Memphis Grizzlies v. Los Angeles Clippers

YEAR END EVALUATIONS FROM – METAL MATTY

BLAKE GRIFFIN –
An epic year for Blake. Not a perfect year, but just to have a man of this talent healthy for an entire year was a blessing for the Clppers. Defensively, Blake has some serious work to do, though he showed some flashes of improvement late in the year. Blake does not need to be a great defender or a shot blocker. His offensive style dictates he needs to save fouls on the defensive end. The goal here is to get back better in transition, be able to stop his own man a little better when playing against talent and in the crunch of games, become a dangerous shot blocker. He already tends to unlock his shot blocking only when the money is on the line which what we need. In general, this man has “awareness” of situation which is good. Offensively, he has a lot of room to grow but is already a terror.

ERIC GORDON -
A fantastic year for Eric. The wrist injury deflated but did not negate his improvement and heroics during the one really solid Clipper run this season. Turnovers are the obvious bugaboo. His penchance for attempting to split double teams I love, but the turnover rate is way too high on this move. As well as he shot the ball at times, he is an even better shooter than he showed this year. My fear with Eric is, although built like a tank, he throws himself into a LOT of hard falls going to the basket. It may be wise for him to find a little better mid range game so everything does not have to be a three or a wild and crazy drive to the hoop.

CHRIS KAMAN -
After looking like a “machine” during pre-season, Kaman fell apart when the game sped up as the season opened. Then got injured. When he finally made it back he actually played very well. The so called “decision” the Clippers need to make between Kaman and Jordan is a tough one. If Kaman did not have a history of injury, this would be a non-conversation as his skill and presence is night an day compared to Jordan (at this point.) But Jordan being a one in a million athletic marvel, and a healthy one at that leads us to a water cooler style “quarterback controversy” discussion of what tastes better, an apple, or an orange. Not to mention option number three, which is to keep them both. Perhaps the smartest move considering the Clippers are not hurting for cap.

MO WILLIAMS –
Mo is a “good” player, not a “great” player. Offensively his shot is strong and he is gutsy. He doesn’t pass especially well but is “servicable” as a PG. Definsively, he is poor, making him a “borderline” starter but a nice “luxury” off the bench.

RANDY FOYE –
Not a particulary good defender or a high percentage shooter, nonetheless, Randy’s game has it’s charm. He’s a gutsy shooter who can “get hot” even against a good team or good defense. In a pinch, he can start at either the one or the two. A nice bench player. 7th, 8th man. Big enough to play in a three guard linup. Does very little to help your team when his offense is “off” but though he can’t be ignored when it comes to spacing, even when cold.

AL-FAROUQ AMINU -
After starting out the season very promising, the likable Aminu’s season turned into a slow motion train wrech that was hard to look away from. After getting a slew of wide open looks early in the season and knocking them down with ease. Farouq’s game fell apart when he got happy feet from behind the arc and instead of waiting for his shot, began to hurry and even shoot off balance threes. Then upon the urging of coaches and fans alike began to “get more aggressive”. This backfired drastically, as his aggressive drives to the basket simply will not work in the NBA in a half court set. Too poor a dribbler. Too lankey and slow developing to get by ANYONE at the pro level. It will be interesting to see if the Clippers coaches will be smart enough to completely eliminate some of the parts of Aminu’s game that lack polish and will never lead to anything but turnovers in the NBA, because if he just sticks with transition, OPEN jumpers and good defense and rebounding, we are looking at a solid, perhaps even really good player.

ERIC BLESOE –
Talent is not a problem here. Size is not a problem here. This guy is capable of dominating a game in many areas including shot blocking. Unfortunately, he is also capable of driving the entire team right off a cliff. Some of the turnovers Bledoe is capable of boggle the mind. That said, he is lightning quick, lightning fast, and has a fairly good looking jump shot. If the attitude is right, he could become a whale of a player, but it’s going to take a lot of improvement in the area of “feel for the game”. You can see very easily that his natural instinct is to play at 100 miles an hour but his handle and vision can only support 80.

RYAN GOMES -
A disappointing, uneventful, and unexciting season from Gomes. A smart player that simply doesn’t produce enough milk to justify the cost of feed. Defensively, he is average, but not good. He doesn’t rebound and he doesn’t really score. He just avoids doing stupid things, which on this team, this season, rightfully landed him in the starting linup more often than not.

DEANDRE JORDAN -
Started to make some real progress mid season, especially defensively, then read his own press clippings and decided to take the rest of the season off. One has to wonder if this guy “gets it”. No doubt, Blake is a good influence but could it not be said that DeAndre is a bad influence on Blake. It seems to me Blake has become much more carefree since hooking up with DeAndre. From a personal standpoint, maybe that’s good for Blake. He’s an INTENSE guy. But as far as basketball I would keep a sharp eye on this. We don’t need Blake to become Mr. Hollywood and enter the movie circuit as a Shaqesque actor in some Baron Davis produced B-Movie.

