It is often best to show restraint when it comes to young players. Expectations have a way of getting out of hand when you see eye-popping physical gifts and allow yourself to dream.

You see what they can do, and all of a sudden you find yourself just assuming that a turnover problem or iffy shooting stroke will correct itself with time, because that’s what can happen and that’s what we want to happen. But it doesn’t always go that way, as we know, and so patience is the play before declaring every player with potential the next Dwyane Wade.

The problem with that, of course, is that we risk missing out on the greatest thing in all of sports: being prepared for the arrival of the next Dwyane Wade.

And last night, for those of us who allowed ourselves to dream, the legend of Eric Bledsoe took another giant leap towards reality. His career may not approach the greatness of Wade’s — and the odds say it won’t — but for special players like him, odds only serve to isolate the believers from those who prefer to play it cool.

On a court that featured a minimum of two and up to five future Hall of Famers, only the great Tim Duncan impacted the game like the 22-year old Bledsoe. Which is fitting, because with every breathtaking defensive possession or composed foray into the lane, his facial expression grew more Duncan-like, completely unfazed by the magnitude of the moment.

It was like for 26 and a half minutes, he was playing a game of one-on-one, make it take it, and his opponent was barely touching the ball. Every check ball at the top of the key belonged to Bledsoe — a chain of buckets, boards, dimes and game-changing stops that just wouldn’t end.

The Spurs are a better team than the Clippers, so Bledsoe could only do so much. But so much, he did. Paired next to Chris Paul, the difference in explosiveness was just as striking as the similarities in composure and control of the ball. When he finally got to share the backcourt with Paul, part of you kept waiting for him to defer or something to go wrong, but it never happened.

His performance against Memphis was special to those of us who care, and noteworthy to the masses that hadn’t yet taken an interest. But even his staunchest supporters had reason to wonder if his skill set was just well-suited for that style of play. After all, even his own coach apparently still considers him more of a change-of-pace novelty than a starting-caliber difference-maker. No one could confidently say he had reached a level he could sustain against more complete opposition.

But what we saw last night changed everything. We rightly resist hyperbole, but we’d be doing a disservice to our most primal NBA passions to deny what we are seeing develop in front of our eyes.

Last night, Eric Bledsoe looked like Dwyane Wade. He put up 23 points on 10-16 shooting, five rebounds and four assists against arguably the best team in the league — certainly the best coached — the one that held Chris Paul to 3-13 from the floor. Without so much as a system to fall back on if things weren’t working, he attacked confidently but with unprecedented control, and scored from any spot on the floor.

He took the ball, quite literally, and a team that has made it this far on the shoulder of one player, Chris Paul, lost nothing in the process. The story of this series is yet to be completed, but it’s looking more and more like the the only things that can keep him off the floor are his coach and his gas tank — which itself is a function of the lack of playing time he received throughout the year.

Because the Grizzlies couldn’t stop him, and I’m not sure how the Spurs plan to, either. That’s because he has what it takes to be great: you can bet that he’ll put his stamp on the game, even if his shot isn’t falling like it was last night. That’s special.

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Isn’t it great to be watching a basketball game again instead of a barfight (i.e. Round 1)? Unfortunately, all that space, flow and tempo Clippers fans had missed came in a convincing loss to the San Antonio Spurs.

Let’s start with the opposition

Game 1 validated everything about the Spurs: they are disciplined, efficient and, forget about the lights, San Antonio can shoot the sun out. I’m going to take a quick second to dispel a misnomer about the Spurs:

The San Antonio Spurs are not old.

Just to repeat:

The San Antonio Spurs are not old.

Got it? Duncan is 36 years old and he lead the Spurs in minutes played (35) and points (26 on 12-20FGA). Ginobli is 34, but after that? Parker (29), Diaw (30), Green (24), Leonard (20), Splitter (27), Neal (27). Don’t kid yourself, the Spurs are not going to wear down as the series progresses.

And the Spurs ridiculous 52% (13-25) from deep? That probably isn’t going to change much either. San Antonio is the best team 3-point shooting team in the postseason at 40.7%. That’s 2% better than the next best shooting team (OKC at 38.6%) and more than 5% better than the Clippers (35%), who are a very good 3-point shooting team.

So that’s the series, right? The Spurs are a team of hyper efficient robots that run the same offensive program until it executes. They calculate the biggest threat of the opposing team (Chris Paul) and scheme to neutralize it.

Yes and no. Game 1 showed a lot of what the Spurs do right and a lot of what the Clippers do… let’s say less right (and by that I mean wrong). Focusing on the key errors by the Clippers:

Miscommunication on defensive rotations: The Clippers were actually reasonable at shutting down the initial offensive action. This is what made their defense so effective in the Memphis series. The problem here is that the Spurs are very adept at moving to the second, third, fourth, fifth and then resetting back to the initial setup. Do you know how Clipper fans have fallen in love with watching Chris Paul probe a defense all season? That probing is basically engrained in the design of the Spurs offense. It stretches and manipulates the Clippers defense until it yields a breakdown. Jordan Heimer mentioned as much on last night’s ClipperBlog Live. At one point he paused the game after a wide-open Spurs 3-pointer to see who had failed to rotate to the shooter. Except that the defense had so thoroughly been torqued that almost every Clipper defender was out of position.

