs the most. As we saw last season, the Clippers' offense struggled quite a bit when Chris Paul wasn't on the floor, and we know that you can never have enough players to initiate the offense. The addition of Farmar should help, but a guy of Ingles' size that is able to do things off-the-dribble provides the Clippers a potential matchup advantage that didn't exist last season. He looked exceptionally comfortable as the decision-maker in pick-and-roll situations, which makes him a nice fit with L.A.'s offensive scheme.

You can never have enough shooting, and Ingles shot the three-ball at a very solid 41 percent clip last season for Maccabi Tel Aviv of the Israeli league. He's made a remarkable leap in that department since turning pro with Barcelona back in 2010, when he shot a dreadful 23 percent from deep.

The 26-year-old is not the most fluid athlete which leads to him struggling at times to defend quicker wings. His size helps him offensively against smaller players, since he can use his strength to his advantage, but he's susceptible to being beaten off-the-dribble on the other end. This won't be a major issue whenever DeAndre Jordan is on the floor to protect the rim, but the Clippers don't really have anyone on the bench that is capable of blocking shots, which could be an issue.

It's no guarantee that Ingles will make the team out of training camp, but given his skills, I'd imagine Doc Rivers should have no problem finding a spot for him.

Clippers sign Udoh, Douglas-Roberts

The L.A. Clippers made the trade last week with the Milwaukee Bucks for the straightforward purpose of cutting salary, and that's just what they did. Then on Wednesday, they used the recently-freed salary space to make a couple of minimum signings. The Clippers have brought in veteran forward Ekpe Udoh and guard Chris Douglas-Roberts on one-year deals.

Udoh was drafted sixth overall back in 2010 by the Golden State Warriors, but has disappointed since coming to the NBA out of Baylor. The lanky 6'10" forward has battled injuries throughout and has never developed much of a useful offensive game, but he does have a presence defensively. The Clippers were in need of additional front court depth, and they've added it here.

Photo Credit - nikk_la/Flickr

Douglas-Roberts enjoyed a decorated career at Memphis before being taken in the second-round of the '08 draft by the Nets. Since then, he's made several stops throughout the league and the D-League, and played last season with the Charlotte Bobcats where he averaged nearly seven points a game on 38% shooting from three-point range.

Neither of these are major impact signings, of course, but the addition of Udoh at least gives the Clippers a better big man rotation than the one they had a year ago. With Udoh, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, Spencer Hawes, Hedo Turkoglu and Glen Davis all on-board, Doc Rivers now has enough options to where he shouldn't need to play Griffin and Jordan outrageous minutes.

L.A. has numerous wing players, so there's a good chance CDR doesn't even make the final squad out of camp. But you can never have enough shooters, and that's one thing that Douglas-Roberts can bring, if needed.

Clippers trade Jared Dudley for nothing, pretty much

Hello, ClipperBlogger. Long time, no see. I'm back.

The Clippers have made plenty of news lately, with the sale to Steve Ballmer and the announcement Wednesday that they've agreed to a long-term contract extension with Doc Rivers that will keep him around until 2019. According to Yahoo! Sports, the deal is worth over $50 million over the next five seasons, which is a lotta scratch.

But we aren't here to talk about those things. We're here to talk about what transpired on Tuesday, when the Clippers randomly decided to send swingman Jared Dudley and a future first-round pick to the Milwaukee Bucks in exchange for forward Carlos Delfino, center Miroslav Raduljica and a future second-round pick.

Dudley began the season as the Clippers' starting small forward, but quickly fell out of that spot and eventually out of the rotation completely as he struggled. He shot 36% from three-point range last year, which is decent, but was still his lowest since his rookie year with Charlotte in 2007.

Photo Credit - Keith Allison/Flickr

On the surface, it appeared as though the Clippers were just dumping Dudley's combined salary of $8M over the next two seasons, but that isn't the case. In this trade, the Clips actually took on $500K more than they had previously on the cap. Then again, this all could wind up being a salary dump, anyway.

Delfino has been a nice role player in the league for many years, but he missed all of last season after suffering a broken foot during the 2013 playoffs with Houston. The foot required additional surgery recently, which is putting his 2014-15 season in doubt, as well.

Raduljica just played his first season in the NBA with the Bucks since coming over from the Ukrainian league and didn't make much of an impact.

ESPN's Marc Stein reported early Wednesday that LAC is expected to waive both Delfino and Raduljica later this week using what's called the "stretch provision". This basically means that they can release a player and spread the resulting salary cap hit over twice the remaining length of the contract. The Clippers were not allowed to do this with Dudley, because his contract had been signed prior to the signing of the 2011 CBA, making him ineligible. Got all that? Me neither.

So, basically, the Clippers made this trade in order to clear a tiny bit of cap space to use on another free agent. With the tiny amount of space remaining, it would make sense for them to pursue one of the few remaining free agent big men. It was reported yesterday by USA TODAY's Sam Amick that former Bucks forward Ekpe Udoh was in town visiting the Clippers.

