OKC has to begin their season with a rather unfortunate back-to-back, as they were in Portland last night where they lost to the Trail Blazers, 106-89. Let's dive into the keys for tonight's first rematch of last spring's Western Conference semifinal.
1. Clippers need to use depth to their advantage
As mentioned above, the Thunder are wounded. "Wounded" may even be putting it kinda lightly. Just nine players were available for Oklahoma City last night in Portland, and all nine were forced to play at least 15 minutes. At one point early in the second quarter, the Thunder had a lineup of Sebastian Telfair, Lance Thomas, Andre Roberson, Nick Collison and Kendrick Perkins on the floor. Yikes. Pretty horrible.
The Clippers, on the other hand, enter this game with relatively good all-around health. Glen Davis is officially out with a groin injury that has lingered since the preseason. According to the OC Register's Dan Woike, though, everyone else should be available.
Glen Davis is out tonight - I'm told everyone else is available to play.
— Dan Woike (@DanWoikeSports) October 30, 2014
See? The absence of Davis leaves L.A. without its primary Blake Griffin backup, but that shouldn't be a huge deal. Hedo Turkoglu and/or Ekpe Udoh can pick up those limited minutes.
The bench was huge for the Clips a year ago, and their key reserves (Jamal Crawford, Spencer Hawes, Jordan Farmar) should be able to present some problems for the OKC spares tonight. If the Thunder were to be at full-strength, it's likely that none of Telfair, Thomas or Perry Jones III would even be seeing the floor. This is a clear advantage for LAC.
2. Russell Westbrook
Pictured here, eyeing Kevin Durant's 2014 MVP trophy.
Most figured that without Kevin Durant, the Oklahoma City Thunder would be The Russell Westbrook Show. And through one game, they're right. Russ was a one-man wrecking machine last night, as he poured-in 26 points in just the first half alone.
However, the Blazers were able to limit Westbrook to just 10 points in the second 24 minutes of the game, and nobody else on the Thunder roster helped much at all. Thomas scored 14 points for the Thunder, while Ibaka was the only other player to reach double-figures with just 10. There really isn't
 |
| Russell Westbrook Photo Credit - Keith Allison/Flickr |
38 points and six assists is a nice individual line, but it doesn't mean a whole lot when you still lose by 17 points. Ibaka is really the only other offensive threat the Clippers need to worry about. He appears comfortable shooting from anywhere beyond-the-arc this season (not just the corners), so it'll be a challenge for Griffin and friends to chase him around the court outside of their likely comfort zones near the bucket. OKC likes to run Ibaka off a low screen and free him up near the free-throw line, so it'll also be on the Clippers' perimeter guys to collapse and help.
Russell Westbrook can (and will) score his points. Just don't let the others beat you.
3. Stretch Ibaka out defensively
As is the case with most shot-blockers, they prefer to hang around the paint and swat anything that tries to meander into their territory. L.A.'s primary offseason pickup was Spencer Hawes, a seven-footer with range out beyond the three-point line. Based on the way he played in the preseason, it appears as though Blake Griffin is now comfortable shooting from deep, as well.
With Ibaka the natural candidate to guard both Griffin and Hawes whenever he's on the floor, it'll be key for L.A. to try and get him out of that defensive comfort zone. We saw the Clippers in the preseason run several different plays that freed Griffin up for shots from the outside, and it'd make sense to see plenty of that this evening, as well. Steven Adams is a decent shot-blocker, as well, but he's also not nearly as explosive as Ibaka. Serge having to chase Griffin and/or Hawes around the perimeter frees the likes of CP3 and Jamal Crawford to find open lanes around the rim. This will force Ibaka's hand. Either he crashes down on the driving guard to cut-off the rim and leaves Griffin/Hawes open from deep, or he sticks with his man on the perimeter and the Clipper guards have a layup line.
4. Find a 4th source of offense
This one is probably more of a season-long mission, but whatever. We know Blake Griffin, Chris Paul and Jamal Crawford can score, and score well. Unfortunately, far too often last season the Clippers would endure offensive droughts if one or none of them were on the court. Griffin and Paul tend to play the majority of their minutes together (with good reason), while Crawford is obviously the No. 1 reserve scorer.
But what if Crawford is off? Or, as was the case last year, what if he gets hurt? Darren Collison, a solid scorer in his own right, is now in Sacramento, having been replaced by Jordan Farmar. While Farmar is an excellent shooter, he's no longer a huge threat to score off-the-dribble. The same can be said for Hawes, though Hawes has shown flashes of a decent post-up game in the preseason, at least. DeAndre scores on dunks.
Matt Barnes was absolutely atrocious shooting the ball during the preseason, as he hit just 3-of-36 shot attempts. That's...unbelievably bad. But Barnes is just about a league-average three-point shooter for his career, so one would hope he was just going through a rough stretch and that he got all of those misses out of his system just in time for the games that count.
The ideal fourth source of offense for the Clips has to be J.J. Redick. Redick's inaugural season in Los Angeles was marred by various injuries that forced him to miss 47 games, and he wasn't really ever able to establish himself as a consistent threat in the games he did play. Even so, it was clear that Doc Rivers loves the offensive tools he brings to the table. More often than not, L.A. would run Redick off a screen for a shot on the first possession of the game with the hope of getting him into an early rhythm. I'd expect more of that this season, and, health permitting, I think Redick needs to prove himself as the excellent two-way contributor the Clippers acquired him to be if they have any realistic championship aspirations for 2014-15.
5. Win the glass
Say what you will about the meaningfulness of preseason games, but there were a few things that happened with the Clippers that may be cause for concern. One of those was rebounding. The Clippers were out-rebounded in all eight of their preseason games. That's unacceptable, but even more so when you have last season's NBA leader in rebounding (Jordan) along with another stellar glass-eater (Griffin) starting on your frontline.
As a team, Oklahoma City had the best rebounding differential in the league a year ago (+3.8 per game), while the Clippers checked-in at 20th with a negative differential. Of the teams that finished with the nine best rebounding differentials last season, five teams were defensive stalwarts (OKC, Indiana, Memphis, Chicago, Golden State) and the other four had hyper-athletic frontlines that gobbled everything up (Houston, Sacramento, Portland, Detroit).
This iteration of the Clippers has both the tools to be an excellent defensive team (7th in defensive efficiency in 2013-14) and the hyper-athletic frontline that should dominate the glass. There's really no excuse for this team to have a negative rebounding differential, and they should actually be near the very top in the league. This is another area where the addition of Hawes could prove super valuable. He grabbed over eight rebounds per game last season, which is obviously an upgrade over the Clips' non-existent backup center from a year ago. So, when Jordan and Griffin are on the bench, L.A. should be able to hold its own in the rebounding department.
Adams, Ibaka and even Westbrook can be beasts in crashing the boards, so LAC will have their work cut-out for them tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment