There wasn’t a lot to take away from the Clippers’ 91-88 win Friday night over a Hornets team playing without both Chris Paul and Emeka Okafor. The Clips had a better night on the glass and were more careful with the ball, but despite playing hard, the game had a very preambulatory feel to it. The Clippers — players and coaches alike — are ready for the regular season to begin. Before they do, they might want to consider a few red flags that reared themselves last night:

Probably not something you want to see on a regular basis.

• Sebastian Telfair will be a boon to the Clippers second unit and should enable the team’s freakish athletes like DeAndre Jordan, Al Thornton and Blake Griffin to find great opportunities on the break or in early offensive sets. That said, there’s no good reason that any Clipper possession should result in a 17-foot Telfair jumper — to say nothing of his four 3-point attempts. Whether it’s because he never had to shoot from distance as a ballhandling prodigy who could get to the rack at will or his stroke is fundamentally unsteady, Telfair’s outside shot is a fast-break elixir for opponents. When your team rebounding is as troubling as the Clippers, there’s no reason to be running Telfair around screens to launch from 20 [1st, 0:45].
• Rasual Butler is an effective tool to spread the floor in the halfcourt — and not a bad passer from the perimeter [1st, 10:00; 1st, 8:23] — but he’s not the guy you want creating from nothing when the shot clock is winding down. That’s simply not his game.
• You don’t want to put too much of a evidentiary premium on Friday night because a team’s 8th preseason game is essentially 48 minutes of garbage time, but Baron Davis’ shot selection conjured up last season’s nightmares. Watching Baron fire up bad shots in a meaningless game reminded me of something Dan Rosenheck wrote about the 2007 Arizona Diamondbacks. That season, the D-backs had a very good W-L record despite the fact that they’d been outscored over the course of the season. How come?  One of the primary reasons was their propensity for using their mop-up guys in blowouts (i.e. garbage time), while reserving their better relievers for tight games. To the extent that Baron Davis needs…must…can’t help but launch low-percentage shots off the dribble, can he confine that compulsion to garbage possessions?  That’s probably a lot to ask, but we can hope.
• Blake Griffin is so incredibly active on the defensive end, which couldn’t be a more pleasant contrast to Zach Randolph. But movement in the defensive halfcourt also demands anticipation and rotation from everyone else. There’s little doubt that Griffin’s mobility, balance and instincts are going to make the Clippers a much better defensive team, but there will be instances when he might be better served to stay home on his man, particularly when he’s guarding someone as dangerous and multifaceted as David West. If that means letting Hilton Armstrong have a shot one-on-one against DeAndre Jordan, then so be it.

As Kevin Pelton asked in his twitter feed last night, at what point does DeAndre Jordan’s rapid development force the Clippers’ hand and trigger a transaction that gets DJ the minutes he needs to sustain that growth? It’s uncanny to watch DJ prowl the paint on the offensive end and, even more remarkably, defend the pick-and-roll proficiently. Is Jordan ready to play 35 minutes a night on a potential postseason contender? Maybe, maybe not. But if the Clippers want to maximize their assets — and they’ve demonstrated that they do — investing in DeAndre Jordan has to be a priority.

Al Thornton’s effort this month warrants praise. The third-year forward was told in no uncertain terms that his starting job was up for grabs, and he’s responded with fierce activity on the boards, and dogged defensive intensity. Thornton still might not be the appropriate starter for this Clippers’ squad, but whether he’s on the floor for the opening jump this season or comes off the bench, Thornton has proven that while he might not be a paragon of efficiency, he’s a model of professionalism.

You can watch the Clips’ final preseason game on Fox Sports Prime Ticket or listen to it on 980 AM at 7:30 PT.

You can also follow Clipperblog’s twitter feed throughout the game.

When Chris Kaman went into hibernation this summer, it sent many members of Clipper Nation into a state of paranoia. In previous years Kaman’s disappearance wouldn’t have raised so much as an eyebrow, but fans newly accustomed to receiving updates on what their favorite players were doing in neat little 140 character packages found themselves irritated. We learned that DeAndre Jordan seemingly works out more than humanly possible and gets his haircut at least 4 times a week.  Sand dunes and summer ball were detailed, and great revelations were made about the team’s newly found chemistry. All while this was happening, there wasn’t a peep or a tweet heard from Kaman. This may have been the first case where a player not having a Twitter account hurt him. Little did anyone know, Kaman was working his tail off towards reviving his career.  More...

