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.

Stops Matter & Transition
The Clippers, above all else, want stops.

With Marcus Camby and Chris Kaman on the back line, Rasual Butler and Eric Gordon on the wings and a motivated Baron Davis providing pressure on the ball, they have enough size, strength, shot-blocking and guile to be a good defensive unit. When that defense clicks, the Clippers notch big wins — Denver, Boston, Lakers, at Oklahoma City.

The to-run-or-not-to-run discussion surrounding the Clippers always struck me as a theoretical debate. While there are teams who are gifted at pushing the ball after made baskets (Houston/Aaron Brooks, Phoenix /Steve Nash, etc), transition opportunities come off defensive stands and rebounds. After residing in the bottom five of the league in defensive rebounding rate for a good part of the season, the Clippers have been doing much better work on the defensive glass. Last night, they created 21 transition opportunities for themselves, and generated points on 14 of those 21 chances.

The Clippers’ defensive schemes looked not unlike what they unleashed on Portland and Brandon Roy on Monday night. The Clippers’ traps were smart, strategic, and generally came from the place on the floor least likely to produce a high-percentage shot.

“We were trying to go quick at [Kobe Bryant],” Dunleavy said. “He’s so great. He knows the double-teams are coming, so he just makes his move faster. We were trying not to come off Bynum, because Kobe does a great job of finding him. We were willing to give outside shots to other guys. We want to get our rotations out there and wanted to contest shots, but if it comes down to Kobe in the post or somebody else taking a shot from the outside, we’ll take the other guy.”

Watch the latter half of the fourth quarter and you can see the level of alertness in the Clippers’ defense behind the Bryant traps. The Clippers defenders are communicating, pointing to one another, shifting their weight with purpose, but rarely cheating absently.

When you pair that defensive commitment with guys running hard toward the rim on the outlet, you get possessions like that nice break at [4th, 4:59] where Craig Smith gets to the basket underneath the Lakers’ slow transition defense. Rasual Butler feeds him from the perimeter for an easy layup, and the Clippers extend their lead to six — a margin that never narrows.

The Pick-and-Roll
Baron Davis, Chris Kaman and Mike Dunleavy each made independent comments lauding the chemistry — all three used that phrase — between Baron and Chris on the pick-and-roll. Remember how fluid Sam Cassell and Elton Brand were with that side screen-roll?  How Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins operate the Boston S/R to perfection? How Nash makes every big he’s ever worked with a master?

It seems like the most basic action you can run. It’s not a skill like shooting the ball and it doesn’t require too much body control — just patience and precision.

But in some respects those qualities are harder to perfect than a shooting stroke. Over the past week or so, Baron and Chris seemed to have established the symbiosis a point guard and his big man needs to make plays in the halfcourt.

“If [the Lakers] wanted to play soft, Baron made shots over the top,” Dunleavy said. “And if they stepped up, he hit [Chris] Kaman on the roll or swung the ball and found open guys.”

Baron and Chris picked apart the Lakers on those pick-and-rolls — from every spot on the floor and, as Dunleavy elaborated, with flawless reactions. On the second possession of the third quarter, they run it on the side. The Lakers anticipate it quickly and blitz Baron against the sideline. So how does our dynamic duo counter? By having Kaman slip toward the hole. Baron bounces the pass between Bryant and Bynum to Kaman on the move, and Chris finishes against the Lakers’ collapsing weak side defenders with an off-balance fling at the basket while falling to the floor. He draws the foul and the Clips go up 12.

The permutations of this pick-and-roll are numerous. Sometimes Baron and Chris take advantage of a slow recovery as Chris rolls, and sometimes Chris realizes he has the space he needs for his jumper (which doesn’t fall at a proficient rate Wednesday night, though these are shots you want him taking).  And sometimes Baron creates the space to launch a 17-footer over a much shorter Derek Fisher. Notice 17… not 21 and, therefore, a much higher-percentage shot.

