Kim Hughes is a delightfully candid man. Not Stan Van Gundy candid, or even Gregg Popovich candid. It’s more of a plain-spoken Midwestern brand of candor.
As forthcoming as Hughes has been over the past 48 hours, his frank answer to the question, “Does the team have enough playmakers and ballhandlers to truly execute a running game,” was disarming.
“Perhaps not,” Hughes said in his first postgame press conference. “That was somewhat exposed tonight.”
I have no qualms with Hughes or anyone else knocking down some walls in the Clippers offense, but to mount a running attack just because Mike Dunleavy subscribed to a militantly structured offense seems rash, especially if you don’t have the personnel to execute that kind of game effectively. The Clippers simply don’t have the playmakers to be a transition-oriented offense. That requires wings who can handle the ball like points, and players apart from the point guard who can legitimately create for others.
The Clippers are built to be a half-court offensive team. Though he might not want to admit it, Baron Davis is no less a half-court point guard than he is a transition improviser. He’s best when posting up at the left elbow, where he can generate higher-percentage shots. So far as long distance goes, Davis is far more accurate off the catch-and-shoot (which generally occurs on a reversal or skip pass in a more deliberate possession) than off the dribble (something he’s tempted to do in transition). His incredible passing skills allow him to find angles in the half-court that few other point guards can.
I realize Baron has more fun running the break, but to suggest that the best way to maximize this particular collection of players is to unfurl organized chaos is preposterous. Stephen Jackson, Monta Ellis and Al Harrington aren’t walking through that door.
You don’t have to run a half-court offense as Mike Dunleavy did. Hundreds of professional coaches have designed schemes that don’t grate on their players. I suspect Kim Hughes could find opportunities for Chris Kaman, Eric Gordon and Davis to get open looks at the basket. But to say that “you want to run” just because, as a tactic, you sense it represents a 180 departure from what wasn’t working, seems silly. Sometimes life requires only a 75 degree adjustment, at least schematically. If you want to completely flip things tonally, then go right ahead. No complaints here.
In short, assess the personnel, and figure out some stuff that gets your scorers space. Sometimes those opportunities will come in transition. But often they won’t, particularly for this collection of talent.
Excerpts from my piece on the game at ESPN Los Angeles:
“It wasn’t a whole lot of fun,” Hughes said.
The Clippers’ desire to refashion their offense as an up-tempo outfit overlooks a key problem: The roster might lack the personnel to turn that vision into a reality. Hughes conceded that possibility when asked if he had the playmakers and ball-handlers to truly execute a running game.
“Perhaps not,” Hughes said. “That was somewhat exposed tonight.”
Next door in the locker room, the Clippers’ players were of a different opinion. To a man, they regarded the blowout loss to San Antonio as nothing more than basketball throat-clearing.
“It’s going to take some time,” Davis said. “We’ve all been playing a certain way for a year and a half. It’s just a matter of time before we all get together and start clicking.”
In his new role, Davis was shaky in 28 minutes. He scored eight points, dished out nine assists but turned the ball over eight times. Still, he was in decidedly good spirits after the game and bullish on the path set out by Hughes. After Davis finished his formal session with the media, he ambled over to the other side of the locker room to offer encouragement.
“We’re gonna be alright,” Davis said to some teammates. “I’m not trippin’. We just got to stick with each other and change our mentality — not turn the ball over and get shots. If we can get our turnovers down to 10 or 11 a game, we’re going to be alright.”
… On a night when the Clippers sought to ignite the fast break, their most successful offense came in half-court sets run through Kaman. He led the Clippers with 21 points on eight-for-16 shooting from the field. Encouraged by his new coach to move the ball when confronted by double teams, Kaman delivered some nice passes, including a pretty kick-out to Gordon in the far corner that led to an old-fashioned three-point play…
The Clippers are a team in transition, engaged in a dialectic between the more formal offense of Dunleavy and the run-and-gun style professed by Hughes. But the recipe for this loss was all too familiar: The team coughed up the ball on 21 of their 97 possessions.
Whether you play in transition or move more deliberately in the half court, wins are hard to come by with that kind of carelessness. The stylistic argument is merely academic.
21 Responses
I like your summary here KA:
“The Clippers are a team in transition, engaged in a dialectic between the more formal offense of Dunleavy and the run-and-gun style professed by Hughes.”
It reminds me of something Stravinsky wrote in the Poetics of Music; something to the effect that it is only through a formal system that true creativity can be unleashed. If you have the illusion of freedom in every direction, where every choice is the same as any other, then you don’t really have any freedom at all, and creativity withers.
Maybe that is what Dunleavy secretly believes.
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RonSpartacus Reply:
February 7th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
Did you just quote Stravinsky on Clippersblog?
I am flabbergasted.
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Kevin Arnovitz Reply:
February 7th, 2010 at 6:08 pm
If you can work Pierre Boulez into your next comment, you get the ClipperBlog lifetime achievement award.
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MichaelCage! Reply:
February 7th, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Haha…I’m not a big fan of Boulez myself, so I’ll have to take a pass. You brought up an interesting point though KA. The necessary tension between intuition and the rigidity of a formal system exists in most of our creative endeavors. Finding that right balance, the knowledge and ability to be creative in a system full of constraints is probably where great art and good basketball lies.
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D.J. Foster Reply:
February 7th, 2010 at 11:00 pm
I say we give him the lifetime achievement award anyway. Good stuff man.