• Kevin Pelton ranks his Top 10 prospects at Basketball Prospectus, and DeAndre Jordan comes in at No. 4: “Because veterans Marcus Camby and Chris Kaman are ahead of him on the Clippers’ depth chart, Jordan is still a name to file away for the future at this point. However, when injuries struck the L.A. frontcourt last season, Jordan proved to much further along in his development than anyone expected after one disappointing season at Texas A&M. As it turned out, there was a reason Jordan was considered a likely lottery pick coming out of high school. He’ll get another year to learn before Camby’s contract expires, leaving Jordan to fight with Kaman for playing time in the middle.”

An interesting one tonight, as the number of Maccabi fans in Staples Center severely outnumbered Clipper fans. The biggest cheers came on Maccabi scoring plays and during timeouts. Mike Dunleavy said it didn’t surprise him, joking both before and after the game that he would go by “Don Levy” tonight to appeal to the decidedly-Jewish crowd.

Speaking of the game, the highlights were pretty much all Blake Griffin dunks and an electric full-court Griffin-to-Ricky Davis-to-Eric Gordon slam in the first quarter. Maccabi played hard but simply didn’t shoot well enough — 44% compared to the Clippers’ 55%, although Dunleavy seemed to think the biggest difference between the two teams was Maccabi’s size deficiencies.

The first half highlight:

• [2nd, 00:01] Rasual Butler hits a three to cap a 9-0 run and give the Clippers a 53-42 lead at the half after Maccabi pushed it as close as 44-42. Both teams came out sloppy in the first quarter but the Clippers pulled away after the run, on the strength of 14 second-half points from Chris Kaman, 11 from Sebastian Telfair, and eight from Blake Griffin. Said Dunleavy: “At the end of the second quarter and beginning of the third quarter we were able to stretch it out and get a decent lead, start taking advantage of our size in the low post. I thought Chris [Kaman] offensively in the second half gave us a big lift, controlling the paint a little bit.”

Other stories to take away from tonight:

• Griffin’s final line: 6-of-7 shooting for 13 points, 10 rebounds, four assists, and only one turnover.
• Sebastian Telfair was on his game in his return from a hamstring injury and just his second game as a Clipper. He started the game, playing the first and third quarters at the point while Baron Davis played the second and most of the fourth. It didn’t start well, as Telfair put up the Clippers’ first two shots of the game — both misses — and turned the ball over twice in the first five minutes. But he turned it around, establishing himself at the free-throw line and finishing the game with a 15-point, seven-assist line to go along with four turnovers. Telfair said he thought of his performance as “a pretty good one, considering that I didn’t get fatigued like I thought I would get. I think I was in a lot better shape than I thought I was gonna be with not playing the last couple games.” Said Dunleavy: “He looked good out there. Early on, he was a little rusty from having been out for a while, but overall, he made some nice plays and was efficient shooting the ball. He was able to get our big guys some easy buckets on some nice passes as well.”
• Butler showed exactly how he can be useful tonight, making 5-of-9 from the field and playing 21 minutes while not turning the ball over. Funny thing is, although Butler took the second-most shots on the team — behind only Kaman, who went 8-of-13 from the field for 18 points — it didn’t seem like it at all. He pretty much only took shots as a third or fourth option on offense, something the team could really benefit from this season from its small forward spot with four other scorers likely to take the court. “Rasual’s a skilled player,” Dunleavy said. “His skills off the dribble and passing the ball have been good for the mix of guys we’ve had in there.”
• Davis said the team’s still finding its identity. “Most importantly, we’re finding ourselves. It’s gonna take some time during the season, but the most important thing is if we can continue to play at a high level and with a high energy, then I think we’re going to figure everything out.”
• Maccabi was largely impressive, especially in the first half. Guard Doron Perkins came off the bench to put up a triple-double with 16 points, 10 assists, and 12 rebounds. Former South Carolina standout Chuck Eidson scored 18 points on 8-of-18 shooting, and former Knicks second-round pick Maciej Lampe put up nine points and four rebounds. Said Dunleavy: “They played hard, they moved the basketball well, they cut hard. They’ve got some guys who shoot the ball well and guys who know their roles.”