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Report: Clippers Interested In KG?

February 4, 2013  ·  9:34AM





HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – The countdown to crazy season in the NBA is on.

Anything goes during crazy season, no rumor is too out there and no anonymous source is out off-limits. That’s what adds all of the spice to the process.

The very first and perhaps most intriguing report of the countdown season comes from The Sporting News, which has multiple sources claiming that the Los Angeles Clippers are interested in making a deal for Boston Celtics All-Star Kevin Garnett. The deal would reportedly involve the Clippers giving up promising young point guard Eric Bledsoe and veteran swingman Caron Butler.

The obligatory refuting of these claims are already in full effect, with ESPN’s Chris Broussard reporting that there have been no “trade talks” between the Clippers and Celtics, which of course would force someone to come up with a clear-cut definition of “trade talks.”

But there is no doubt that both the Clippers, losers of five of their last seven games with injured All-Star point guard Chris Paul on the shelf, and the Celtics, who will finish this season without their own All-Star point guard, Rajon Rondo, are searching for solutions. Sean Deveney of The Sporting News made a compelling case for these two franchises doing business in his initial report:

Celtics officials have made no decisions about the future, even with rookie power forward Jared Sullinger (back surgery) joining point guard Rajon Rondo (knee) last week in seeing their seasons end.

The Celtics came into Sunday’s game on a four-game winning streak and will wait until closer to the trade deadline to decide whether to keep this team together. The deadline is 3 p.m. ET Feb. 21.

For now, the Clippers wait on their injured guards. [Chauncey] Billups is working his way back from a foot injury. There is no timetable for the return of star point guard Paul from a knee injury. [Jamal] Crawford, the team’s sixth man, is wearing an industrial-strength facemask to protect his broken nose.

The Clippers are a battered bunch and losers of five of their previous seven games.

Coach Vinny Del Negro hopes to get Paul and Billups back during the team’s eight-game trip, which runs through Feb. 11.

“Right now, it is all about winning games,” Del Negro said. “We need to get guys back to win at a higher rate than we are right now, then we were used to at the beginning of the season. It’s a long season; you have to manage it the right way. When we think we’re getting everyone back, it seems like, so far this year, someone’s been injured. You have to manage that. You have to take the highs and the lows.”

But still, the Clippers are going for it. And why not? When healthy, they count themselves among NBA title contenders. That’s saying something for a franchise that had long been considered not just among the NBA’s worst, but in all of sports.

Considering, too, the struggles of the Los Angeles Lakers, the Clippers see this season as a chance to reach at least the Western Conference finals and in doing so to reorder the hoops hierarchy in LA.

Garnett, who makes his offseason home in Malibu, has a no-trade clause in his contract and two years left on his contract. So there is that one, gigantic hurdle to deal with. He’s not going anywhere he doesn’t want to go.

But he could have worse options than joining a Clippers team that could be one or two healthy stars away from making a championship run. The championship window in Boston is closed, no matter how hard Celtics coach Doc Rivers tries to fight it.

Garnett has a limited amount of time left to chase a second title to pair with the one he won with the Celtics in 2008. Rolling with the Clippers could be his best and last chance to add to his already Hall of Fame worthy resume. For a player as consumed by winning as Garnett has been his entire career, it would be hard to dismiss an opportunity like this were it actually on the table.

And that brings us back to the core of crazy season in the NBA. No matter how far-fetched an idea seems in theory, the possibilities will get floated to the basketball-loving public between now and the Feb. 21 trade deadline.

The countdown to crazy season in the NBA is on!

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Blogtable: The Clips Without CP3

January 30, 2013  ·  10:30AM

Each week, we’ll ask our stable of scribes to weigh in on the three most important NBA topics of the day — and then give you a chance to step on the scale, too, in the comments below.

Week 14: Has it clicked for the Lakers? | A healthy star who’s struggling | Clips without CP3

What’s the prognosis for the Clips without a fully healthy Chris Paul?

Steve Aschburner: Prognosis for the second half? Maybe the Clippers can hang onto their Pacific Division crown to secure a top seed. But if Paul still were bothered by his knee come the playoffs, I think they’d be in trouble. Eric Bledsoe is solid, but Paul’s too important — distributing, defending, closing — to think the Clippers could play at or near their potential through even a first-round series. You know the saying about playoff defenses taking away your first and second options? L.A.’s foes would be able to focus on its second and third options without Paul as a full factor.

