Everyone's favorite pitiful team, the Los Angeles Clippers, will make their only trip to the Wells Fargo Center today. Their arrival represents the Sixers last "winable" game before the Lakers on Friday followed by an outlandish 8-game road trip that will take us past the New Year. I'd like to see the Sixers set the tone with a demonstrative win and some quality basketball.
Blake Griffin and Eric Gordan have been absolutely dominant in leading the Clippers to their 5-20 record. If they go off tonight, well, the Clippers are probably still going to lose. That doesn't mean we should just sit back and let them have their way, though.
The first thing the Sixers should do is put a blanket on Gordon. By that, I mean you put Jodie Meeks on Al-Farouq Aminu and you put Andre Iguodala on Gordon. If the Clippers decide they want to attack the Aminu/Meeks mismatch, I'm fine with that. I welcome it. Tell Iguodala to lace his sneakers extra tight and keep Gordon out of the lane. Make him shoot threes (he's shooting 27% on 5 attempts/game, this season), just make sure he's not getting to the line, where he's doing most of his damage.
The Sixers don't have an answer for Blake Griffin. Athletic bigs devastate them, especially on the offensive glass, and Griffin is not only athletic, he's aggressive and talented. The best thing they can do is make him work on the other end. Brand should be able to have his way with him on the blocks (if he isn't dead tired from the 38 minutes he played last night). Gordon's quick, but he can't hang with Thad on those drives from the top the key. Keep attacking him and you're going to either get a bunch of easy hoops or you're going to get Griffin in foul trouble. DeAndre Jordan is another guy that's going to cause problems on the offensive glass, I don't know how you match up with his size.
At the point, Eric Bledsoe is a huge fan of turning the ball over. Jrue needs to pester him - without fouling - and make it hard for Bledsoe to initiate the offense. On the other end, Jrue has a decent size advantage on Bledsoe, and should look to take advantage of it. Last night, he got the ball in the post a couple of times, but shuffled his feet before hitting an easy turnaround over his man. Clean that up and it's a weapon.
The Clippers have absolutely no bench (unless Baron Davis suddenly gets in shape and stops being a team killer). Expect Thad and Lou to outscored LA's bench by themselves.
The Clips are 0-10 on the road. They're near the bottom of the league in both offensive and defensive efficiency. Vinny Del Negro shuffled is grasping at straws, and actually went away from his youth-laden starting lineup for their last game in Orlando. I'm not sure if those changes will bleed into tonight's game or not. The Clips also haven't played since Sunday, while the Sixers played last night. This game has to be a win.
I mostly talked about the matchups if Aminu and Bledsoe start. If they don't, however, some things need to change. First of all, you can't put Meeks on Ryan Gomes. He's like a bull in a china shop. Iguodala would have to take that matchup. Instead, I'd switch the matchups among guards. Put Meeks on Baron Davis, play off him and dare him to shoot jumpers. Put Jrue on Eric Gordon, with the same instructions. Keep him out of the lane, keep him off the line. The veteran starting lineup worries me more than the young one. Gomes has always given the Sixers fits.
Prediction: Sixers 97, Clippers 89
The tip is at 7pm, game thread will be up at 5:30. Also, Derek Bodner and I will host another episode of
SixersBeat after the game. I'll post all the info later on.
Oh I'm excited to go to the game tonight and watch the new and improved Sixers! I just hope I don't have to hear Collins yell "C'Mon Now" too many times. A victory and maybe a couple of Turner drives and a huge dunk by Andre right on Griffin's head would make me very happy.
Spencer Hawes is getting posterized tonight. That's for sure.
Not sure if anyone else saw this on twitter, thought it was interesting, http://twitter.com/johnschuhmann (nba.com) had some nice things to say about a certain sixers lineup.
1st tweet "Most improved teams (pt diff per 100 poss): MIA (+8.3) NYK (+7.5) BOS (+6.6) CHI (+6.1) SAS (+5.4) PHI (+5.0) NJN (+4.2) NOH (+4.0)"
"Best defensive lineup (min of 40 min.): Chalmers, Wade, Jones, Bosh, Dampier. Allowing 63.8 pp100p in 44 min."
