Eric Gordon and Team USA

It’s yet to be seen whether Eric Gordon will survive the final roster trimming from 13 players down to 12 before the world championships begin on Aug. 28th in Turkey, but even if the experience were to end here, there’s a lot to take from Gordon’s play this Summer.

Watching Gordon develop as a player up to the this point has been an interesting exercise. While some of his fellow draft classmates, like Russell Westbrook, have made leaps and bounds since they entered the league, Gordon has improved gradually, not looking terribly different from the guy the Clippers drafted two years ago. Part of the appeal behind selecting Gordon was how NBA-ready he was, and throughout his short career in Los Angeles he’s proven to be one of the steadiest choices the draft had to offer.

I’m hesitant to proclaim Gordon hit a plateau last season, but the numbers do show that Gordon’s shooting percentages declined while everything else was identical to his rookie campaign. It’s definitely difficult to judge Gordon’s development when you consider the context – about 75 percent of the games he’s played in his career have been meaningless with the season already in the tubes. How can you judge a player defensively when some of the other players that share the court with him have already packed it in for the year? Can you really fault Gordon for not being more aggressive when just about everyone was gunning for a new contract late last year by taking whatever shots came their way? While the environment has been tough for Gordon to grow in, it’s been equally hard to get an accurate read on just how good Gordon really is, and just how good he may become.

In a lot of ways this is where Team USA steps in. We all know what Gordon can bring to the national team – accurate outside shooting and physical on-ball defense being the primary attributes – but what can Team USA do for him?

The most important thing about Gordon’s time playing for Team USA this Summer is the confidence he can gain from the experience. Gordon has largely been a hidden commodity in his first two seasons, but regardless of that he’s been tabbed by some of the best coaches and basketball minds in the world as one of the finest players the entire league had to offer. Take a look at what Coach K had to say to ESPN’s Chris Sheridan about him:

The coaches have been raving lately about Eric Gordon, who was on the cut bubble when the team held a minicamp in Las Vegas last month, “because we didn’t know him as well,” Krzyzewski said.

“He’s really had a terrific practice every single day, and every day he’s produced, he’s just been steady. And he’s a guy that doesn’t need the ball long. On our Olympic team, Carmelo Anthony didn’t need the ball long, and that helps. He’s been very good. Very good. I won’t say anybody’s made the team until we’re down to 12, but he’s been very good. I’ll leave it at that.”

It’s important for Gordon to hear new and prominent voices praising him, just as it’s important for him to share the court with superstars like Kevin Durant and savvy veterans like Chauncey Billups. Gordon has some deficiencies on the court, mainly his rebounding and ball-handling abilities, but a lot of what’s holding him back is being waged in Gordon’s own head. Often times he struggles with asserting himself into the offense, lacking an aggressive nature despite almost always being the best offensive option on the floor. It appears this Summer is helping Gordon realize that his play is reflective of his mental state, especially when you look at what he told ProjectSpurs.com:

“It’s definitely a great experience and I’m learning a lot about myself. I’m learning that I’m competitive and that I am one of the better ones out there. This is a good experience and it’s great to be a part of,” said Gordon to Project Spurs.

So what happens when Gordon eventually makes his way back to the Clippers? If you can step up and take shots when you’re playing with some of the best the NBA and the world has to offer, you can surely do it when you’re back with your own team. No offense to Ryan Gomes, who has certainly taken enough of a beating lately, but he’s not exactly Kevin Durant, know what I mean? If you can hang with the best, you should dominate the rest.

It’s going to take a lot of confidence for Gordon to evolve into a more aggressive scorer, but this Summer is helping in that regard even if Gordon is playing a complimentary role. While Gordon is about as stoic as it gets and is not a verbal leader by any means, his words do carry a little more weight because he speaks so infrequesntly. With that said, ask yourself this: Does Eric Gordon have the confidence to say this as a rookie?

…though Gordon’s tone changed a bit when I (ProjectSpurs.com) asked him about playing with Baron Davis, “It’s good. We just need to get him motivated to really play. We all know he can play. As long as he stays motivated we know what he can do to help us.”

Gordon may never blossom into a big time playmaker or an unstoppable scoring machine, but it’s important to remember that he is still developing. It may not be tangible quite yet, but this experience and the confidence gained from it should translate into something you’ll see on the court in the near future.