Fran Blinebury: About the same as the prognosis for the pole business without firemen and strippers.

Chris Paul, by Rocky Widner/NBAE via Getty Images

Chris Paul, by Rocky Widner/NBAE via Getty Images

Jeff Caplan: Prognosis Negative. The Clippers won’t go very far without a full strength CP3. Just like last season when they were swept out of in the West semis by the Spurs when Paul and Blake Griffin were banged up. The Clips are extraordinarily deep and talented, but without Paul to handle the ball, to exert control over the offense when the game slows down and execution is key, L.A. won’t go far.

Scott Howard-Cooper: The championship hopes are over. The aspirations for a Western Conference title are over. Yes, the Clippers are deep, and, yes, they would have Chauncey Billups (eventually) and Eric Bledsoe to take over at point guard. But Paul is one of the special talents in the league, a threat as a passer or shooter, a defender, a leader. There is still a long time before the question becomes real. But for the sake of conversation, the Clippers would not be able to overcome CP3 laboring in the playoffs.

John Schuhmann: If he’s playing and not 100 percent, then they’re still a pretty good team, because that, at least, keeps their great second unit intact. Their depth is most effective when their starters are playing and their defense is at its best when Eric Bledsoe is out there with Matt Barnes, Lamar Odom and Ronny Turiaf. But they’re obviously not nearly on the same level as the Spurs or Thunder if Paul’s not at his best. He’s the engine of their top-five offense.

Sekou Smith: Well, if they don’t have him at full strength for the remainder of the season, that’s a game changer. As deep as they are, Paul is the heart and soul of that team. Eric Bledsoe is a fantastic young talent and great things could be on his horizon in the coming years. But the Clippers need an experienced and steady hand at the controls down the stretch and into the playoffs. Take a look at Boston and see how quickly a team’s fortunes change when they don’t have their All-Star point guard in the mix. Better yet, just go back and look at the difference in the Bulls without Derrick Rose. The Clippers would be in a similar situation without Paul healthy for the duration of this season. With CP3 they have a chance to compete for a spot in the Western Conference finals and ultimately a championship. Without him … they’ll be fishing long before then.

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Clips’ Mounting Losses Are Less Worrisome Than CP3′s Knee

January 27, 2013  ·  12:15PM

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HANG TIME SOUTHWEST – The Los Angeles Clippers’ four-game losing streak isn’t nearly as distressing as the sight of Chris Paul dressed like Cliff Paul on the bench night after night.

CP3, the West All-Star’s starting point guard, missed his sixth game in the last eight — and third in a row — Saturday night. And once again, the Clippers came away with a loss, 101-100, at Portland. It was L.A.’s fourth consecutive defeat and second in a row where Paul’s crunch-time cool was needed against two teams out of the playoff mix.

But really the losses are insignificant compared to the health of Paul’s bruised right kneecap. He injured the knee in the stunning home loss to Orlando on Jan. 12 when he bumped knees with Magic guard J.J. Redick. He missed the next three games, all wins against Memphis, Houston and Minnesota.

Paul returned on Jan. 19 against Washington, going for 22 points and 11 assists in 35 minutes. All seemed right.

But two nights later in the loss to Golden State, the start of four in a row, Paul re-aggravated the injury and hobbled throughout the game, finishing with four points and nine assists in 33 minutes.

He hasn’t played since.

Back on Tuesday, Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro called Paul’s injury a “day-to-day thing.”

“How long, I don’t know,” Del Negro told The Los Angeles Times. “But I don’t want to bring him back and then he’s out again like this time. So we’ll be as cautious as possible and try to work through it.”

The Clippers led 100-91 with 2:38 to go at Portland on Saturday night, but they’d never score again as Portland rattled off the final 10 points of the game. Eric Beldsoe has taken over as the starter with Sixth Man of the Year candidate Jamal Crawford used to help close with Blake Griffin.

“We’ve got to learn with this group without [Paul] to finish games,” Del Negro told reporters after the game. “It was an opportunity for us to finish the game.”

The next one comes tonight in a rare road-home series against the Blazers. Del Negro said after Saturday’s game that Paul is not expected to suit up, saying he’ll have a better idea of when Paul will play once he begins some contact drills.