"If you set minimum to 100 min., best def. lineup in the league is Holiday, Meeks, Iguodala, Brand & Hawes. 91.6 pts allowed per 100 poss. That Philly lineup is also strong offensively (115.0) & the No. 1 overall lineup w/ a min. of 100 min. 2nd is Rondo, Allen, Pierce, KG, Shaq"
Then Liberty ballers twitter and Jschuman started exchanging tweets about the philly line up.
"Great point. #s skewed by 1 game. RT @atthehive: @LibertyBallers Haha. I get the feeling the Hornets are somehow involved in that stat"
Another follow up tweet said that Jrue/Meeks/Iggy was only +2 vs hornets to show that there might be more to it.
I don't believe this nonsense for a second. The Clippers obviously have the starting lineup of the future. Surely they should be atop these lists.
rolling over the clippers young debate, I think that saying their starting lineup currentely shows their "future" starting lineup isn't accurate, but to say that they have a talented young roster, more so than the Sixers and most teams in the NBA is a very fair argument.
out of curiousity, how would everyone rate the young players of the Sixers and Clippers. For me I have two clippers as my first two which is where it matters the most.
1) Blake
2) Eric Gordan- I have him slightly over Jrue as i think his skill set is becoming less common in the league than Jrue's.
3) Jrue
4) Iggy
5) ET
6 tie) Al-Farouq
6 tie) Bledsoe
8) Thad- Thad doesn't excite me, I'm starting to fear that his ceiling is near. Main concern is that he isn't a starting 3 or 4 in this league.
9) Deandre
10) Meeks- I like meeks, but don't see him having much upside.
11) Hawes
12) Speights
I really don't understand people going nuts about Blake Griffin. Yes, he does look great right now (although defensively he is light years away), but has everyone forgotten that he is the same guy who missed a whole season because of an injury. Griffin's game is based on so many plays where he doesn't take care of his body that i think will inevitably lead to many injuries. And if injuries do slow him down, he doesn't have the game to be very good without the elite explosiveness and athleticism.
I'm not saying i don't like him, he has been sensational thus far, but that Clippers team somehow reminds e of that super talented Portland team from a few years back. Look where they are now.
Injuries are a concern but are they enough to make you want to pass up on a potential all star big?
Where would you put Blake if you made a similar list?
Probably first, but i don't think that says anything really.
Each season there are at least 4-5 teams putting very young squads on the court with exciting young players. How many of them do actually become contenders? Even worse, how many of them become contenders with the same young core?
And i also think that evaluating players that put big numbers on bad teams is extremely hard. Which is why i'm not sure whether i should buy Griffin's and Gordon's stats. I really don't know what to make of them. Nor do i know what to make of Beasley and Love. They are in the same situation, and actually the Wolves have a better young core IMO, why does noone talk about them...
Honestly, I don't know what to make of Gordon. The game he's playing this season isn't really all that rare. I mean, he's doing it very well, but he's essentially a slashing shooting guard who gets to the line, can't shoot from deep and takes way too many threes. His past two seasons, he was more of a catch and shoot guy. This version is much, much better if he can keep his free throw rate that high, but I just don't know where it came from.
"but he's essentially a slashing shooting guard who gets to the line, can't shoot from deep"
Eh? Coming into the season he was a career 37.9% three point shooter on 658 attempts, a fairly decent sample size. I get that he's struggled from 3 so far this season, but to say that he can't shoot from deep is more than a little bit unfair. I don't override 658 attempts and 140 games because he's struggled from three for the first 23 games of a season.
a slashing guard who hasn't been effective from three this season is an accurate statement. a slashing guard who can't shoot from deep I don't believe is.
Yeah, I was talking about the player he's been this season. He was kind of the opposite the past two years, more of a shooter who didn't get to the line a whole lot.
Do you think D.Jordan can become a decent starting center? So far he's been the 3rd most productive player for them after Griffin and Gordan, which I guess isn't saying much. Also I wonder when Kaman is going to come back from injury. The Clips probably miss his 38% shooting, which I didn't think was possible for a center but it's always nice learning new things.
I like the Clippers future draft picks more than I like their current roster. The Clippers will probably get a top three pick this season, and the Clippers still have the T-wolves unprotected pick in 2011. Now if the Clippers could only find a better coach and a new owner.