Getting the Wings Going
Eric Gordon didn’t light it up, but he and his counterpart on the wing, Rasual Butler, provided the spacing that Baron and Chris needed to execute many of those sets. Gordon played a particularly intelligent game. Check out the possession at [2nd, 9:07]. When Shannon Brown crowds him on the left side of the perimeter, Gordon collects the pass from Telfair and drives hard to his right. Odom, who’s on Craig Smith (strategically placed high to give Eric an open lane to the hoop), doesn’t have time to get in Eric’s path. Eric seals himself off from Odom, elevates strongly and converts the layup.

Butler had one of his more complete games of the season: A couple of well-timed 3s, though his overall shot percentage was nothing dazzling. What I liked about his overall performance was that he played in that Tayshaun Prince mold — gathering rebounds, making sharp entry passes for assists, and playing both strong man defense and using his length to cordon off the Lakers’ weak side options.

Nobody will ever have cause to complain on the nights Butler is an accurate sniper from the arc, but really productive small forwards don’t just 3-and-D. They facilitate the offense as alternate perimeter playmakers. Butler did that Wednesday night.

Maximizing Your Assets
Craig Smith will be more useful some night than others. Against the Lakers’ bigs, he’s a handful. That’s especially true when the Clippers are in an up-tempo mode. Smith runs the floor extremely well and beelines to the rim in transition as well as anyone in the league — which explains his 59.2 field goal percentage. Once Smith has position in the post, that thick body of his has an uncanny way of getting to the rack. I have no idea how he does it apart from being very good at preserving his direct route to the rim by sealing off his defender. Everyone loves easy baskets, but you need the personnel to get them.

Then there’s Marcus Camby. The 13 rebounds come as no surprise, and I suppose the five dimes in 28 minutes don’t either. Having a big man who can makes plays in a high-low scheme from the elbow is indispensable. On a night when Baron is the best playmaker in basketball, Butler is creating opportunities and Camby is making pinpoint interior passes and zippy feeds from the perimeter, the Clippers’ ball movement is like a pinball game.

That’s how you beat one of the top defenses in the league.

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.

As you watch the possessions in sequence, you see the Clippers defense employ more hard hedges. They were much more concerned with patrolling passing lanes and backpedaling to make sure that the Celtics’ screeners were picked up on the roll. This strategy might have yielded a few more shots at the rim for Rajon Rondo (he had nine such opportunities), but overall the Celtics were much less active in the half-court than they normally are.

The Clippers have traditionally been a defensive squad that’s run a lot of perimeter traps at opposing ball-handlers. We can attribute some of that to a lack of defensive flexibility. The Clippers don’t have bigs you can switch onto smalls, though that should change once Blake Griffin is healthy.

I’m not an ideologue on pick-and-roll defense. Context is very important. Mike Woodson will tell you that Atlanta’s defense switches so readily because they have the personnel to do so, with versatility at the 2, 3 and 4 — to say nothing of a 1 you’d like to get off the ball as soon as possible. The Clippers, given their current personnel, would be foolish to switch a lot of PNRs. But if you have guys who can guard multiple positions, it makes sense to show that look to defenses at strategic moments.

I can’t help but wonder if last night’s defensive success against Boston might have shined a new light on how the Clippers can continue to improve defensively. They’ve never been a horrible defensive pick-and-roll team, but they also have the capacity to get better.

UPDATE: In speaking to Mike Dunleavy today, he mentioned that the help off the perimeter (from Tony Allen’s man) played a big role in the Clippers’ ability to defend Boston’s pick-and-rolls Sunday evening. The video certainly confirms this.

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.

Let’s take a look:

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.

The other 20 percent of Dallas’ playbook Friday night falls under miscellaneous (i.e. Shawn Marion curling off a screen, a spot up set for Jason Terry).

I’m very bullish on the Mavericks this season because that pick-and-roll game is awfully difficult to defend. Jason Kidd, J.J. Barea and Jason Terry all run it well, but it’s the presence of Nowitzki behind the action that makes Dallas so tough. Do you trap the ball-handler? Maybe, but that will leave you 4-on-3 — and one of those three is a 7-footer who can kill you from anywhere in the halfcourt. If Nowitzki’s defender stays home, now you’re looking at a 2-on-1 and Jason Kidd has this funny way of finding open basketball players easy shots. On top of that, Erick Dampier sets a nasty screen and Shawn Marion is terrific in the PNR. Marion was the roll man five times last night and scored a bucket on four of those five possessions. If he handles a pass cleanly, that number is probably 5-for-5.