The sooner the better for the Clippers, who begin a massive, eight-game road trip after tonight’s game. It starts at Minnesota on Wednesday and then takes on a distinctly East flavor including stops at Boston, improving Washington, Miami, New York and Philadelphia.

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Back Away From The Edge, Clipper Fans

January 25, 2013  ·  11:46AM

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HANG TIME, Texas — From Bill Walton’s feet to Danny Ferry’s bolting for Italy to the choice of Michael Olowokandi to practically any decade of Donald Sterling’s long and painful stewardship, it is practically built into their DNA.

Fear! Dread! Panic!

So maybe you can’t blame Clippers fans for seeking out a tall mast from which to jump.

But we will.

Relax.

Yes, it’s now a three-game losing streak that has your boys slipping behind the Spurs into third place in the Western Conference playoff race. Yes, the latest blow came at the hands of the lowly Suns, who are more barren than an Arizona desert and are memorizing the name of their new coach (Lindsey Hunter).

No, the ball’s not going into the basket as often as they’d like. No, Blake Griffin wasn’t zooming toward the rim to catch alley-oops for dunks, wasn’t attacking the basket and wasn’t taking enough shots.

Come on, surely you can take off your sunglasses to see that handsome young man in the dapper outfit sitting over there on the bench, not far from coach Vinny Del Negro.

Meet Chris Paul, fire-starter, All-Star and MVP candidate whose stock is only soaring higher as he waits for a sore knee to feel better.

Maybe everyone was fooled when the Clippers swept a three-game road trip a week ago with Paul on the sidelines nursing his knee. But does anyone really think this team, this season, this talk about the Clippers as real championship contenders doesn’t revolve around CP3?

Everything the Clippers try to do with their offense is based on having the ball in Paul’s hands, letting him make plays, buckets and decisions, as Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles notes:

The Clippers don’t want to make any excuses while Paul is out, and there’s certainly a chance he could be out for a week as he was the last time he sat out with a bruised right kneecap. But with the Clippers up by one with 7:45 left in the game, the Clippers sure could have used Paul or at least Chauncey Billups running the offense to close the game out. Eric Bledsoe is a great change-of-pace point guard and can give the Clippers a spark in the second and third quarters, but Del Negro likes to lean on Paul (and Billups when he’s healthy) early and late in games and it’s not hard to see why.

“All that stuff changes with Chris or Chauncey out there,” Del Negro said. “There’s no excuse. We were in this game and whoever is out there I have confidence in and they got to make the plays.”

Paul is the one who gets the ball to all of the other Clippers in the best position for them to score. Paul is the one who creates the open spaces for open shots. Paul is the one who turns them from a collection of diverse talent into a team.

Yes, there are games that you can win over the course of a long season without your star player. The Clippers did that in going 3-0 through Memphis, Houston and Minnesota. But that was never the point.

Imagine the Heat without LeBron James or the Thunder without Kevin Durant. Heck, even imagine the Three Stooges without Curly.

The show still goes on. But nobody really comes to see Shemp.

We don’t need laboratory slides to know that panic is in your blood, Clipper fans.

Just relax and know that CP3 is just collecting a few more MVP votes this week.

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Blogtable: First-half Blindside

January 23, 2013  ·  11:28AM

Each week, we’ll ask our stable of scribes to weigh in on the three most important NBA topics of the day — and then give you a chance to step on the scale, too, in the comments below.

Week 13: First-half blindside | Knicks or Nets? | Trade me!

Besides the Lakers, what’s one thing you didn’t see coming this season?

Steve Aschburner: The Golden State Warriors. No way, no how did I see these guys winning more games by the midpoint than they won last season (23 in 66 vs. 25 in 40), being 12-5 against winning teams, ranking among the top contenders in both offensive and defensive field-goal percentages, showing such road chops, boosting their rebounding diligence and on and on. The personnel changes have been modest but surgical – Landry, Jack, Barnes, Ezeli – while much of the improvement has come from within, with the chemistry and continuity of coach Mark Jackson‘s second season. (Even now, it feels weird writing that whole paragraph.)