Udoh has battled injuries since coming into the league in 2010, but he was taken by the Warriors 6th overall in that draft. He's never come close to living up to that draft position, but the Clips lack serious depth along the frontline, and you never know what kind of impact playing for a great coach on a great team may have on a young player like him.

Dan Woike of the OC Register also mentioned the possibility of the Clippers re-signing spare forward Hedo Turkoglu once/if Delfino and Raduljica are released. Turk's best days are clearly in the rearview mirror at this point, but he did give L.A. some decent minutes in spurts down-the-stretch last season.

The Clippers' forfeiture of a future first-round pick is the most troubling aspect of this deal. With the team expected to contend for championships, it's not like they're risking dumping a lottery pick or anything, but first-rounders are quite valuable assets. To dump one just to free up a little amount of cap space to sign a fringe roster player seems like a bit of a waste.

The second-round pick the Clippers are receiving is actually the same one they'd initially traded to Milwaukee in the trade that brought J.J. Redick to Los Angeles.

Report: LeBron interested in joining Clippers

So I wrote last week after the Miami Heat were dispatched by the San Antonio Spurs in the Finals that if LeBron James were to be interested in finding himself a new team this summer, that he should strongly consider joining the L.A. Clippers.

Reports came down this morning that LeBron did decide to opt-out of his deal with Miami this summer, which is a development that wasn't entirely unexpected. Opting-out would allow James to sign a lengthier, more lucrative deal with Miami, if he so chooses. However, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports had a few interesting tidbits regarding LeBron's decision.

The most intriguing move on the mind of James and his camp, sources told Yahoo Sports, would be a sign-and-trade scenario with the Los Angeles Clippers in which James could play with close friend Chris Paul and under president-coach Doc Rivers.

See? Interesting! It's no secret that players love to play for Rivers, and James' history of friendship with Paul is well documented. But there are a few snags to this scenario.

As for sign-and-trade scenarios, in which Riley would have to assist James in getting his maximum financial payout with a new team, the organization has been privately adamant that they'd never do it, league sources said. If James wanted to force his way to the Clippers, he'd have to create the fear within Miami that it could lose him for nothing to a team with the salary cap space to sign him.

The Heat can say all they want that they don't have interest in helping facilitate a move for LeBron, but if push came to shove would they really stick to that? I suppose it would depend on what they would be getting back from another team, but losing him for nothing doesn't seem like the greatest outcome for them if he does decide to sign elsewhere.

If the Heat are serious about not helping out with a sign-and-trade and LeBron still wanted to join the Clippers, the team would just have to make separate moves in order to create the space necessary. As of today, the Clippers have about $76 million in contract commitments for next season, but that number will drop to about $71 million once Danny Granger, Glen Davis and Darren Collison officially opt-out of their respective deals, as expected.

Photo Credit - Keith Allison/Flickr

The biggest and most painful move would be trading rising center DeAndre Jordan, who is owed over $11 million in the final year of his deal next season. Finding a taker for a 25-year-old center with a reasonable salary shouldn't be too difficult for the Clippers if they are to go that route. The Clips would have to trade him to a team with enough cap space to fit him in, because L.A. couldn't afford to take any salary back in order to clear the space to sign LeBron.

The Clippers would also likely have to find new homes for some combination of Jamal Crawford, Matt Barnes and Jared Dudley. Crawford is the reigning Sixth Man of the Year, while Barnes still certainly has a role somewhere. Dudley is coming off a down year, but he's still a solid shooter.

There have been whispers regarding the possibility that James could take less money to allow his team to build a better group around him, as well, so perhaps the Clippers wouldn't even need to dump as much salary as it initially appears. Obviously Paul and Blake Griffin aren't going anywhere, but anyone else on the roster can be had.

It's also important that the Clippers don't jump the gun here and move all their pieces prior to getting a commitment from James, if possible. Dismantling the team and then having LeBron sign elsewhere would obviously be quite the nightmarish scenario.

If LeBron is seriously considering bolting from South Beach, then there'll surely be no shortage of suitors out there making themselves available to him, as was the case four years ago. The Clippers, remember, got a face-to-face meeting with LeBron during his free agency tour that year, but a big part of the reason he wasn't truly serious about L.A. as an option was because of the presence of one Donald T. Sterling.

Sterling's situation will play no small part in the team's pursuit of LeBron, as he's been adamant that he thinks Sterling need no longer be a part of the NBA. The NBA is certainly doing its best to make sure the pending sale of the team to Steve Ballmer can be completed as soon as possible, though Sterling is trying to drag things out.

The addition of LeBron James would surely make the Clippers the odds-on favorites to topple the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference, but he'll also be receiving interest from the Atlanta Hawks, Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Lakers, Cleveland Cavaliers, Houston Rockets, Phoenix Suns and, of course, the Heat.

