Power Ranking Each LA Clippers Player Heading into 2015 NBA All-Star Break
No one knows what to think of the Los Angeles Clippers.
The Clippers were supposed to be one of the title favorites coming into the season, but 53 games have proved such sentiments to be hasty. At 34-19, they stand tied for sixth in the West and are on the verge of falling.
It's been a bad week or so for the Clips and their fans—especially for Blake Griffin, who found out he needed surgery on his right elbow to remove a staph infection. Griffin will be re-evaluated in three weeks, and the Clippers are lucky they have the eight-day All-Star break to cushion the blow of losing their best player. But seeing Blake sit for weeks at a time isn't exactly comforting.
This is the guy who finished third in the MVP voting last year, and now he's on the sidelines in a suit and tie.
So, the rest of team has to step up without him. Except we're not sure if it can, considering that the bench is about as shallow as a kiddy pool.
It's been an odd year. The Clippers are weirder than a dancing Steve Ballmer. (Actually, scratch that. Nothing is weirder than a dancing Ballmer.)
Time without Griffin will be even stranger.
Honorable Mention
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13. C.J. Wilcox
Wilcox has barely played during his first season, not exactly a trait that's unique to him as a rookie. Doc Rivers isn't a fan of playing his young wings, and considering the minuscule impact we've seen from Wilcox during his short time on the floor, it doesn't appear that will change anytime soon.
12. Ekpe Udoh
Udoh was supposed to come to L.A. and help on the defensive side of the ball. That hasn't happened, mostly because, like Wilcox, he hasn't gotten a chance to show off any of his skills. Udoh has played a mere 87 total minutes on the season, and almost never gets in unless it's a blowout with a few minutes left. It doesn't seem like he's got much of a chance at ever cracking the Clippers' rotation.
11. Dahntay Jones
Jones signed a 10-day contract with the Clippers right when 10-days became eligible. He impressed them enough to receive a second 10-day deal upon the expiration of his first. Now, the Clips have him signed for the remainder of the year as a supposed perimeter stopper, even if he's not big enough to guard larger wings. Not having one of those guys may be the Clippers' greatest hole on the roster.
10. Hedo Turkoglu
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Doc wanted Turkoglu back with the Clippers, specifically. Well, he got it.
Part of the reason the Clippers unloaded Jared Dudley's seemingly bloated contract and a first-rounder to the Milwaukee Bucks was so they could re-sign Turk (along with Chris Douglas-Roberts and Udoh). Unfortunately, it hasn't really worked.
Or maybe it has.
It's difficult to imagine exactly what Rivers had in mind for Turkoglu at the start of the season. It's not like he's been much worse than he was a year ago. He's just relatively absent when he's on the floor.
Turkoglu's good for an intelligent perimeter swing or a drained, open three every once in a while, but other than that, the 35-year-old isn't going to do a bunch of great stuff for one squad. He doesn't handle the ball anymore, he's not creating for his teammates and his defense leaves lots to be desired.
Now, with Griffin out, Turkoglu is receiving more playing time. He ran with the Dallas Mavericks for 19 minutes Monday night. That may keep up for as long as Griffin sits, especially if Glen "Big Baby" Davis is out for a while as well. The Clippers better hope they get healthy soon.
9. Glen Davis
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Davis has had a bad last 48 hours.
He first experienced back spasms while playing against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Then, he left the Mavs game early with the same issue. Now he's waiting out the injury.
Big Baby getting hurt couldn't have come at a worse time for the Clippers, considering the Dallas game was the team's first contest without Griffin. The last thing the team could afford was to lose another power forward, thinning its big-man rotation even more.
Even when healthy, Davis' game has basically fallen off in every way possible over the past few years.
Every once in a while, we'll still see him rotate into the lane to draw a charge on a penetrating ball-handler, but that's mostly because he's so unthreatening as a rim protector that he uses the charge as a defensive tool instead.
Davis is listed at 289 pounds, but we all know that's not the case. I mean, we have eyes, man.
Davis is huge, and Doc's description of him dropping 20 pounds over the offseason is still the quote of the NBA season. "It's like throwing a deck chair off the Queen Mary," Rivers told the Los Angeles Times' Melissa Rohlin. Healthy or not, though, there isn't much positive Davis can do for the Clippers right now. They better hope Griffin gets back soon.
8. Spencer Hawes
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Hawes came into the season as the guy who was going to fix everything. And no, that isn't an incredible exaggeration.
The biggest hole on the Clippers roster over the last few years was the gaping one where the third big man was supposed to be. That's actually how Big Baby ended up in L.A. initially, signing with the Clips after the Orlando Magic bought him out so he could solidify the team's big rotation.
Neither of those signings worked out like Doc planned, though.