Terrible rebounding rears its ugly head, again: It’s completely understandable that the Clippers would lose (or play to a draw) the rebounding battle against Memphis. The Grizzlies are an excellent rebounding team. But the Spurs? Throughout the season the Clippers have been the better rebounding team. But in Game 1, San Antonio resoundingly controlled the boards (47 to 34). Simply put, the Clippers cannot lose so decidedly on the boards and expect any kind of success against this Spurs team.

The bright side? Despite the ineffective defense and poor rebounding, the Clippers won the possession battle (83-80). They also caused a lot of turnovers (15 for the Clippers to 18 for the Spurs) and were within 8 points (after a 10-0 run) with 8 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter.

On top of that, Blake Griffin and Chris Paul had unequivocally poor games. In fact, you could say every Clipper had a poor game with the exception of a scorching Eric Bledsoe, and then just solid games from Caron Butler, Nick Young and DeAndre Jordan (the latter two getting curiously few minutes prior to garbage time).

“If Chris Paul had a normal showing, Clippers could have won Game 1”

Maybe, but Tony Parker had a terrible game as well. As much as everyone thought this series would be a battle of elite point guards, the crummy performances essentially negated each other. It should be fully expected that Chris Paul will figure out the Green/Leonard conundrum that Popovich trotted out for Game 1. After all, Memphis is thought of as the premier perimeter defensive unit and Paul solved that puzzle. Just expect Parker to work out the kinks as well.

And yet, the Clippers had a Paul performance of sorts by Eric Bledsoe in Game 1 (or as DJ Foster said, “He looked a lot like Dwyane Wade.”) Slashing, probing, tip ins, spot up shots, behind the back passes, Bledsoe did it all. He even executed the patented Chris Paul flop where Paul slows down midcourt and stops to let an opposing big run him over, drawing an easy foul. Not only that, Bledsoe drew the most difficult perimeter defensive assignment whenever he was in, be it Parker or Ginobli (a large reason why Parker had such difficulty). Bledsoe’s presence allowed a hampered Chris Paul not to have to exert so much energy defensively and focus on breaking down the San Antonio defense. This is now the third straight game Bledsoe’s fingerprints have been all over the game and it’s clear Del Negro needs to adjust the rotation patterns to better utilize Bledsoe’s minutes.

On the topic of rotations, I wonder if Blake’s minutes should be limited. And this is not an idea with the hopes he recovers from injury, although Blake is clearly affected. More than anything he seemed tentative in Game 1. After the grit ‘n grind of the first round, it looked as if Blake didn’t know how to adjust back to a straightforward game of basketball (like he was institutionalized).

Griffin is not a strong help/rotation defender. But this is more than compensated with his offensive production, by either distributing out of double teams or generating his own points. But if he’s not being aggressive because of injury or otherwise? Then at best he’s simply swinging the ball from the perimeter without engaging the Spurs defense. Not a threat to shoot the outside shot. Not forcing the defense to collapse.

And this is partly why Foye is struggling so much. Throughout the year teams have been keying in on Paul and/or Griffin, leaving Foye to spot up and shoot. In Game 1, San Antonio focused on Paul and stayed at home with all the Clipper shooters. If Griffin is unwilling or unable to exploit the coverage, it might behoove them to limit his minutes until Griffin is more confident in his body/ability.

And that might be the biggest factor for the series: the Clippers need to either drag the Spurs into a dogfight (as Kenyon Martin suggested) or get into a high octane war. As ugly as their series with the Grizzlies were, it forced the Clippers into an identity of grinding and resiliency. The Clippers maintained their determination but need to quickly identify how to attack the series. Is it a knock down, drag out fight? A better choreographed ballet of jump shots and screen and rolls? Alternating between the two? The fact that there are realistic options for Clipper success should give hope that this could be a long series yet. We’ll see in Game 2 how the Clippers decide to adjust.

Follow @andrewthehan

In some ways, the Clippers season begins tonight.  After the Chris Paul trade and the elevated expectations that came with it, you could have argued — and I did — that anything less than a trip to the second round would be a disappointment.  And so, here they are, ready to begin.

The Spurs await, representing the heavy favorite, the juggernaut that many predict to take this series in four games, if not three.  Seems funny to me that, given what happened during their three regular season meetings — a Clipper loss in the second game of the season, a Clipper win, and a game you may remember, in which an inbounds play went terribly awry – a team led by Chris Paul and Blake Griffin could be so overlooked. Especially considering what happened just a season ago, when the Spurs were handed a ticket to the second round before those pesky Grizzlies — the ones the Clippers just dispatched — reminded us that that’s why the play the games.

We can only hope this series approaches the excitement of Round 1, because there are a ton of interesting storylines. Here are a few, but also be sure to check out the excellent work over at the Spurs’ TrueHoop site, 48 Minutes of Hell, including previews by Aaron McGuire and Andrew McNeill and an appearance by our own D.J. Foster on their podcast.