Come to Los Angeles, LeBron James

Hi, ClipperBlogger. Long time no see.

Should the Clippers change their name?

Now that the sale of the Los Angeles Clippers to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer appears imminent, ESPN L.A.'s Arash Markazi penned an interesting article regarding the future of the team's name.

Whom should the Clippers target in the NBA Draft?

Who? Whom? Whatever. You get the idea. The Clippers were eliminated from the playoffs last week, and now they can set their sights on the offseason ahead. There's obviously plenty of uncertainty there, but we need not speak of Sterlings in this space today. I'm sure there'll be plenty of time for that later, anyway.

Did the Clippers get robbed in Game 5?

Doc: "We got robbed."
— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) May 14, 2014

Welp. There you have it. In short, the Clippers lost to the Thunder last night, 105-104, in a game they most certainly should have won. When you're up by seven with just over 40 seconds to go, the game should be yours. But they didn't win. And now, they're facing elimination.

There was a lot that happened. By now, you're familiar with what went down. The officials, who had been overly whistle-happy all night long, managed to botch a replay that allowed the Thunder to wrongfully keep possession, just before a questionable foul by Chris Paul on a Russell Westbrook shot resulted in three game-clinching free throws for the Thunder point guard. And there it is. Thunder win, Clippers lose, Clippers now trail the series 3-2 coming home for Game 6.

Doc is right, the Clippers did get robbed here, certainly. But they also screwed a bunch of stuff up late in that game. Jamal Crawford took a couple of "heat check" type shots that aren't okay, particularly late in a playoff game. The Clippers had a sizable lead at the time, but you can't be wasting possessions that way.

Photo Credit - Keith Allison/Wikimedia Commons

The Paul turnover that resulted in the botched review call was also inexcusable, and there were several uncharacteristic plays he made down-the-stretch that helped doom L.A. CP3 actually turned the ball over five times last night, after having done so just six times in the previous four games of the series combined. 

While I'm not convinced Paul's foul on Westbrook's three-pointer was actually a foul, it's still silly of him to even come close enough to where the official could deem it as such. The fact that Westbrook was even attempting that shot was insane in and of itself, and Paul needlessly got all up on him. Odds are, Westbrook isn't hitting that shot even without Paul in the picture. Paul got bailed-out in the previous series after he nearly fouled Steph Curry on a would-be game-winning three-point attempt, and this time, he got caught.

Outside of the final minute, the Clippers played extremely well in this game. They controlled the pace, and they were able to keep the MVP of the league in-check. Durant finished with 27 points, but he shot a miserable 6-22 from the field, and was clearly frustrated. Of course, conversely, Russell Westbrook was completely unstoppable. Paul is commonly referred to as "Point God", and, as Grantland's Jason Gallagher said, Westbrook should be known as "Point Godzilla". The Clippers haven't had an answer for him all series long, and he is what kept OKC from getting their doors blown last night. Point Godzilla finished with a game-high 38 points to go along with six assists and five rebounds.

It's nice that the Clippers get to come back to STAPLES Center to play Game 6, but, as I mentioned yesterday, home court advantage really doesn't exist in this series. The Clippers nearly beat OKC for the second time at Chesapeake Energy Arena last night, while the Thunder could've easily swept the previous two games at STAPLES were it not for L.A.'s monstrous Mother's Day comeback.

Can the Clippers win tomorrow night? Of course. It's evident that these teams are extremely evenly-matched, so to count them out just because they're up against it would be beyond foolish. Given all they've had to deal with already during this playoff run, winning each of the next two games wouldn't be all that surprising.

Game 5 Preview: What can the Clippers do to slow down OKC's big guns?

The Clippers saved their season on Sunday with a maniacal fourth quarter rally, evening their second-round series at two games apiece with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Things were looking rather dire early on as the Thunder were doing whatever they wanted offensively while simultaneously stifling the Clippers' offense completely.

Paul, Clippers crush Thunder 122-105

Chris Paul emerged from the Clippers' first-round series with the Warriors physically beaten and emotionally drained. But that didn't stop him from imposing his will on the Thunder on Monday night.

Game 6 Preview: Can the Clippers oust the Warriors?

The Clippers-Warriors series has been largely overshadowed by the Donald Sterling off-the-court controversy, but one of the more highly-anticipated first-round series has, for the most part, lived up to the billing thus far.

NBA bans Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life

At his press conference in Manhattan Tuesday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver came down hard on Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, banning Sterling from the league for life. Sterling is barred from attending NBA games or practices, being present at any Clippers office or facility, or participate in anything involving the business practices of the team. Sterling was also fined $2.5 million by the league, which is the maximum fine allowed by the league's bylaws.

What does the Donald Sterling controversy mean for the future of the Clippers?

Early Saturday morning, TMZ released audio purported to be Clippers owner Donald Sterling making racist remarks in a recorded conversation with his girlfriend. In the event you aren't dwelling under a rock, you're aware of this by now.