Clippers vs. Lakers: Major Questions for Both Teams Heading into Season Opener
When the Lakers and Clippers open their 2013-14 season against one another Tuesday night, the Staples Center will have a somewhat familiar feel. The building will be filled mostly in purple and gold. Jack Nicholson will be at his courtside seat, giving more passion to a basketball team than any acting role since The Departed. Kobe Bryant will even be there.
But the reality for these two franchises have never been more different.
Long the ugly, redheaded stepchild of the Staples Center, the Clippers enter their second season as a Western Conference monolith (despite Donald Sterling's best efforts to screw it all up). Chris Paul is back for the next five seasons, and he's brought a cast of new friends along for the ride. Jared Dudley and J.J. Redick lead a cast of new faces, who will be coached by Doc Rivers—one of the league's most respected and highest paid coaches.
The Clippers are above the luxury tax line and have gone all-in on their Big Three. Their high rises aren't the only thing expected to reach another stratosphere this season.
Meanwhile, the Lakers are in a state of Clipperian despair. Unlike Paul, the Lakers' big free agent, Dwight Howard, took $30 million less than his maximum value to bolt for the Houston Rockets. Howard's departure sent Mitch Kupchak into Dallas Mavericks mode, signing veterans to stay competitive but still keeping long-term cap flexibility available.
This was all done in part to appease Bryant. Who, by the way, will watch all 48 minutes from the sidelines as he continues recovering from a torn Achilles suffered last season. Bryant's timetable for return remains up in the air, with Jim Buss' decry that he could return for the preseason looking increasingly laughable by the moment.
For the Lakers, Bryant's return is by far their biggest question heading into the regular season. But it's not the only one—for either side. Here is a look at a couple looming concerns for the Clips and Lake Show that actually involve guys who will factor into Tuesday night's game.
Los Angeles Lakers
Can This Team Even Broach Mediocrity on Defense?
Last season, the Lakers finished 21st in defensive efficiency on a per-possession basis. That's obviously not very good. Teams historically don't win titles without their defensive efficiency being firmly inside the top 10, and being a top-five unit is even a better indicator of future success. You know, defense wins championships and all that.
But what was lost in the Lakers' late-season surge to the playoffs is how much they improved on that end. Over their final 20 games, they finished 11th in the league—the type of run that would create optimism had the band been brought back together.
The biggest reason for that improvement is now in Houston. Opponents scored 102.5 points per 100 possessions—about the equivalent of the Milwaukee Bucks' 12th-ranked defense—when Howard was on the floor last season. When he was removed, the Lakers became a sieve that allowed points more frequently than any team in the league. For all the criticism Howard rightly endured in Los Angeles, he's a damn good defensive big.
With Howard gone and Metta World Peace now dealing with the crazies in New York City, the Lakers defense seems destined for a perpetual spiral. Steve Nash is one of the league's five worst defenders, a guy who got murdered on pick-and-rolls before his 39-year-old legs started showing their age. Steve Blake, a 6'3" point guard with slow feet, will be stuck guarding 2s. Nick "Swaggy P" Young's Xbox controller mind is permanently stuck on X.
Pau Gasol is still an above-average defender, and Shawne Williams was good enough in the preseason to encourage some faith. Well, that is until you remember Williams is a beanpole 4 who was out of the league last season at age 26—not exactly a ringing endorsement.
Chris Kaman and Jordan Hill will play alongside Gasol in bigger lineups that might work better defensively, but Mike D'Antoni's desire for spacing makes me bearish on how often we'll see those looks. It's more likely that D'Antoni tries building these Lakers in the vision of his pre-Carmelo Knicks, only without the young talent or players willing to work their behinds off on defense.
Against what should be a whirring Clippers offense, Lakers fans are going to get a good idea of how ugly things will be Tuesday night.
Can Pau Gasol Still Produce at an All-Star Level?
With D'Antoni already talking about sitting Nash out on back-to-backs, it's becoming ever-clearer that these Lakers are Gasol's team until Bryant returns. The oft-maligned coach has spent his offseason fiddling the Gasol flute, heaping praise on the seven-footer whenever he has a chance.
It's a strange turn from where the two were at the beginning of D'Antoni's tenure, when he benched perhaps the game's most skilled post player for Earl freaking Clark. Gasol trade rumors were boundless right until the point he got hurt, putting the whole kerfuffle on hold until the summer—right until Howard left and D'Antoni realized he was SOL without him.
Gasol seems to have put that in the past, and good on him. Because with his contract expiring after this season, there aren't many better places for Gasol to prove he's still worthy of an eight-figure salary than with the Lakers.
While I tend to be more optimistic about Gasol than most, his return to All-Star form isn't guaranteed. He suffered through his worst season as a pro in 2012-13, missing nearly half of the season and watching his points per game drop from 17.4 to 13.7. And it wasn't just his counting stats. Gasol not only posted up less last season than in 2011-12, but was also far less effective. He averaged 0.95 points per possession on post-ups two seasons ago against 0.87 in 2012-13, per Synergy.