Golden State's Mark Jackson, by Rocky Widner/NBAE via Getty Images

Golden State’s Mark Jackson, by Rocky Widner/NBAE via Getty Images

Fran Blinebury: The Clippers challenging for the best record in the league and home-court advantage all the way through the NBA Finals. There was no doubt that Chris Paul and Blake Griffin had them moving forward.  But after last spring’s playoff sweep by the Spurs, this is a Bob Beamon-like leap ahead.  Jamal Crawford has been a turbo-charger and Eric Bledsoe makes the backcourt an embarrassment of riches.  Their offense and defense rank in the top five, they are 17-7 against teams with winning records, 13-6 on the road and 22-7 against the West.

Jeff Caplan: I could go negative here and say I didn’t see Boston struggling to this degree, although I was never one who thought they’d barnstorm through the season either. So, allow me to spread sunshine across the land and praise Mark Jackson’s Golden State Warriors, who are 25-15 and playing a total team game that’s entertaining as heck to watch. Oh, and they haven’t even seen Andrew Bogut yet.

Scott Howard-Cooper: Didn’t see these Knicks coming. If anything, I saw them going: going down a notch in New York City thanks to the Nets’ arrival, going away while relying on a lot of AARP members, Raymond Felton and Amar’e Stoudemire. Instead, they’re keeping the pressure on for the top spot in the East. Surprise, surprise.

John Schuhmann: If you told me before the season that the Warriors would win 25 of their first 40 games, rank 12th defensively and rank sixth in rebounding percentage, my response would have been, “Wow, I’m looking forward to seeing Andrew Bogut healthy and playing well.” That they’ve done all that without Bogut is pretty incredible to me. Mark Jackson and Mike Malone deserve credit for devising a defensive system that works for their personnel, and Stephen Curry and David Lee deserves credit for improving on that end of the floor. I’m still looking forward to seeing Bogut healthy and playing well.

Sekou Smith: The Knicks. Given the way they finished last season (getting trounced in that first round matchup against the Heat), I honestly didn’t see a top-two team in the East coming from whatever the Knicks cobbled together over the summer. I didn’t see “Carmelo Anthony, MVP” coming either. But he shut his critics up with some of the best basketball of his career through the first half of this season. The Knicks basically had the first half I was expecting from the Lakers.

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Bledsoe Holds The Line In Paul’s Absence

January 16, 2013  ·  10:53AM






HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – With point guard superstars (Chris Paul) and luminaries (Chauncey Billups) on the roster, it must be tough for a youngster like Eric Bledsoe to find time to shine.

He’s also operating on a team that features the one-man, crossover freakshow that is Jamal Crawford, whose exploits on a nightly basis inspire these sorts of tweets:

But with Paul (knee) joining Billups on the Los Angeles Clippers’ bench the past two games, their young apprentice has been at the controls and the Clippers didn’t slow down one bit.

They followed up a 26-point rout of the Memphis Grizzlies Monday night with another solid thumping of the Houston Rockets last night. Bledsoe was fantastic in both, dropping 14 points, four assists and three rebounds on Mike Conley and the Grizzlies and then a season-high 19 points, seven rebounds, five assists on Jeremy Lin and the Rockets.

Bledsoe knows he has to bide his time behind his more heralded teammates, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have plenty of ambition to fuel his fire in the meantime. He couldn’t have two better tutors. And he’s already formulated his plan, according to my main man Broderick Turner of The Los Angeles Times:

“I’m just preparing for that moment,” Bledsoe said in his typically quiet voice. “I’m still learning behind Chris and Chauncey. Hopefully, we win a championship and if I do get that chance, I can lead a team.”

Bledsoe started for the second consecutive game because Paul was out because of a bruised right kneecap. Bledsoe finished with a season-high 19 points, seven rebounds and five assists in the Clippers’ 117-109 victory over Houston.

But Bledsoe knows that Paul is an All-Star point guard who is just 27 years old.

If Paul re-signs with the Clippers over the summer as most people expect, it will mean Bledsoe may have to leave the Clippers to become a starter.

“I’m just focused on winning,” Bledsoe said. “I’m just focused on winning and learning how to win right now. For the most part, I’m just continuing working and building, learning how to run a team. The other stuff will take care of itself.”

The Clippers are deep enough at every position that they should be able to resist any urge to dangle Bledsoe in the trade market this season, preserving their right to groom him for a bigger role in the event that Paul’s decides to go elsewhere (which seems implausible, considering the way the Clippers are playing this season).

