This sort of thing would happen to the Clippers, wouldn’t it? With nine minutes left to play, the television feed for the game drops out completely. I’m left only with Mike and Ralph giving me a play by play account of what is happening on the court. No big deal – the duo is so good that I’m willing to accept the loss of vision as only a slight hindrance to my overall experience. Of course, as soon as the whole radio bit starts to grow on me, the sound feed dies. Great. Now my only option is the intertubes, but unfortunately I can only find a simple play by play to follow along with. Do not worry though. After following the play by play, I have a pretty good idea of how it (probably) all went down.
[4th Q, 9:27] – The scoreboard, video, and sound feed are all down, but the lighting in the arena miraculously still works. With nothing better to aimlessly stare at, the Clippers all fix their eyes on Dunleavy in the huddle. Confused by all the new found attention, Dunleavy freezes up. Baron urges Dunleavy on, but just as Dunleavy regains his composure the t-shirt cannon guy appears. A renegade t-shirt comes to Kaman, but he bobbles it and drops it.
[4th Q, 9:12] – Out of the timeout Marcus Camby gets his 6th block of the night, and Craig Smith draws an offensive foul. Back on the other end, Smith assists on a Marcus Camby dunk. The two pause momentarily to admire their own awesomeness, then engage in an epic flying high five.
[4th Q, 8:26] – From boxscore: “Rodney Stuckey assists.” I refreshed three times to make sure it was accurate, and yes, this actually did happen. Congratulations are in order.
[4th Q. 7:28] – Jonas Jerebko gets fouled and scores on an acrobatic finish to narrow the deficit to two. Sensing he was close to a double-double “animal style” (double digit total rebounds with double digit offensive rebounds), Ben Wallace checks himself into the game. Lo and behold, Jerebko misses the free throw, Wallace gets the offensive rebound and gives it right back to Jerebko, and he promptly knocks down a three. The 5 point play gives the Pistons the lead, 87-86. Since he didn’t box out, Rhino asks Camby for take backsies on the high five, but Camby declines.
[4th Q, 6:05] – Al Thornton hits his second jumper IN A ROW from beyond 15 feet. Thornton gives the Pistons bench the “Michael Jordan against the Blazers shrug” as he backpedals down the court.
[4th Q, 5:47] – Official timeout. The scoreboard regains power, and the fans collectively exhale. A whole fourth quarter of not knowing when to MAKE SOME NOISE would have been an absolute disaster.
[4th Q, 4:18] – Eric Gordon makes a driving layup that is downright Michael J. Fox-ish. Always aware of the situation, Chris Kaman gives Gordon a triumphant piggy back ride all the way back down court.
[4th Q, 3:32] – When the TV feed resurfaces, Jerebko nails another three to bring the Pistons within four, much to the delight of his fan section composed entirely of vikings. No — seriously. Jerebko has fans and they dress up like vikings.
So that basically sums up what we missed while we were subjected to poker.
Game Notes:
- The Clippers had their worst rebounding effort of the season tonight. Detroit grabbed an incredible 19 offensive rebounds, 10 of them coming from Ben Wallace. It’s no secret around the league that the Clippers don’t box out – expect teams to continue to hit the offensive boards with reckless abandon like Detroit did tonight.
- The familiar trend of the Clippers shooting extremely well in the first half continued tonight, as they made 54% of their field goals and finished the game at a 56% clip. Again, another narrow escape that didn’t have to be – the Clippers nearly shot 20 percentage points higher than the Pistons. If you’re that much better offensively, you should win by a much larger margin.
- This makes back to back nights where Marcus Camby has played over 40 minutes – for those of you worried about Blake Griffin’s spot in the rotation, don’t be. Camby and Kaman should not and will not keep up this heavy of a workload.
- When Kaman, Baron, and Thornton are on their games, the Clippers are a very efficient offensive unit. The three combined to go 25 for 34 from the field tonight for a 74% combined shooting percentage. When the Clippers struggle on offense, it’s rarely the result of bad play calls or a lack of execution. It’s usually just the Clippers missing open looks. Even Eric Gordon, who struggled a bit by his standards (4-11 FG) had three wide open looks from deep simply not fall. The sets are working well, but the Clippers are playing uphill basketball by allowing their opponents an unnecessary amount of extra possessions every game. The team simply needs to work harder on the glass if they plan on playing at a higher level.
Clippers next tilt will be Sunday at home against the Grizzlies at 12:30p PT.
11 Responses
the clippers are an addiction for which there is no cure. why couldn’t i be addicted to something less destructive to my psyche, like heroin
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Posted on November 27th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
funny post, D.J. Being a Clipper fan requires an ironic sense of humor and you got it. Faker fans definitely DO NOT get it. They are too busy timing their desperate jumps on and off the cheesy purple and gold bandwagon. Meanwhile Clipper fans bleed red, white and blue no matter what the record.