An exercise in contrast
One popular sentiment is that the Clippers struggled to score in a 7-game first round series, so how could they possibly be successful in an inherently more difficult second-round series against an obviously superior Spurs team?  This, of course, is filled with faulty logic.  The Spurs are, at least on paper, a better team than both the Clippers’ first round opponent and the Clippers themselves.  But each series takes on its own personality, and it would be a mistake to project the style we saw play out in Round 1 to this matchup.  Whereas the Spurs are an offensive machine, the Grizzlies were/are famous for making even the most efficient units look like my middle school team against the kid who went on to play at Memphis. There is a reason Chris Paul committed a turnover more per game in that series than he did all year.

The Spurs don’t have the perimeter defenders that Memphis does — few do.  They also don’t have the type of athletic bigs capable of blowing up pick-and-rolls, meaning that if his hip flexor cooperates, Paul should find space to pull up for jumpers or get into the lane, as long as Griffin and DeAndre Jordan can set him some decent screens.  One would think the Clippers could exploit this advantage in running their favorite high screen-and-roll sets, but at the very least, this dynamic should give this series a different look than we saw in Round 1.

These were two of the most efficient offensive teams during the regular season, but they do what they do in different ways.  The Spurs rely on a system that maximizes the strengths of individuals that know their roles. The Clippers rely on a system that is best described as “Chris Paul.”  To stop the Spurs, the Clippers will have to play sound defense for entire possessions, complete with rotations and discipline, to avoid being carved up on pick and rolls and kick outs to deadly shooters.  You can bet that San Antonio will focus its collective effort on containing Paul and take its chances on other guys beating them.

If they are successful getting the ball out of Paul’s hands, the Spurs will then look to run “shooters” off the 3-point line.  I put “shooters” in quotes because, while guys like Randy Foye, Mo Williams, Nick Young and Caron Butler can shoot, they also fashion themselves as scorers and slashers.  Will the Clippers resist the urge to pump fake and dribble into long 2′s?  They were in the top third of the league in shots attempted from 16-23 feet, and Greg Popovich surely knows this.  You want to see how the coaching battle turns out?  Take a look at how many corner 3′s the Spurs get and how many long 2′s the Clippers settle for.

What did we learn? And does it matter?
As Randy Foye said, the MVP of the Grizzlies series was the Clippers bench.  The “Goon Squad,” consisting of Eric Bledsoe, Mo Williams, Nick Young, Raggie Evans and Kenyon Martin, provided an element of toughness and energy that the Clippers desperately needed against the Grit ‘n Grind Grizzlies.  In some ways, injuries to Paul and Griffin worked in the Clippers favor, because they forced Vinny Del Negro to go with Bledsoe and Martin during extended stretches.

But what does that mean for this series?

Perhaps the most misunderstood aspects of the Spurs is just how good their defense became over the course of the season.  They are more athletic than they have been in the past, and those who aren’t make up for it with smarts and positioning — you know, the way a good defense works.  Paul may be able to find holes at the elbows, but Bledsoe, if given the opportunities, will likely see collapsing defenders challenging him to shoot or make decisions on the fly.

But we are probably getting ahead of ourselves projecting how Bledsoe, or anyone else in the second unit will play. That’s because, with no discernible substitution patterns, we have no idea how Del Negro will choose to utilize them. What value did he find in Evans and Martin, and how does he believe that will translate into certain situations against a completely different opponent?  When Blake Griffin is as healthy as he’s going to be and DeAndre Jordan is hanging in there, like he did against Marc Gasol for stretches, where do the minutes go?  And in the backcourt, we still have little indication about where guys stand on the totem pole and what that means for different situations.

The battle down low
By the end, the Memphis series had evolved (devolved?) into countless, successive cases of big on big crime.  No one was spared, and at the end of the day, the Clippers were able to parlay their involvement into team rebounds and scrap buckets.  Their opponents this series will present a different look down low, and while it may not be as physical, it figures to be just as dangerous.  Tim Duncan is a nightmare for guys who have trouble staying down on pump fakes, and the Clippers happen to have two such players in their starting lineup.

On the other end, the Spurs will look to force Griffin into uncomfortable situations, although as we’ve seen recently, those situations have become fewer and farther between.  Remember when the book was to make him shoot jump shots? Well, over the last two months of the season, he shot 37 and 49 percent on jumpers from 16-23 feet.  He also showed against the Grizzlies that he can take punishment and keep attacking, so it will be interesting to see how San Antonio plays him.  Ultimately, it may just come down to the health of his sprained knee.

After waiting this long, I’m sure we are all just ready for the season to begin.

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We interrupt your regularly scheduled playoff programming to bring attention to a phenomenal video documentary about the Sacramento Kings and their battle to stay in Sacramento. This has more to do with the Clippers than you might think — Anaheim wants a team, and well…just watch the video. It’s well worth your time.

To learn more about Small Market, Big Heart visit the official site here: http://smallmarketbigheart.com/