Switching is an option, but here’s where Eric Gordon’s size hurts the Clippers a little. Bigger 2s can handle some switches or, at the very least, stall a big man long enough for the defense to recover. There was a reason Cuttino Mobley was on the floor so much for Mike Dunleavy during the Brand Era. Mobley was a very capable pick-and-roll defender and a central ingredient in those good defensive squads. Gordon still has to learn how to anticipate the pick-and-roll and have a recovery plan ready. He’s not going to be able to fight through every screen, but if he can develop that instinct of knowing when and from where the screen is coming, he can take some pressure off the Clippers’ bigs who are finding themselves backpedaling a lot the first week of the season. Baron Davis has traditionally been a tough straight-up man defender, but I haven’t seen much over his year in Los Angeles to indicate he’s going to chew through a screen or give a big man trouble coming off that screen.

Hedging still demands that kind of recovery from your guards. It also requires smart, proactive play from your big man (against Dallas, the big man in the PNR is often the man who’s guarding Marion). Marcus Camby prefers to stay back defensively, though I’m pretty certain he’s shown on a screen a handful of times over his 13-year career. Kaman is getting better, though the Clippers usually deploy Kaman in a perimeter trap.

If Kaman is the match-up on Nowitzki, he’s going to have bigger things to worry about than pick-and-roll defense. And that’s why Dallas is going to be so tough to defend this season. It isn’t enough to defend the pick-and-roll to perfection, you also have to be mindful of the game’s most versatile big man at the same instant. That kind of multi-tasking is difficult.

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:

• Once Baron gets in close, Blake Griffin is drawing his man low — a no-no.  He needs to move off the block to a spot at about 15 feet so his man has to make a real choice: collapse on Baron and leave Blake open for a 15-footer or stay home on Blake and give Baron more space than he should have. Good offense is making the defense choose between two bad options. The more each of the five guys on the floor can do that on a given possession, the better the offense.
• Though they’re a little slow getting to their spots, both Rasual Butler and Ricky Davis are also stretching the defense on the perimeter.  Their tardiness is attributable to the fact that Baron gets into the paint so quickly against Monta Ellis.

The Clippers spent a good part of Tuesday’s practice working on defensive rotations. During the team’s 5-on-5 scrimmage, the coaching staff would have one practice squad run a high pick-and-roll, with a direction by Mike Dunleavy to go left or right off the action. The defensive unit was then ordered to trap or “red” the point guard, which means the PG’s primary defender would crowd him directly on his shoulder, with the screener’s defender joining his teammate out on the perimeter.

Basic perimeter trap, but effective only if the back line defenders rotate with quickness and precision.

This coverage scheme is the backbone of most NBA defenses on half-court S/R possessions. The teams that perform this task well (Cleveland, San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans) tend to prosper.  Teams that struggle on defensive rotations get shredded, particularly by offenses who can spread the floor with shooters.

Remember these guys? Defense was their middle name. (Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE)

Will the Clippers be a solid halfcourt defensive team this season?

Hope: Crisp as 2005-06
In some sense, defensive rotations are a lot like officiating in basketball. When your team’s defense is rotating effectively, you hardly notice it.  When they blow it, it’s painfully obvious and aggravating.

Let’s rewind to 2005-06, when the Clippers were the 7th most efficient defense in the league. One of the bedrock strengths of that team was the alacrity of their half-court defense. On a 1-5 pick-and-roll, Cassell and Kaman would blitz the ballhandler, and the backline trio of Elton Brand, Cuttino Mobley and Quinton Ross would pick up the screener and still get to their respective spots along the perimeter. That season, the Clips played 3-on-4 defense in those situations as well as any team in the league, which is why, despite being a below-average offensive squad, they were a Raja Bell hail mary away from a conference final berth.

“A lot of what you do defensively is keyed by the guys on the back line,” Dunleavy said. “They have a chance to see the play and read the play. They see everybody out there.”

