2018 NBA Season Preview Series: Los Angeles Clippers

I’ll admit, when I threw this combination of teams into this poll, I knew where the stoolies were going to go. I just really wanted to blog the Clippers and they never won any of their previous polls so I had to stack the deck. Sue me. Honestly, I’m fascinated by what’s going on in LA. The Clippers are this weird team that is 100% in a rebuilding phase after Lob City has officially ended, yet they aren’t your typical rebuilding team where they are tanking to get to the high lottery. Some might say they are in NBA Purgatory which is the worst place you can be as an NBA franchise, but I don’t think that’s it. I think they have real talent and honestly were “fighting” for a playoff spot for way long than I think any of us predicted once they traded Blake. But naturally, before we get into why I think they will once again be one of the teams fighting for that 7/8 seed, we should first relive the good times from their 2017-18 season.

2017-18 Season Highlights

We all know there are few things in this world that Doc Rivers hates more than a rebuild. He has no time for that shit, it’s why he forced his way out of Boston and to the Clippers in the first place. Well in a cruel twist of fate he is now staring a rebuild right in the face whether he likes it or not. The good news is, if you look around the league at all the different rebuilds, you could be in a worse spot than where the Clippers are. I mean look at this roster

and because of course, before the ink is even dry on this blog we have this news

it’s almost as if these teams have no respect for the blog game. Pretty rude. Anyway, before I saw this tweet, I saw the Clippers had the 12th highest payroll in the league at $120,480,813, and I’m no cap expert but let’s just all agree we can subtract that $6M from Wesley Johnson and then the $1.3M for Jawun Evans. I think it’s fair to say neither of these guys are going to make or break their year, even if Johnson played 20 minutes a night. The only reason that name even sounds somewhat familiar to you is because we all saw him die on national TV

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So now that the Clippers don’t have to worry about that bad juju, maybe this is the year they turn things around! You look at the history of the Clippers, it sure isn’t all that great. The last time they made a conference finals was all the way back in the late 70s when they were the Buffalo Braves. Since then, they’ve made the playoffs just 10 times, and never past the second round. There’s a reason they’ve been the laughing stock of the league for basically as long as all of us have been alive. Last season snapped a 6 year run of postseason play, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the West isn’t getting any easier. So why should Clippers fans hold out any sort of hope that they get back there this year?

Well for starters, there is still talent on this roster. Gallo looks healthy and back to being a plus offensive player

They should have Avery back after he played only 6 games last year before he had sports hernia surgery which will make a difference on both sides of the ball, Tobias Harris is in a contract year and he wants a big time extension and we all know what contract year players look like. Lou Williams is still going to be his same old self of instant offense off the bench, and Patrick Beverly, another guy coming back from injury is a defensive pitbull. This is a team that had the 19th best Drtg last year, and they are adding a whole hell of a lot of defense to this roster, which is going to be important as they challenge high powered offenses like DEN for those last few playoffs spots. I know the easy thing is just to think the Clippers will be the same old Clips, but getting just 17 games between Beverly and Avery is a big deal.

And we haven’t even talked about their rookies yet. Ask anyone who is a loser like me and watched way too much preseason basketball they’ll tell you SGA is the fucking truth. He had one of the best showing this preseasons of this entire class and his size at 6’6 make him such an interesting prospect

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Then you add Jerome Robinson, a nice scorer out of BC, and this team has that good mix of good veteran talent and young promising talent that can really speed up a rebuild. I bet that’s why Doc doesn’t completely hate his life. And look, any time you go from the star power to Lob City to this collection of pieces, and then you struggle in Year 1, fans will be skeptical. But honestly, Gortat can do like 70% of what DeAndre Jordan can do, Montrezl Harrell is one of my favorite young bigs in the league, a guy who has high energy and really came into his own last year, if you can’t tell already I’ve sneaky talked myself into the talent on this team, if they can all stay healthy.

But of course, things have to change from last year. It’ll be interesting to see just how much better this offense is with everyone back, considering the Clippers had the 8th best offense last season. I would imagine that jump comes defensively, but I think we should see improvement in areas like spot up shooting where they ranked 23rd in the league with 0.99 points per possession and 39% shooting. Now that they’ll have Avery back who is one of the best off ball cutters in the entire NBA, it wouldn’t shock me if we saw them improve even more from their 5th ranking last year. Having this additional talent back will help them in isolation, something they ran 7.9% of possessions which was good for 8th in the league, because now guys won’t be able to cheat and clog the paint with additional shooters on the floor. Hopefully SGA can help them in the TO department where they were in the bottom half of the league, and that’s a big part of their problem because they weren’t exactly at preventing opponents from scoring off their mistakes, giving up 17.4 points which was 23rd in the league. You improve the defense and limit your turnovers, that’s how you crack the top 8 in your conference.

Unlike some of the other teams fighting for those final 2 spots, the Clippers have a secret weapon nobody else does. They have Boban. You laugh, but that just means you haven’t been watching. Boban is a MONSTER both literally and as a basketball player. The guy plays like 12 minutes and suddenly has like 14/17. it’s incredible. Maybe the key this year will be Doc’s willingness to finally unchain his beast on the entire league

He only played 8 minutes last year, and frankly that is unacceptable. Get him around 20 minutes and you will crush every opposing frontcourt you face. Gortat and Boban are two of the biggest goons out there who aren’t afraid to bang bodies down low. Sure the league is going small, but think of the matchup problem you have if you throw some lineups out there with both of those guys in them. I say why not.

History tells us not to expect much from this franchise, especially with how good the rest of the conference is. But you know what, it feels like there’s going to be some shakeup in the playoff seeding this season, who knows if teams like MIN/SA/NO even make it. If the Clippers stay healthy and take a step forward, why can’t they slide in? Sadly, the whole “what if” game is pretty much what Clippers fans have been playing for decades, but who knows, maybe this is the year they finally get some good luck.

Official Greenie Prediction: 42 wins