Watch Eric Gordon Live

Watch Eric Gordon and the United States take on Spain today at 12p PT in international play. We’ll have much more on Gordon and his performances up to this point, but if you’d like to see how he does for yourself, go here to follow along live.

Is Ryan Gomes The Solution?

From Kevin Arnovitz’s piece over at ESPNLosAngeles.com:

Knowing one’s limitations as a player might be one of the least heralded attributes in basketball. It’s a quality that’s been absent on recent Clipper rosters, a primary reason the team has struggled to put up points despite plenty of competent scorers. But that acute awareness of his strengths and weakness is one of one Gomes’ defining traits as a player.”[The Clippers] aren’t looking for someone dominant at this position,” Gomes said. “Sure, if I average 18 points, seven rebounds, five assists, that’ll be wonderful. But I feel like my best quality is my knowledge of the game. I don’t think I’m going to wow you athletically, but I can dabble in a little bit of everything.”Gomes’ humility isn’t an aw-shucks brand of athlete-speak and isn’t born out of a lack of confidence. He’s just far too versed in basketball to peddle anything other than devout truths, and he loves talking about the game. Gomes is happy to discuss his move to Los Angeles, the apartment he’s rented for himself, his wife, young daughter and mother-in-law. But what gets Gomes going, what he really loves to schmooze about is chalk-talk. 

Ask him why the Timberwolves struggled in the triangle, and he’ll tell you the specific point in the sequence when defenses anticipated the action and clamped down on the offense. Ask him how his good friend Al Jefferson will fare in Utah’s flex offense, and he’ll speak in detail about how Jefferson will flourish and which reads will prove most difficult for the big man. Ask him about the particulars of his game as an NBA small forward, and Gomes is an open book. 

“I’m not going to back guys down,” Gomes said. “But I’m going to turn, face up and use my quickness — get fouled, get to the rim, shoot my jumper.” 

Since he came into the league from Providence College, Gomes has been tagged as the dreaded “tweener” — a player who straddles the small and power forward positions. The Clippers plan to use Gomes as a small forward, which he’s played the past two seasons in Minnesota. Gomes readily acknowledges that he’s not a prototypical 3. He’s confident in his ability to play strong, straight-up, one-on-one defense, but that certain assignments give him problems. 

“At the 3, there are some nights where it might not work in my favor,” Gomes said. “But Carmelo [Anthony], I think I can guard him. I can guard guys like [Al] Thornton. I think I can do a solid job on [Paul] Pierce. I can guard guys who face up and attack you one-on-one. [Ron] Artest is a perfect matchup for me. 

“Where I have limitations is with guys who get their shots by running off screens. [Kevin] Durant. A guy like Jason Richardson is tough for me.” 

Gomes conveys a refreshing self-awareness that could be mistaken for self-deprecation. Coaches and general managers often characterize a player as a “glue guy,” but few NBA veterans are comfortable enough in their own skin to tout their intangible qualities as their strongest assets. 

“You have to find a niche,” Gomes said. “Find something you do well to stick around in this league. That’s the case for all of us except for those 30 who can do everything. For the rest of us it’s about finding a way — knowledge of the game, smarts, those little things.”

To read more on Gomes and his approach to the game, go here.

The Silver Lining

What was the worst part of Donald Sterling’s comments yesterday?

It’s the offseason. This is the one time of year Clippers’ fans can be overly optimistic without those pesky losses clubbing them over the head again and again, crushing their spirits. Fresh uniforms, fresh faces, and a fresh start. That should have been the feeling derived from yesterday, but it wasn’t. Fans know the dark cloud that hovers over the franchise hasn’t gone anywhere, but in the offseason they’re not typically forced to look up at it.

Sorry Randy Foye, but your owner doesn’t know your name and probably couldn’t pick you out of a lineup. Apologies to you as well, Ryan Gomes. If it were up to him, you wouldn’t be a Clipper. The same goes for you, DeAndre Jordan. You’ve been here a month Vinny Del Negro, and the owner is already questioning your taste in personnel.

So what do you do with that blatant display of disrespect, Vinny Del Negro?

Pick up a marker and put everything Sterling said on the whiteboard in the locker room. Underline it and leave it there for the whole team to see, all year long.