Hawes got four years for the full mid-level exception, far more money and years than Davis was given. Coming off a season in which he drained almost 42 percent of his high-volume threes, he should've added spacin, making him one of the rare bigs who could excel next to both Griffin and DeAndre Jordan in different Clipper lineups.
That was all nice in theory, but it hasn't worked.
Hawes' three-point percentage has dropped all the way to 34 percent. He's been unimpressively passive, horrified of triggering his slow release from the perimeter, and thus, he's passed up on open long ball after open long ball. He hasn't had the contributions as a passer that he did last season with the Philadelphia 76ers and Cleveland Cavaliers, either.
We've seen a different Spencer Hawes than we did last year, one who isn't helping the Clippers all that much. And because of that, the third big-man spot remains an issue, just as it has in every other year of the Chris Paul era.
7. Austin Rivers
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Rivers better than Hawes? That wasn't supposed to happen.
It's not that Rivers has been any good. Statistically, he actually hasn't been that much better with the Clippers than he was with the New Orleans Pelicans earlier in the year, but this is exactly how poor the bench has become.
Rivers' last 11 games, over which he's shooting 45 percent from the floor, have actually been pretty solid. His defense, meanwhile, has shown better than it did in New Orleans.
It's not like Rivers is playing at an NBA All-Defense level, but he has been acceptable, forcing some low-risk steals. (Steals are always more valuable when they come in rhythm of your team's rotations rather than when they come from jumped passing lanes, because it means you're playing low-risk, high-reward basketball.)
Rivers still doesn't make threes, he's atrocious as a guard from the free-throw line and his 45-30-46 shooting line over those last 11 games is somewhat hilarious.
In the end, almost regardless of how he plays, Rivers doesn't fit into the team. It's particularly difficult to justify giving up assets for his presence, as a 6'4" combo guard should've been about fourth on the Clippers' list of priorities.
But that's in the past. Rivers is in L.A. now. There's nothing the detractors can do about it, so at least they can deal knowing he hasn't been the Clippers' worst rotation player...so far.
6. Jamal Crawford
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It's been a strange season for Jamal Crawford.
He began the year as he always does: scorching hot and nailing tough shot after tough shot.
The Clippers' sixth man posted a 46-39-91 shooting line through November, and it looked like he was going to be in contention for yet another Sixth Man of the Year trophy, as is always the case. But then a funny thing happened: Crawford fell.
And fell.
And fell.
He's been secretly reeling for more than two months now, and no one is really talking about it. Since that usual start to the year, Crawford is shooting just 36 percent from the field and 30 percent from three over his past 37 games. Shots don't want to fall, and it can't be good for his trade value—even if he does have a modest contract which is only partially guaranteed for next season.
It's never good when arguably your only remaining trade asset is heading in the wrong direction a week before the deadline. And if the Clippers do want to keep him, then it doesn't make much of a difference.
As poor as the bench has been this season, the Clips need something from Crawford. Anything. They've gotten it sporadically this year, but not as consistently as in the past.
If he continues to struggle for the rest of the year—which is possible; I mean, the dude's almost 35 years old—then what is there to do?
5. Matt Barnes
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One of the oddest phenomena about Barnes' year is the relationship between performance and respect.
Barnes is putting up the best three-point shooting season of his life, sinking 37 percent of his 4.4 attempts per game from beyond the arc.
He's shooting often, and he's making shots often. Yet, defenses don't really care.
Griffin gets the ball in the post, and the defense leaves Barnes to help. Paul finds his way into the paint, and Barnes' defender is the first one to collapse into the lane. No matter how many shots he makes, Barnes is the Clippers' main "If there's one guy we're not guarding, it's that one" guy.
So, what can Barnes do? Keep hitting open shots, I guess.
More than half of Barnes' attempts from the field have been threes with a defender four or more feet away from him upon release. He's taking good shots and, for the most part, they're going in the hoop.
Add in that Barnes has been the Clippers' best (and most heady) perimeter defender, and you have to give the guy some dap for still being this productive at 34 years young, something no one really saw coming when he first entered the league in 2002.
Now he just needs to work on not getting those techs...
4. J.J. Redick
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Not the back. Anything but the back...
Redick did return from back spasms Monday evening against Dallas, and only missed a few games because of a relatively tame injury. Back issues, though, are always worrisome, especially when they happen to a guy who missed 47 games because of back-related problems last year.
Injuries aside, Redick is having one of his best statistical seasons—if not his single best.
His 44 percent three-point accuracy is the best of his career, and his constant movement within the Clippers offense allows the team to run plays with him that it couldn't even try with anyone else. But Redick isn't only a shooter.