CRAIG SMITH –
Everyone knows what Craig Smith is. A tank that can actually blow buy guys. A natural scorer around the basket. Undersized when it comes to length. Even pump faked once this year on instinct with no defender in sight. While that seems funny, it goes to show how smart this guy is. He’s crafty. Defensively, he is not anything special and he is an average rebounder at best from either of the big man spots. A SOLID bench guy, third or fourth big who can actually play a little SF against the slower ones as his strength to agility ratio is quite amazing.

IKE DIOGU –
Signed out of the blue, this man came in and made an immediate impact with his energy and rebounding including BIG rebounds. This is one of those bigs who has probably not once, ever, been accused of wondering from the paint. He will occasionally take and even make a jump shot but rarely without hesitation as it is obvious he is itching for something closer to the hoop. The odd man out later in the season somewhat inexplicably. A nice comeback year for Ike. He deserves a role next year for someone, even if it is not the Clippers.

BRIAN COOK –
At times did some heavy damage with his deadly three pt shooting. The injury set him back and he never found a role late in the season. A slow, lumbering, but intiguing player due to his lack of any conscience from deep. Runs hot and cold.

JAM MOON –
Not a bad little throw in for the Clips. Jamario is at best a bench player, but you could do worse. And if nothing else, he is rumored to play good defense. Not to mention, he knows his limits.

WILLIE WARREN –
Lit it up in the D-League for a while. Never found a role with the big club. Hard to say what will happen with Willie, but most likely he will get a shot to compete for a spot next year.

VINNY DEL NEGRO -
Though the Clippers had one VERY nice stretch of games, there were WAY too many games where the team played from behind and those they played ahead in the first half almost invariably were followed by giving away large leads all at once and third quarter collapses. The win / loss record, I feel did not tell the whole story when it comes to the LOOSING mentality this ball club exibited the entire year outside of one really nice run. It would be nice to throw Vinny an “atta boy”, but he simply didn’t get this team playing their best ball very often. Once the roster was “fully healthy”, we still played the same, careless, loosing mentality ball. Just looked a little more talented doing it. I don’t think Vinny surrounded himself with enough quality assistants and his X and O strategies in general did not work and were too predictable. The only real solid strategy that worked this year was Eric Gordon single handedly taking over the game late. I’m not sure that points to coaching brilliance so much as Eric’s talent level. But at least he was smart enough to let Eric run with it when he was hot. Clearly, nothing else late game was ever gonna work. Especially with six guys and the other team’s coach guarding Blake.

RALPH LAWLER –
Lalwers Law again tended to hold up this year as did the man himself. A joy to listen to. By far the best announcer in the league.

MIKE SMITH -
We could do worse. Mike has a good attitude and is “into it”. That said, he is a mamby bamb who can be extremely annoying with some of his antics such as the endless fishing for ways to caress statistics in order to put a player in “good company”. As much as I want to kill him sometimes, he on the whole meshes with Ralph pretty good, and Ralph routinely cuts him down to size. In the end, I’m willing to “tolerate” Smith as long as he is with Ralph, but if Ralph were to retire, Smith clearly has to go. We can’t have a second Chick Hearn / Stu Lantz debacle where the side-kick is left to essentially run the show.

Very interesting season came for finish, from the begging lots of hope that still there, in a balance we got what we expecting from Blake, Erick, DJ, Randy even from Kman when he was healthy, finally BD was out, MO is getting into the system after play behind James is difficult to take the roll of conducting the team and truly believe that next we will see a better player. Disapointed well Gomes I don’t know if should be a trading card in the off season but is the best for him a form the team he is not getting along with the system, Rhino well as bench player is not bad as well as Iku (been younger has more potential), Cook as well as Willie are no pieces in this puzzle, sorry.
For the coaches people talk about how good the Bulls are now but a team is not getting good sudenly there is a process, time (years as happened in Oklahoma), is not that the Bulls coach bring a magic staff and chance everything, it is difficult to came and coach a team when you have players that hurt your team, when you have to give a image to a team that never had one, yes VDN made mistakes but we have to give him credit for hard work that you see in the players, some critizice his decision in the last minutes of the game but players excusion is vital on this, the first half of the season we have miste BD that “decide on the floor” and that was always bad, now we can say is a 50-50.
Coaching staff will work, I hope, hard in the off season with the rookies (that still rookies Bledsoe and Aminu) next year we will see if is an improvment and work on those guys or not, remember all of them came late in the pre-season. As many hall of famers said you have to respect your coach and be a player, so the coach can do his work, so rookies including Blake I believe that they have to take that in consideration.
Next season starts now, looking for talent for our SF and decide what to do with the Centers.
Now I have only one wish, NEW OWNER PLEASE.

Great review by metal matty; although, don’t share the dislike of Mike Smith. I like the banter between him and ralph. Also, smith does have some insightful, timely comments during the game, usually focusing on strategy, x’s and o’s, that I find interesting. also seems like a class guy. As far as lawler- the best in the business.