Change in the Mo’mentum

This post is woefully light on facts and evidence. The Kings and Nets and Suns and Grizzlies and 76’ers, not exactly the powerhouses of the league, were not convinced.

It also feels a bit, well I’ll stop short of dishonest, to fail to point out that only 2 of the 13 games before the trade were at home and those two were against the Bulls and Celtics.

It would be refreshing to see Clipperfan be a little more honest with themselves. Its unlikely the trade has anything to do with the (mighty!) 6-5 run.

I agree that this article is disingenuous but I also am a firm believer in the conclusion; Mo Williams at PG going forward is a much better situation than Baron at PG.

First, Baron always wanted to be the hero and regardless of how good he was on the Charlotte Hornets, he should not be the focus of this Clippers offense. Baron’s backdown play and 3 point heaves were not conducive to Gordon thriving or growing and Gordon by far was and still is our biggest threat outside the key. Baron may have thrown great oops, but that doesn’t mean he consistently got BG the ball in strategic locations. And that’s not going to change until VDN diverges from the “toss the ball mindlessly to Blake in the post” strategy.

The corollary to Baron wanting to be the man is that he would push the ball and try to create the highlight for Blake. Someone above claimed that the Clippers should be a fastbreak team that pushes the ball instead of settling into offensive sets. That’s laughable. Look at any team that’s won the championship over the past 15 years. Only one team didn’t operate out of a halfcourt offense a significant majority of the time and that was the Celtics with the inhuman talents of Rondo at the point. Mo’s patience is exactly what we need from a veteran point guard. If we had a solid SF (Shane Battier at a modest price would be ideal) who could stretch out the floor for us or was an offensive threat in the slightest, we could have a seriously deadly halfcourt game.

Second, with all the talk of BG bringing life back into Baron, I still can’t imagine seeing him come back to training camp this summer in decent shape. Every year he’s been with the Clippers he’s showed overweight and unconditioned, leaving him to not hit his stride until well into the regular season. Mo does not have that problem. He’s much less of a celebrity. He doesn’t produce movies and make CDs during the offseason, he works on his basketball. He has a mental drive to win that Baron never has had and never will have. That’s a big reason why I think Bledsoe has exploded with Mo coming over. The 20 year old has for the first time seen the level of effort and unselfishness necessary to be a quality PG.

Quick tangent about training camp: I have cautious optimism that Kaman will come out of training camp next year with his full repertoire on offense and defense. Kaman got way out of shape when he was injured because he’s really not naturally built the way a Center should be. Over the offseason and during training camp, I hope the personnel are smart enough to put him on a grueling lifting and conditioning regiment because that’s the only way that he could compete on D and go back to his bread and butter: the ambidextrous baby hook, the only glimmer of hope to come out of the 2009-10 season.

Third, I won’t discount that the following is a product of Cleveland but Baron has played in an astounding 4 out of 12 games. The purported reasons were knee problems at the beginning and lately back spasms. Now, regardless of whether you think Baron is better than Mo, Baron using up the free time of the team masseuse does the team no good whatsoever on the court. Further, Baron’s body was only getting worse as the years wore on meaning he probably would have had to miss even more games next season. I like the longer term prospects of Mo’s younger more resilient body.

the coaching staff is good enough to get a healthy clipper team to the playoffs, although the defense needs to improve drastically along with FT% with griffin,kaman and jordan they should be making 15-20 FT’s a night in the high 70’s or low 80’s percentile there is no excuse for the teams FT%

IMHO the reason Baron is gone is Eric Gordon. How many times did we see Gordon grimace when Baron didn’t pass him the ball this year. The future of the Clippers lies with EJ. He is a restricted free agent at the end of next season. I have heard reports (I forgot where, so don’t quote me) that his Dad said he wants to play elsewhere. Not sure if this is true or not but if he leaves then Blake does as well. I think management wants to keep him as happy as possible. Based on his comments and reading between the lines, he is much happier with Mo than Baron.