He's smart, knowing how to find open space in an offense, and that intelligence carries over to when he has the ball, too. An underrated passer, Redick is never going to run the Clippers attack, but he can contribute to it, finding teammates on quick swings around the perimeter or even out of some pick-and-roll sets.
He's hardly a one-on-one defensive stopper, but he is a smart team defender, understanding how and when to rotate at certain spots, something the Clippers as a team have gotten better at of late.
Redick has become one of the most essential Clippers. Doc Rivers and Co. better hope his back spasms were just a blip on an otherwise clean screen.
3. DeAndre Jordan
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There are people out there who say Jordan has been better than Griffin this year. And we're not talking about dumb people whose opinions don't deserve to be heard. Quite the opposite. Smart people are saying this.
It's hardly popular opinion, but even ESPN's numbers guru Kevin Pelton tweeted such a couple weeks ago.
So, why has Jordan been so good? Well, it's more because of his recent play—even if that Pelton tweet did come before his single week which produced not one, but two 20-20 games, capping it off with an unrealistic 22-point, 27-rebound performance against the Mavs on Monday.
For the second straight year, Jordan has taken another leap during the latter half of the season. It's a remarkable trend for someone who's already 26 years old—young enough to get better, but old enough to rest on his laurels, especially coming of a third-place finish in the Defensive Player of the Year voting.
Jordan didn't look that much better earlier in the year, but he did the same thing last season; he came on as the schedule developed. Now, he's playing his best basketball since that seven-game, first-round playoff series against the Golden State Warriors last May.
He leads the league in rebounds again. He leads the league in field-goal percentage once again. He's trying to become only the second player to lead the NBA in both those categories during back-to-back seasons. The first was a guy named Wilt Chamberlain.
D.J. has become a legitimate stopper. He plays every day, and is the current holder of the NBA's longest consecutive games played streak. And, somehow, he still finds time to do interviews with his mother after he's done.
2. Blake Griffin
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There might be too much fixation on the negatives of Griffin's game this year.
Too many mid-range attempts. Not enough rebounding. Not enough defense.
It feels like we're always picking Blake apart. So, for this slide, let's just discuss the good from Griffin, because there's a whole lot of it which isn't getting mentioned enough.
First off, Griffin is having an historic passing year, solidifying himself as the best distributing big man in the NBA. His 5.1 assists per game lead all frontcourt players by a mile (Marc Gasol is second among bigs and is averaging 3.8 a night).
Meanwhile, Griffin's passes are more productive. As ESPN's Tom Haberstroh noted last week, he's passed into more assist opportunities for threes than any other big in the league as well. He also leads the NBA in lob passes. Not among big men, among everyone.
Now, though, the Clippers are left dealing without their main distributor, who has basically become LaMarcus Aldridge if he were a superfreak athlete and could do other things.
Look at the shooting distribution between Aldridge and Griffin, and you might be shocked to find that the two power forwards' numbers are almost identical in quality and quantity.
Griffin is taking 37 percent of his attempts from 16 feet out to the three-point line, and he's hitting 41 percent of those shots. Aldridge, meanwhile, is shooting 42 percent from that area, with almost the same ratio of his looks coming from there.
If you were always one to choose Aldridge over Griffin, you may want to rethink that now. He's doing what Aldridge does as a scorer, but he's facilitating, running the break and dominating in transition.
Not bad for a disappointing season.
1. Chris Paul
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What? Are you surprised? Did you think anyone else would be atop this list?
Stephen Curry and Russell Westbrook have gotten most of the point guard publicity this season, but Paul is having a sensational year as well.
He's shooting better from three than he has since 2010-11. He's second in the NBA in assist opportunities and is third in assists per game. He's been putting up his most efficient scoring numbers of the past few seasons.
Paul is having one of his better years, all while still contributing on the defensive end of the floor. You get the feeling that his defense will turn up come playoff time, too, similar to the way he defended Curry (and even Kevin Durant) in last year's postseason.
Now is Paul's time to step up, similar to how Griffin lifted his game when CP3 missed a large block of time last season. With Blake out of the lineup, a greater offensive burden falls on Paul since he doesn't have his usually reliable fall-back option.
Now, it's Hawes that he's throwing the ball into on the block. It's a completely different dynamic for the offense. Paul may not have another regular-season level, but we're about to find out for sure if that's true or not.
In his 10th NBA season, Chris Paul is still playing like...Chris Paul. There doesn't appear to be a reason that will change any time soon.
Fred Katz averaged almost one point per game in fifth grade but maintains that his per-36-minute numbers were astonishing. Find more of his work on ESPN's TrueHoop Network at ClipperBlog.com. Follow him on Twitter at @FredKatz.
Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are current as of Feb. 11 and are courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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