Hours before the Clippers knocked off the Lakers on Wednesday, I asked Mike Dunleavy how a coach can tell the difference between real, permanent growth and the fleeting illusion of improvement.

“You ask yourself, ‘Is the team able to do what it wants to do?’”

Wednesday night, the Clippers got most of what they wanted offensively courtesy of Baron Davis, who is playing his most prolific stretch of basketball since he arrived in Los Angeles.

What accounts for that uptick? It’s probably a combination of factors.  More...

Looking at the breakdown of the game by play type, Boston ran somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-25 pick-and-roll sets, a significant number below their average. That’s notable in itself, but looking at the distribution of the Clippers’ defensive coverages in those possessions, one thing stands out:

The Clippers rarely trapped the ball-handler.  More...

Back in the day, Chris Kaman was essentially a post-up player who needed the ball at a specific moment in a specific spot in order to work effectively. One of the revelations about his jackrabbit start to the season is how diverse his repertoire has become in the half-court.

Monday night against Minnesota, the Clippers ran five or so traditional/Kaman 1.0 post-up sets for him, but the majority of his touches came from a broad variety of schemes. On two occasions, the Clips ran screens that freed up Kaman to flash to the elbow. He was also the roll man on a few aggressive ball screens. And he generated a bundle of points with basket cuts off the ball.  More...

Finally had a chance to watch most of Dallas’ big win over the Lakers last night, and the findings were interesting.

80 percent of Dallas’ offensive sets can be reasonably classified as one of two things:

• Pick-and-roll
• Dirk Nowitzki

There’s some overlap here, but Nowitzki — at least Friday night — was employed most frequently as a post-up threat, or in isolation on the wing. Occasionally, Rick Carlisle would spot up Nowitzki on the weak side, run some action low in an effort to lure Dirk’s defender into the play, then whip the ball over the Dirk before the defense could recover.  More...

There wasn’t much to like in the second quarter of Monday night’s game against the Warriors, but this Baron Davis-DeAndre Jordan connection demonstrated how effective Baron can be when he initiates the offense as a posting guard.

Couple of observations:  More...