Los Angeles Clippers Seeking Key Ingredient to Championship Recipe
PLAYA VISTA, Calif. — Defense wins championships. No rebounds, no rings.
Add another championship cliche for today's NBA: The wing is the thing if you want to win a ring.
Think about it. That's where LeBron James typically plays. That's the spot from which the San Antonio Spurs drew their strength last spring, when Kawhi Leonard carried his team to the Larry O'Brien Trophy and took home a Finals MVP of his own.
San Antonio seems to be hitting its stride now that Leonard is playing well again. The Cleveland Cavaliers came into the 2014-15 season as presumptive contenders because they had James at the 3.
The Oklahoma City Thunder won't so much as sniff the playoffs without their injured small forward, Kevin Durant. The same goes for the Indiana Pacers in the absence of Paul George. The Golden State Warriors and Portland Trail Blazers are counting on continued improvement from Klay Thompson and Nicolas Batum, respectively, to put them over the top.
And if you don't have a star on the wing, you'd better at least have someone who can guard his opposite number consistently—a Tony Allen in Memphis, a Trevor Ariza in Houston, a Jimmy Butler in Chicago—and/or be a threat to shoot from deep, like Chandler Parsons in Dallas and Paul Pierce in Washington.
Right now, the Los Angeles Clippers don't appear to have anyone who fits any of those bills all that cleanly.
Matt Barnes (42.1 percent from the field, 31.8 percent from three) has scuffled out of the gate, affording opposing defenses the freedom to cheat off him and, in turn, pack the paint for Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan. According to NBA.com, Barnes has been left wide-open nearly 40 percent of this time, but he has converted just 20 percent of those shots so far this season.
As a result, head coach Doc Rivers has recently taken to starting Jamal Crawford over Barnes on the wing. The reigning Sixth Man of the Year has responded with 15 points per game in his last two on one end, while getting torched by bigger, stronger and younger counterparts on the other.
"I don’t think we’ve had great play there," Rivers said prior to practice on Friday, when asked for his assessment of the Clippers' situation on the wing. "I think we’ve been better lately. I think Matt’s played much better. I think Jamal and JJ haven’t been a bad combination. We just need to keep working on it and probably go game to game and see where we want to go with it."
The Clippers are far from out of options. Chris Douglas-Roberts emerged as a solid starter in Charlotte in time for the 2014 playoffs, but he has played only sparingly in L.A. and doesn't figure to play at all so long as his Achilles remains sore.
Reggie Bullock has played even less than CDR so far, even though the North Carolina product is healthy after an injury-riddled rookie campaign. At 6'7, Bullock has the build and the shooting ability to be a solid three-and-D solution to what ails L.A. on the wing. And yet, Bullock's played just once since hitting four threes against the Utah Jazz in early November.
"I definitely feel like there’s still an opportunity left because we’re going to play against big guards that like to post, and Coach will probably use me there," Bullock told Bleacher Report prior to the Clippers' loss to the Spurs. "I just have to continue to keep working and wait for my time to be called again and just show that I belong on the court."
That night, Leonard took Crawford and Barnes to task for a regular-season career-high-tying 26 points while Bullock watched from the bench.
Could results like those mean more minutes for Bullock?
"I don’t know," Rivers responded. "There’s opportunities for everybody on our team. We’ve just got to get better play."
Rivers went on to suggest that Reggie's lack of playing time is partly the function of a short rotation, one that figures to change in length as the season progresses.
Just don't expect the rotation to lengthen with any trans-Pacific imports, though. Rivers brushed aside the rumor, per Daniel Artest, that his Clippers were "interested" in Metta World Peace, who's currently playing in China.
"The first guy that told me was a friend from New York," Rivers revealed. "He actually put the MWP, and I was like 'Who?' Then he told me what it was, and I said, 'Oh, I guess that’s a new rumor.' That’s as much as I know about it, let me put it that way."
Not that the Clippers aren't on the lookout for help, as Kurt Helin Pro Basketball Talk noted:
"What the Clippers would love to do is trade for that defensive stopper on the wing. Good luck. The entire league wants one of those. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports said Thursday on the Clippers flagship radio station in Los Angeles The Beast 980 the team had called around the league looking to trade for a wing, but came up empty.
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For now, the Clippers insisted that whatever issues they have at the 3 pale in comparison to their more systemic problems on the defensive end.
"Our defense has been not very good overall," said J.J. Redick. "It’s not just wing defense. It’s everything. it’s a team game; it’s a team defensive game. The best defensive teams play team defense. They don’t have great individual defenders necessarily."
Redick reminded reporters that the Clippers got off to a slow start last season before finishing up as a top-10 defensive outfit. According to NBA.com, L.A. currently ranks 21st in defensive efficiency.
Rivers, though, doesn't attribute those woes to the wings. "Our 3 spot is not the biggest problem defensively," he explained. "We’ve been getting beat off the dribble. I think that’s been a bigger problem."
Rivers certainly isn't wrong about that. So far, his team has allowed the league's highest opponent field-goal percentage at the rim (.605). As Grantland's Zach Lowe pointed out, that probably has more to do with L.A.'s bigs than their swingmen:
"They’ve hemorrhaged points when Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan share the floor. That’s a reversal from last season. Both have looked out of sorts; Jordan is back to his old hyper-jumpy ways, and Griffin’s pick-and-roll defense has been uneven.
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If there's anything about the Clippers' wings that's bothered Rivers, it's their collective inconsistency in the scoring column. "I think we’re all focused on the 3 because of the way that spot has played," Rivers added. "I think it’s more focused offensively."
In truth, the Clippers don't need much offense out of that spot. Griffin and Chris Paul constitute arguably the most potent pick-and-roll pairing in the NBA, pouring in more than 40 points per game between them through the first seven games of the 2014-15 campaign.
Redick was ice-cold to start, but he broke through with 30 points against Portland, and thanks to his longstanding reputation as a sharpshooter, he will always be able to attract defensive attention.
Whoever mans the 3 in L.A. need only be competent enough on the offensive end to not be abandoned by the opposition. Crawford is already there. Barnes' shots might start falling eventually. Bullock figures to get a look before all is said and done.
Maybe, then, L.A.'s wing concerns are much ado about nothing. Maybe the Clippers' 3s have merely become convenient scapegoats for the team's more troubling ailments, since that spot is clearly the club's weakest.
Or, maybe games like Leonard's will prove closer to the norm than the exception.
Either way, the Clippers should have a clearer picture of their most glaring weaknesses by the end of the month, with home games against the Phoenix Suns and the Chicago Bulls preceding a grueling, seven-game road swing.
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