Bledsoe is a luxury that not every team in the league has, a youngster with superstar potential that they can take their time grooming for bigger and better things.

In a league filled with young, talented point guard prospects, Bledsoe might very well be the most underrated due to his current circumstance. He also has one of the highest ceilings.

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Vasquez, Gordon Give Hornets Some Hope

January 9, 2013  ·  2:04PM

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HANG TIME SOUTHWEST – Greivis Vasquez deserves a raise — which he’ll get in due time — or the key to the city or, heck, just make him mayor of New Orleans.

The city, and its beleaguered basketball team, couldn’t ask for a better ambassador than the Venezuelan-born point guard who’s leaving his heart and sweat on the floor every night as he emerges as a top talent in the league.

“The biggest thing is I’m getting an opportunity,” said Vasquez, a recent player of the week recipient. “Still, people don’t know about me as much because I’m playing in a small market, which I love. I love this city, I love this team.”

Pretty refreshing stuff from a third-year player just starting to hit his stride for a franchise that’s endured it’s share of hard knocks in recent years — including a hard-luck 7-25 start to this season.

Yet as I wrote after Saturday’s 99-96 overtime win at Dallas, the season really started at that moment. Add Monday’s impressive thumping of the San Antonio Spurs in front of 11,599 that ended a seven-game home losing streak, and Wednesday’s fourth-quarter comeback against the previously streaking Houston Rockets, and the Hornets are on a roll with their first three-game winning streak of the season.

Why the reset on the season?

Because the ridiculously youthful Hornets finally got game-changer and now-healthy shooting guard Eric Gordon in the starting lineup Saturday. It allowed coach Monty Williams to make other changes and roll out the starting five he envisioned.

And this is where Vasquez’s ambassadorial value comes shining through. A 6-foot-6, bearded jolt of energy, smiles, enthusiasm and positivity, his team-first attitude is absolutely contagious. It’s critical to the evolution of this franchise, and no more so than as it relates to Gordon, the 6-foot-3 scoring machine deemed the future of the franchise when New Orleans acquired him in the painful CP3 trade 13 months ago.

“I have a good relationship with Eric and I tell you this, we have been talking a lot,” Vasquez said before Saturday’s comeback victory. “Eric is a pro. I feel him as a player too, because his knee was really bothering him. But now he feels like his teammates got his back, we all got his back. We all know he’s going to make us better and we’re going to make him better. And now, we talked [Friday] night, we’re going to make this situation a great situation. We’re going to start winning games.

“For a guy like that to say that to a guy like me, that means a lot. I’m sure he’s saying that on behalf of the whole team because we’re winners, we want to win and we work. And that has been the main thing of our team, we’re going to work regardless. Whether we lose or win tomorrow we are getting better because our vision is in the future.” (more…)

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Del Negro Stays Clear Of Hot Seat

December 31, 2012  ·  9:49AM

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – What the Los Angles Clippers are doing is just as impressive in person as it is from afar. Seriously, do you have any idea how difficult it is in the NBA to win every night with a schedule that is unrelenting and competition that, for the most part, is as tight as you could get on a given night?

The Clippers do and have managed their league-best 17-game win streak masterfully.

Does it mean they’ve arrived among the NBA’s truly elite? We won’t know that for sure until sometime in late April or early May, when this group fights off the pressure in the playoffs and advances without playing their very best. Does it mean they have officially replaced the Los Angeles Lakers as the top hoops draw in their own city? Of course, not. Lakers fans will simply remind you to look up in the rafters at Staples Center and start counting the banners.

But if this streak proves anything at all, it’s that Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro has figured out the best way to avoid the dreaded coaching hot seat he seemed to be on every other night when his team wasn’t winning all the time. In fact, he’s rarely been mentioned, good or bad, during the streak. And that’s probably the way he’d like to keep it.

The laws of NBA gravity suggest that this streak will have to end sometime soon. A grueling stretch of schedule that has the Clippers walking on hot coals – in Denver on Tuesday, the Nuggets are 9-1,  in Oakland to face Golden State the next night, and then back in Los Angeles for another round of the City Championship series against the Lakers on Friday, followed the next night by a visit from the Warriors — just to survive the next six days.