That 2005-06 team knew how to read half-court defenses even though, with the possible exception of Ross, none of the other four players in that lineup were All-NBA defenders. But Brand and Mobley had acute court awareness and were tough as nails. That season, you could watch 40 defensive possessions before seeing a blown rotation. Though many Clippers fans might be loath to admit it, Mike Dunleavy had a lot to do with that.

For this year’s Clippers, getting from chaos to fluency is going to take a little time.

“It’s all about repetitions,” Dunleavy said. “For us, the first component is getting to the right spots, make the right reads, and then you continue to build on that.”

Will this team have the personnel and collective smarts to replicate that 2005-06 defense? It’s certainly possible. If you swap out Al Thornton for Rasual Butler, the Clippers’ “three man rotation” defending a 1-5 pick-and-roll would be composed of Eric Gordon, Rasual Butler, and Blake Griffin/Marcus Camby/Chris Kaman.

Aside from the beastliness, explosiveness, athleticism, balance, and general immortality Griffin displayed at Summer League, Dunleavy was most impressed with the rookie’s reads on defense. “He really got the rotations,” Dunleavy has said … three times in interviews over the past eight weeks. He’s telling the truth. Not only was Griffin routinely at the right spot, he reacted with ease to nearly every offensive counter. On top of that, he was a vocal traffic cop on D. In short, he got it.

Rasual Butler has the length and wherewithal to bounce from a cutter back to the perimeter effectively. The upgrade over Thornton in this department is almost inestimable.

The wild card here is Eric Gordon. Though EJ has the strength to body up as a man defender against many opposing shooting guards, he has yet to master team defense and has a long way to go before he’s Cat Mobley. But there’s tremendous upside here. Gordon played with dozens of lineups last season and it’s unreasonable to expect a young rookie to grasp the nuances of NBA rotations — particularly when there was a different defensive unit out there each time he took the floor … and that unit often included the likes of Thornton and Zach Randolph. When you consider that collection of players last season, it’s no wonder the Clips finished 27th in defensive efficiency.

This season, Butler will take tremendous pressure off  Gordon on the wing.  If Griffin is as quick a study defensively as he’s demonstrated early, the Clippers could be a dramatically different, and vastly improved, defensive unit.

The Fear: Opponents Exploit the Clips’ Inexperience
Compliment Griffin and Gordon all you want, but can you find any precedent for an elite defensive unit that depends on the instincts of a couple of 20 year olds?  I’ve been asked/forced to go on record with a prediction of the Clippers’ win total this season, and the optimistic number I’ve come up with is 36-38. And it’s this dynamic — along with the rebounding on the wings — that’s kept that number in check.

This fear isn’t without a disclaimer — it’s early. Although some believe that the ability of a player to understand half-court defense is a hard-wired intuition, there’s plenty of evidence that a player can cultivate that defensive readiness.

“These are skills that can be taught,” Dunleavy said. “When you get it right, it will be really good.”

Note the future progressive tense here.  It will be really good.  But that could take some time and there are several rotation players on the squad for whom that time could be an eternity: Thornton, Steve Novak, DeAndre Jordan, Ricky Davis (at times). Gordon still has a ways to go.  Chris Kaman is a sold interior defender, but becomes less capable the farther away from the basket. At this juncture, only Marcus Camby and Butler can be depended on for crisp possession in-possession out rotations.

Another uncertain piece here: Baron Davis’ ability to contain the ballhandler. For all his defensive failings — and they were many — Cassell knew he’d be beaten off most S/Rs, but he was very good about funneling the opposing PG to the right spot. Baron has been a very, very good defender in the past. Last year? Well, you watched the games. You tell me. Will Baron recommit himself this season?

There are a lot of uncertainties and the prospect of this collection of players replicating the air-tight 2005-06 squad defensively are very, very remote.  If this season’s Clippers can finish in the high-teens in defensive efficiency, that would be a vast improvement — but still leave them as a 30-ish win team.

The Hope: Gordon and Griffin become quick studies under the tutelage of a coach whose specialty is this kind of instruction.

The Fear: That learning process takes far longer than anticipated. Thornton continues to get the bulk of the minutes at the 3, and the base pick-and-roll defense up top will leak like a sieve.