I want to thank everyone who took the time to give thoughtful responses to my post. I think there are obviously some very polarizing issues here, not the least of which involves a player who is no longer on the team (Baron), but has been a lightning rod for both praise and criticism from the time he signed on and will probably continue to be so among this crowd. I guess I should say that I made a conscious attempt to avoid making a judgement about who is “better,” but despite a lot of thought, it was difficult to come to any conclusion other than, “Mo is a better fit.”

One thing I need to make clear is that I do not come to this conclusion because I see 2-11 and then 6-5 and decide that this must be better. I showed those records only to indicate that the team has played over .500 ball (something that I figure no Clipper fan would take lightly, especially considering the HUGE wins against Boston and Denver), largely without Eric Gordon.

And this is where I think we may have lost track of my point. I know, and I know most of you know, that the Clippers lost most of those games on a miserably long road trip and against some great teams. I am not saying it’s Baron’s fault or the results would have been better with Mo, but I do believe Mo’s style of play suits them better for a couple of reasons.

1) Gordon — as Gordon said and I repeated, he is clearly happy to have a point guard who understands his place on the totem pole. I think that his happiness is a primary concern for the team (along with Blake), but also his effectiveness on the court. I don’t see how it’s possible to debate the immediate upgrade they get from Baron possessing the ball to Gordon. For all of Baron’s skills, he likes to have the ball in his hands, and just from a distribution of resources stand point, Gordon offers more value and efficiency, and it’s not even close.

2) Blake– I also chose to focus on how Mo Williams facilitates the obvious cornerstone of the franchise, and his presence as a shooter, no doubt, does this. Having watched the shift in how teams defend Blake and the Clippers’ inability to punish them consistently from the outside, I believe that having another shooter provides more value than is lost by Baron’s “playmaking,” particularly when you factor in the increased involvement of Gordon in that role. Some have chosen to quibble with the idea that Williams is, actually, a good shooter, and to that I really have no response. He is basically a 40% 3-point shooter for his career, and I don’t put too much stock into what he did for a couple months as a primary scoring option on one of the worst teams we have ever seen.

3)Less is more — this, to me, is the point that I tried to convey that may not have come through as I hoped. As Zach Lowe at SI.com said in his description of the story when he linked to it yesterday, “Charlie Widdoes of ClipperBlog is happy to have Mo Williams, in part because Williams seems happy to defer to Eric Gordon.” Zach hit the nail on the head, and I guess I would add to that that whatever Mo brings in the way of shooting or facilitating is gravy. Eric Bledsoe is the point guard of the future, and in the meantime it’s Gordon who assumes the role of primary playmaker. To have a point guard who actually understands and embraces his role in the big picture, to me, has value in and of itself.

I chose not to incorporate too many numbers (in large part because the team’s offensive and defensive efficiency numbers are not drastically different before and after the trade, and I don’t love to use those kinds of numbers in such small sample sizes anyway) into the post, but I did find it worthwhile to show the stark difference in performance during both periods, both of which the team, again, with Gordon mostly out. As I also mentioned, Kaman’s return has been a an important factor. Hopefully this does at least a little to describe my thought process, and mostly, addresses some of the concerns for those of you who consider my work disingenuous or dishonest.

I guess Im the only clipper fan that hates the mo/baron trade. Is mo really a point guard or just a small shooting guard. Ill be honest baron had his ups and downs probably more downs the past couple years, but he’s a passer, a leader, and plays way better defense than mo. Mo’s no allstar, take LBJ off the team and look what happened. Yes, Mo can shoot a lot better but thats what eric gordans for. They have won a few games lately but look at the teams they played. They easily could have won them all with the talent they have. I just dont think that mo makes others better. As for Baron, at no time this season has the clippers been entirely healthy, and when they did he got traded. Ive been a clippers fan for the past 5+ years and ive never seen that much talent on the squad. Barons not the best on the team, but he knows his role. I guess well never know whats best, I just want to see a real playoff run before i die.