This team is seriously flawed psychologically. I love BD as a person but he is not a great leader. Unless Blake is the second coming of Tim Duncan I think 32 wins is the ceiling.
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jgroove Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 2:58 am
I completely agree, 32 is it. I don’t think it’s psychological though, I just don’t think they have good chemistry together. I give credit for BD doing his best, but either he or Kaman has to go — it’s just not a good combo. At this point, I’d trade Kaman for a strong 3 and take our chances with Camby/Griffin and DJ. Plus, who on earth would take BD? Maybe the Knicks in the summer when ever free agent spurns them?
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Fritz Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 8:21 am
chemistry & psychological sort of overlap…I think Kaman is fine, you just can’t win on a consistent basis if he is your #1 option. trading him would be a mistake. He is a good center in his prime. Camby is near the end of the road. We need a new coach who is going to motivate the players better or another veteran who is going to be a leader. you are right, we are stuck with BD, but even with his flaws he should be good enough to lead this team to the playoffs as an 8th seed. We are not talking about winning the championship here.
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rbm Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 9:34 am
7-10 record is not too bad. Gordon missed several games+ Blake is yet to play his first game.
With Gordon, this team can sustain its record at .500. With Blake it can improve even greater.
If Baron Davis can own this team on the court, Dunleavy can steer this team to perform well. He has enough talent around him. The return of Griffin can change everything.
This team can win 45+ games this season if Griffin & Gordon stay healthy.
To keep our playoff hopes alive, we need to do better than Sacramento, San Antonio, Memphis, OKC and NOH. To attract ‘A’ list free agent next season we need to do well this season. LeBron wants to win. Between NY & LA, he might chose LA. And Sterling will do everything to get him here. A monster season by Griffin can sway LeBron more than $120 million contract.
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Fritz Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 10:32 am
“If Baron Davis can own this team on the court, Dunleavy can steer this team to perform well.”
a big “if”! in fact, that question will be the critical one as to whether the Baron Davis era is successful.
Other than Lebron, what are the F options? Bosh will probably stay in Toronto, Joe Johnson is a 2.
jgroove Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 11:03 am
We actually NEED a real 2 (though Johnson can play the 3). Gordon is a fine 3 point shooter, but he’s pretty one dimensional. He’s not fast enough to consistently score in the paint (how many lay ups have we seen him miss even in his “good” games?). Johnson would be a godsend, but the point is with the lower salary cap NONE of these premier free agents are really going anywhere. The difference between what they can make on their current teams and what the “cap ready” teams can offer is huge at this point. If the economy and cap hadn’t crashed? Maybe we’d have a story. Perhaps Bosh will split Canada because he’d like to live in the states again full time, but they money may be too hard to say no to.
Here’s the thing with Kaman. It’s clear that he can only deliver on one side of the ball at a time. His offensive numbers are fantastic this year, but they are because he’s providing less effort on the defensive side (cough, Carlos Boozer…). I’m a huge Blake fan, but if anyone thinks he’s coming in and providing more than 10 and 8 for the first few months or so they are dreaming. This will not be the preseason and he’ll be coming off an injury where he hasn’t played in almost two months. Reality folks.
Chemistry is not psychological. Some of the happiest and friendly teams have had the worst on court chemistry and some of the most bickering and at their throats squads have been NBA champs (or at least conference champs).
If we stay at this 7-10, 20-30 clip I really think management needs to at least trade Camby (classy vet and all) to get more talent. Everyone talks about how “deep” this bench is, but it’s really not. They are all one-dimensional players. We need more guys who can create their own shot, shoot, score and rebound. It’s scary when Memphis has more of those guys than we do…
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rbm Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 11:30 am
We need to scout for budding talents everywhere. Clippers should spend more money on this front. Make a short list of most talented players and follow them. It involves hard work but rewarding during the season.
Dunleavy should find more minutes to Smith, DeAndre and Telfair. If they don’t play consistant minutes every game, this team is going to win 1 and lose 2 on consistant basis. Camby & Kaman shouldn’t be playing more than 30 mpg.
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Posted on November 27th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
that was awesome ..mj blazers shrug for al .. Nice!
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Posted on November 28th, 2009 at 2:28 am
MAKE SOME NOISE!
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Posted on November 28th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Kevin, DJ,
Since Baron is such a debated topic on CB, I thought you guys would find it interesting that I’m in 1st place in a roto league based on PER where I’ve started Baron all year. Since the rosters are limited to 7 players and only 5 can start, I have to start Baron. And he’s come through for me this year.
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Posted on November 28th, 2009 at 11:51 am
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