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Kevin Arnovitz Reply:
February 8th, 2010 at 8:35 am
MC:
If you’d like to compose a piece on this — as short or long as you’d like — I’d be honored to make it a top post. Please send your email info to clipperblog at gmail.com, but only if you’d like.
ka
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MichaelCage! Reply:
February 8th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Thanks for the consideration, KA and DJ, I would be more than honored to contribute something to Clipperblog. I wrote you an email with my contact info and will try to type up something tonight or tomorrow before the game. Also if you guys ever drop by the Brewery to meet with Mike, we can hook up for a drink at Barbara’s and chat about the Clips.
Posted on February 7th, 2010 at 4:24 am
As every creative person knows, you have to learn the scales, mix the paints, study the grammar before you can create anything worth more than a moment’s notice.
I looked forward to the Hughes era because I thought that building a free-flowing offense on the skeleton of Dunleavy’s rigor would give us the best of both worllds.
Now it’s revealed that, maybe, we still don’t have the skills to flow. Not every musician is a soloist.
So here’s the question — does Dunleavy feel the heat to find a point-forward type, or does Hughes revert to a more structured kind of game?
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JM Reply:
February 7th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
MichaelCage! and pipedreams: awesome comments.
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Posted on February 7th, 2010 at 7:09 am
Like I said to Ralph on facebook if the players don’t care, why should I. Words are cheap. They showed no heart from the start. It doesn’t matter who the coach is if the players don’t go out there and show that they’re worthy of being millionaires.
As I’ve said for 25 years I guess, we Clipper fans we’ll have to ‘WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR
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old666 Reply:
February 7th, 2010 at 8:47 am
horrible game, hard to watch
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Posted on February 7th, 2010 at 8:19 am
i’m not gonna judge one game right after the shoe drops or even the next vs. a strong team. but let’s see what’s up after that.
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Posted on February 7th, 2010 at 9:36 am
Judging this team on the basis of just 1 game isn’t right. San Antonio knows how to stop runaway trains. Trying to implement new schemes right after Dunleavy vacated his job was a mistake. Against Greg Popovich you have to match his schemes to win.
Kim Hughes is a good guy. But he doesn’t have ‘THAT THING’ to survive as an NBA coach.
Being an Asst.Coach is different. HUGHES might buckle under pressure sooner than anyone can anticipate. Players like to play for a strong coach who command respect. Hughes might not be that kind of coach.
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Posted on February 7th, 2010 at 9:53 am
ATTENTION MR.DONALD STERLING:
If you really want to make your franchise stable and bring respectability, first you have to do the following:
HIRE A GENERAL MANAGER WHO IS PROVEN AND DRIVEN. OFFER HIM ANYWHERE BETWEEN 8 to 10 million per year(keep the contract period short). AND STOP WORRYING ABOUT PLAYERS AND COACHES. LET THAT GM HANDLE THOSE ISSUES. YOU DEAL WITH YOUR GM AND LET HIM RE-BUILD YOUR FRANCHISE. 99% OF YOUR EMPLOYEES MUST GO. MOST OF THEM ARE HIGHSCHOOL LEVEL PERSONNELS WHO HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING IN NBA.
YOUR NEW GM WILL HIRE & SHAPE HIS NEW TEAM. UNLESS YOU CLEAN-UP YOUR HOUSE, THE REAL NBA TALENTS WON’T COME TO YOUR DOOR-STEP.
I REPEAT, GET RID OF 99% OF FRONT & BACK OFFICE PERSONNELS NOW & LET YOUR NEW GM DO THE REAL WORK.
PLEASE DO NOT TRY TO COMBINE COCHING & GM POSITION. IT WON’T WORK IF YOU WANT TO WIN.
THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE. GRAB IT.
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Posted on February 7th, 2010 at 10:00 am
Easily the worst game I have seen played offensively in the NBA in the last dozen years of watching 100 plus games a year. So, in probably the last 1200 or so games I have watched, I have never seen a more pathetic, disgusting, insulting to the fans offensive performance.
They pushed the ball when they did not have numbers, launched shots that were low percentage, early in the shot clock, and played as if they had no obligation whatsoever to take quality shots, create quality shots for their teammates, or protect possession of the ball.
If this continues, my fuse is short. I’ll cut bait shortly. Watching that game made throwing up in my mouth seem like a good time.
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Posted on February 7th, 2010 at 11:17 am
I suspect if the Clippers had come out hitting all gears and decimating the Spurs, we would still be saying, “let’s not judge based on one game”. Face it, we are Clipper fans, in it for the long haul. Time will tell, let’s not start FireHughes.com just yet.
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Posted on February 7th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
And to think I almost went to this game. Ha!
They just looked very unsettled. Like a guy who just got ou the can. It takes a while to adjust to society.
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Posted on February 7th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
10 more days to trade Camby. Lets see what Dunleavy comes up with.
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Posted on February 8th, 2010 at 10:18 am
Kaman an all-star.
http://www.nba.com/2010/allstar/2010/02/08/kaman.replacement/index.html?ls=iref:nbahpt2
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Posted on February 8th, 2010 at 11:43 am
Who was the 3rd quarter “guest” PA announcer during this game? It had me cracking up…
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D Reply:
February 8th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Petros Papadakis, I believe.
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Posted on February 8th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
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