It’s certainly doable for a team that went 16-0 this month. But adding four more wins this week against that schedule would be grounds for an investigation into extra-terrestrial assistance for a franchise that has never experienced the kind of hoops high the Clippers are these days.

Which brings us right back to Del Negro, whose navigated this mercurial stretch seamlessly. He’s allowed the Clippers’ entire cast of characters to play their roles to perfection. All-Stars Chris Paul and Blake Griffin lead the way, Caron Butler and DeAndre Jordan do some of the heavier lifting when they need to, as Butler did in Sunday’s win over the Utah Jazz with 29 points, while the league’s best bench (Jamal Crawford, Matt Barnes, Eric Bledsoe and the boys) continue to crash open close games with their wave on non-stop energy.

You don’t win 17 straight games without someone knowing when to and when not to push, as Crawford told the Orange County Register after No. 17:

“Everybody here has a decent body of work in some way shape or form,” Crawford said. “They’ve proven something somewhere in the NBA. With that is a confidence that a player has, and there are egos involved.”For him to be able to manage that and put people in the right positions and use people to their strengths, he deserves a lot of credit.”

Del Negro has juggled a rotation full of veterans without much drama, but he’s established roles for everyone from Paul to Ryan Hollins.

“Guys get frustrated sometimes not playing as much, but it’s about the team winning games,” Del Negro said.

One thing Del Negro has done is allow players to operate in their areas of strength.

“He just tells me to be me. It’s been awhile since I was told to just be me,” Ronny Turiaf said. “I think it goes back to the Laker days when Phil (Jackson) told me, ‘Ronny, just go out there and play. I trust your basketball I.Q. I trust your basketball knowledge to be able to make plays for us.’”

Utah coach Tyrone Corbin said managing a roster with so many guys who are capable could present challenges down the road.

“It’s difficult. It’s a good and a bad thing to be in,” Corbin said. “Guys want to play, especially good guys who have had great careers and still think they have something to offer. Things are going well so they all want to be a part of it. It’s easier to manage their minutes, when things are going well.”

Said Crawford of Del Negro: “For him to have the pulse of the team and feel the team and the stuff he draws up, he has us believing we can win every single day.”

Do it every single day this week and someone can toss Del Negro’s hot seat into the ocean sometime late Saturday night!

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Do Clippers Pass Your Eyeball Test?

December 28, 2012  ·  11:44AM

LOS ANGELES – Lob City sells tickets. But defense wins championships.

That’s the way the basketball purists are approaching the Los Angeles Clippers, the hottest and “best” team in basketball as we speed toward the end of the year the Mayans said would be the end of for us all.

It seems fitting that the Clippers, of all franchises, would be in this position. They’ve never had the best record in the league this late in the season. And they’re fighting a legacy of futility that makes it tough for guys like TNT’s Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith to truly believe in what they’re seeing out of a team that has won a franchise-record 15 straight games.

But what would your reaction be to the news that the Clippers — even with all of the alley-oop action we’ve enjoyed from Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan – are as much of a defensive powerhouse right now as they are entertaining and athletic?

The fact is, the Clippers are the second-best defensive team in the league behind Indiana and rank as the most improved defensive team in basketball, ahead of Golden State, Minnesota and Indiana.

Top five defenses, 2012-13
Team DefRtg
Indiana 95.7
L.A. Clippers 96.6
Memphis 96.8
Chicago 98.6
Atlanta 98.8

DefRtg = Points allowed per
100 possessions

If you’re not interested in the metrics, give them the eyeball test that Celtics coach Doc Rivers did before, during and after the Clippers put the smackdown on his team Thursday night on TNT. It’s hard to dismiss the Clippers when they are up in the grill of a team that built its foundation on defense, the bedrock that led to a championship during their spectacular run of the past five seasons.

“Last year, I think they showed up and they just thought their talent and their offense was [going to win for them],” Rivers said. “But this year their defense has been fantastic. I mean, we’re all talking about their offense, but they’re playing just terrific defense. And they have balance now. They’re fifth in the league in scoring, fifth in defense. That’s a balanced basketball team and that makes you really good.”

Still, the Clippers are fighting to dispel any notion that this is just a momentary run and that they are the Clippers of yore, when they were a team that quite frankly could not be counted on to do things the way they’re doing them now that Paul is a part of the organization.