That may not seem like a huge difference, but it is nearly universally accepted that post-ups are among the least efficient plays in today's NBA. A difference of 0.08 in Gasol's case takes him from perhaps the most elite high-usage post man in the game to someone who probably didn't deserve all the shots he got down low. It's also true that Gasol ventured to the elbows more frequently under D'Antoni, but he was already a high-usage midrange player; he simply shot worse.
That said, there are some reasons for optimism. Gasol was battling through near-chronic knee pain last year. And though he'll probably never feel like a spry 25-year-old, Gasol looks like someone rejuvenated by his return to the center position.
"I feel better than what I expected," Gasol said, via ESPN's Dave McMenamin. "I'm really happy with how I feel right now. Now it's just a matter of we have a tough start, very demanding, a lot of games in a short period of time to start off. But hey, that's what the NBA is about sometimes and you got to get through it."
Los Angeles Clippers
Is Doc Rivers Capable of Coaching an Elite NBA Offense?
There are different types of elite NBA coaches. There are those who are tactical masterminds, the guys like Gregg Popovich, who can completely overhaul his system to adapt to new talent. Or Tom Thibodeau, who is so demanding of his players that he could probably teach a lamp how to properly defend a pick-and-roll in his system.
And then there are coaches like Doc Rivers. The ones whose interpersonal skills and ability to reach his players often exceed what they bring from an Xs and Os level. Rivers shares a brotherly bond with nearly all of his players; even Rajon Rondo, with whom Rivers has not always gotten along, praised his coach upon his departure. Phil Jackson was like this.
But along the way, coaches like Jackson and Rivers need that tactical underling to take their team to the next level. Jackson had Tex Winter, who employed the Triangle offense and #NWTS for NBA defenses. Rivers had Thibodeau in Boston, who helped usher in an ongoing revolution on defense.
We'll get to the Clippers' defense here in a bit, but this team was built for offensive excellence. Chris Paul has more shooters on the outside than at any point in his career, and Blake Griffin should have freedom to roam in the paint and develop his still-underrated post game.
The problem: Rivers' Celtics teams were increasingly putrid on offense. The ball stopped in the hands of Rajon Rondo or Paul Pierce as they dribbled down the shot clock, leading to inefficient possessions and too many shots as the buzzer was sounding. Boston was an above-average offensive team just once (14th in 2009-10) in Rivers' final four seasons with the club; in the entire Big Three era, the Celtics finished top-10 in offensive efficiency just once (2008-09).
Rondo's possessions too often looked like Chris Paul's while running Vinny Del Negro's "sets" these past two seasons. The Clippers had enough offensive talent to be elite during the regular season, but they were exposed as a fraud last season by Memphis.
Are we sure Rivers can change that? If the answer is yes, look no further than lead assistant Alvin Gentry as to why. Gentry hasn't worked out as a head coach, but he thrives as something of an offensive coordinator, emphasizing a quick tempo and rapid ball movement.
It will be interesting to see how deep Gentry's influence is. Paul, who has a history of knee issues, likes slower tempos and dribble-heavy possessions. That has worked for him in the past, but with so many elite shooters on this team, the Clippers would be doing a disservice if they regressed to the Del Negro era.
Can DeAndre Jordan and Blake Griffin Make a Leap as Defenders?
We won't even scratch the surface of this question Tuesday night, but it's one that will probably define the Clippers' season. There's enough talent here to win the West; I have them projected as the conference's top seed with the second-best regular-season record in the NBA.
They're talent-laden and deep and have enough smart veterans that 55 wins should be the bare minimum here. If the Clippers don't lead the league in points per possession, there is something very wrong—or Kevin Durant literally strangled the entire NBA.
Where the contender/pretender conversation starts is on defense. Rivers has implemented the aforementioned pick-and-roll principles, and that system has somehow managed to turn Carlos Boozer into a workable defender. If the locker room is committed—and that's not a guarantee, since I'm pretty sure Jamal Crawford is allergic to the word "defense"—the Clippers won't be a bad regular-season defensive club.
Defending a pick-and-roll is as much about willingness and effort as it is athleticism on the perimeter. Doc is a good enough leader that the players that matter should buy into the effort.
The issue is that the Clippers did nothing this offseason to address their biggest personnel problem: interior defense. Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan have been unusable in postseason crunch-time minutes because neither can shoot free throws or reliably defend. Del Negro was stuck using what was left of Lamar Odom against Memphis last season.
The Clippers scored a whopping 112.5 points per 100 possessions with Griffin and Jordan on the floor during the regular season. But they shot a pathetic 67 percent from the free throw line and allowed teams to score at a near bottom-10 rate.
Jordan is a first-rate member of the JaVale McGee All-Stars—guys who pull off enough spectacular plays that lay fans think they're good defenders. He blocks shots. That's what he does. He also gets bullied in the post because of his poor footwork, misses cuts due to ball-watching and has been generally uncommitted to getting better throughout his career.
Griffin works as hard as anyone in the league and developed into a very good pick-and-roll defender last season. But he's jumpy in the post, over-helps and strangely doesn't use his athleticism very well on defense.
The Clippers will survive with the duo in the regular season. Just don't be surprised if one of their wings winds up elsewhere and all the nice things Rivers and Co. have been saying about Jordan this season slow to a trickle.
*Stats are via NBA.com unless otherwise noted.
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