If you’re looking for bright spots early in this season, you’re going to have to dig deep to find anything. The Clippers are 0-3 in regular season play after going 1-7 in the preseason. None of the games were even very close unless you want to talk about the Portland opener. And the statistics back up the poor play. The team is 30th of 30 teams in these metrics: Offensive Efficiency, True Shooting Percentage, and Effective Field Goal Percentage. In Defensive Efficiency they rank 28th. In Rebound Rate and Assists they rank 23rd. In Turnovers, the problem I thought would most egregiously effect the team, they rank a stellar 19th (although that might be worse if they played faster than the 21st ranked Pace). No matter which way you look at it, the team has severely underperformed even last seasons standards and that was supposed to be a worse team.
The good news, if you can call it that, lies in the fact that Eric Gordon and Chris Kaman have been uncharacteristically underwhelming. I know, not stellar news. But if there is going to be any sort of regression to the mean, it means that there is going to be a progression in their play. Eric Gordon has a career 45.3 Field Goal percentage and a 37.4 3-Point Field Goal Percentage and yet this year he is sporting a 41.9 Field Goal percentage and a 16.7 3-Point Field Goal Percentage. It stands to reason that he’s going to turn it back around.
Chris Kaman has a career 48.7 career Field Goal percentage and yet he’s shooting 29.8 percent this year. That’s ridiculous. Those number should turn around.
Now whether or not that happens tonight against the San Antonio Spurs remains to be seen.
Note: If you feel like chatting I’m going to be on ESPN’s Daily Dime Live.
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