“They have a terrific team,” Rivers said. “Every year is a new year, but they’re good. They’re talented and they play together. They all accept their roles. They’re actually a fun team to watch play, other than the dunks. They’re just a fun team to watch play the game.”

Barkley questioned whether the Clippers could keep this up — playing at their fevered and physical pitch and also playing every man in uniform and getting contributions from them all — when the games slow down in the playoffs. It’s a fair question that won’t be answered until April and May, depending on how deep the Clippers play into the postseason.

And it’s not realistic to believe that Matt Barnes will stretch his current streak of nine straight games of scoring double figures off the bench or that Jamal Crawford, Lamar Odom, Ronny Turiaf and Eric Bledsoe will continue to provide the starters an opportunity to rest in the fourth quarter of every game.

But don’t tell that to Paul.

“I’ve probably sat out more fourth quarters this year than all my previous seven seasons,” he said. “People talk about how me and Blake’s numbers are down. Well, we don’t play many fourth quarters. And I think it just says a lot about our team and how everything is balanced.”

Balanced in every way. Their production from up and down the roster is at the heart of not only this 15-game streak but also their league-best 23-6 record (the Thunder are 22-6).

Most improved DefRtg

Team 2011-12 Rank 2012-13 Rank Diff.
L.A. Clippers 102.9 18 96.6 2 -6.3
Golden State 106.0 27 101.3 12 -4.7
Minnesota 103.6 21 98.9 7 -4.7
Indiana 100.4 10 95.7 1 -4.7
Brooklyn 106.9 29 104.0 21 -3.0

Just as impressive, though, is the focus the Clippers bring every night. And it’s opponent specific. They had to battle a team built similarly to theirs in the Denver Nuggets on Christmas and beat them into submission over the course of four quarters. The Celtics brought a different level of animosity to the Staples Center and the Clippers responded in kind.

“[The Celtics] played very intense, they played aggressive, they played physical,” Griffin said. “And I thought we did a good job of matching that.”

Perhaps best of all is that the Clippers don’t seem nearly as preoccupied with their current streak as others. Their focus is on the developing the chemistry and cohesion needed for finishing the marathon in style.

“I don’t really care about it,” Jordan said of the streak. “We’re just playing, we’re rolling. Everybody’s clicking and we’re starting to gel even more. We still have some guys out. Hopefully when they come back we’ll still be able to keep things going.”

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Billups To Suit Up, Start For Clippers

November 28, 2012  ·  4:21PM




HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – If veteran guard Chauncey Billups can do anything to cure what ails the Los Angeles Clippers, losers of four straight games, we will all find out tonight.

Billups is expected to make his season debut tonight against Kevin Love and the Minnesota Timberwolves at Staples Center (10:30 p.m. ET on NBA TV), per Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports:

It’s an injury return that couldn’t come at a better time for the Clippers, who have found themselves embroiled in one mess after another lately during their mini-slump.

Vinny Del Negro is suddenly on the hot seat (his normal spot, nothing new) and the Clippers are struggling to find the rhythm they had when they kicked off the season on a 8-2 surge.

Chris Paul was critical of his team’s effort, and some people feel his head coach, Vinny Del Negro, after Monday’s loss to the New Orleans Hornets. He even tweeted about it, creating an uproar with words that lacked the context of his more nuanced reaction that only some seemed to pay attention to:

“We lost to a very … let me choose my words … not a very talented team but well coached,” Paul said. “I watch them play every game that they play. One thing about [coach] Monty [Williams] is they’re going to play hard. If you watch their games, they been to a couple of overtimes and they’ve only been in a couple of blowouts, which were against Denver and Oklahoma City. They’re going to play hard. … With those guys playing like that and us waiting until the fourth quarter to turn it on, it’s going to be tough.”

Paul’s praise for his former coach, Williams, was seen as a direct shot at Del Negro.

The return of the Clippers’ most prominent leader not named Paul, however, could be the infusion of positive energy needed to get this team back on track.

Of course, Billups hasn’t played since he tore his left Achilles tendon last Feb. 6. Before that injury he was playing a critical role alongside Paul, averaging 15 points and four assists, in one of the most dynamic backcourts in the league.

Now he joins not only Paul, but his replacement, Willie Green, and bench stars Jamal Crawford and Eric Bledsoe, in what has to be one of the deepest and most explosive backcourt rotations in all of basketball.

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