You’ve been praised by many for your ability to motivate, and while you probably don’t need a whole lot of material to fire up the troops, you’ve got plenty of ammunition now.

No one believes in you. Your owner doesn’t believe in you. He doesn’t even want you to be here.

Strange as it sounds, this media disaster can be used as a rallying point, the words that band the team together. After all, nothing unites a group like a common enemy. It’s a little unorthodox to have that enemy be your owner, but it isn’t unprecedented.

Major League's Lou Brown: A Master Motivator

The owner doesn’t want you, doesn’t like you, and doesn’t think you’re a good basketball player.

You’ve got 82 games to prove him wrong. Make them count.

The Curse Has a Name

Regarding comments made by Donald T. Sterling to T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times, here’s my post over at TrueHoop:

Try to imagine you’re at a business gathering, maybe a trade show. Your boss holds court in one corner of the room. He’s surrounded by people who are insiders in your industry — some of whom know you personally, while others are only vaguely familiar with your work.

The next morning you find out through a third party who doesn’t even work for your company that your boss told those insiders he has no idea why the company hired you (only he called you “Whatshisname.”).

Or maybe your boss told the circle you have lousy taste in personnel and couldn’t attract the real comers in the field, even though that was your job. Your boss complained about how his investments in capital improvement would attract better talent, only you couldn’t close.

The irony of Sterling’s griping about his organization’s inability to lure top talent is almost too obvious to acknowledge. You might agree with Sterling that the signings of Gomes and Foye represents a failure for the franchise this summer. You might hold Clippers general manager Neil Olshey accountable for that, or head coach Vinny Del Negro for his input in those choices. I think Olshey exercised discipline and deployed a sound long-term strategy given the circumstances — Sterling being one of the primary circumstances. Intelligent people can disagree about how the Clippers fared this summer in the marketplace. But whichever side of the argument you fall on, there isn’t a reasonable excuse in the world for what Sterling did to Gomes, Foye, Olshey and Del Negro.

The Clippers’ curse isn’t a supernatural phenomenon. It has a name, a face and an unfortunate history of personal failure.

Over the past few years, I’ve gotten to know a lot of people who work for the Clippers. They work across the organization in sales, marketing, communications, digital media and basketball operations. These are professional people who are proud of their work — and they should be because every day they do a solid job for a brand that few people think very much of. Yet they do the work, some of them with a sincere hope that one day they’ll be able to say that they had something to do with the moment the Clippers became an entity that mattered in Los Angeles and in the NBA.

Although I haven’t met Foye, last week I visited with Gomes for the first time one-on-one. I found a thoughtful professional. A very measured executive for one of the league’s most well-respected franchises told me that Gomes is one of the best people involved in professional basketball. Olshey is eager to do his job well. He’s always courteous, has pretty decent taste in basketball players and is a more creative dealmaker than he’s been allowed to be. Del Negro has been with the team for only five weeks, but has brought the kind of charisma and exuberance that vaulted him to the top of Sterling’s list of coaching candidates.

Whether Gomes, Foye, Olshey and Del Negro are basketball geniuses or likable doesn’t really matter. As employees of the Los Angeles Clippers, they all warrant Sterling’s basic respect, which ultimately requires so little of such a blessed, wealthy man. All Sterling has to do when asked about his employees in polite company is offer an endorsement — or, at the very least, not publicly humiliate them. That’s his only ambassadorial duty as team owner on a day when the Clippers introduce the media to some minor stylistic tweaks on their uniforms.

Imagine it’s your world again. We return just as you’ve found out your boss was trashing you to people outside your company. Now ask yourself:

Is this a place you want to work?

Some New Threads for The Clips

Do people still say threads? No? Oh. Well let’s just move on.

The basic motif remains the same, though there are some new stylistic flourishes. “Los Angeles” will appear on the primary red away jersey, which used to have “Clippers” in script.

In another change, Baron Davis is going back to No. 5 this season.

Of course, the unveiling couldn’t be complete without Blake interviewing DeAndre on his thoughts on the new uniforms. Here’s the video, courtesy of Clippers.com:

Let’s hear it in the comments section: What do you think about the new jerseys? I’d tell you how I feel, but I’m the one asking the questions.