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,[...]

Six thoughts from the win last night: Generally speaking, the Clippers are not a very good shooting team. Coming into last night’s game the team ranked 23rd in field goal percentage from the 10-15 feet range, 24th in field goal percentage from 16-23 feet, and 26th in effective field goal perce[...]

The Clippers post an efficient offensive game — one that would have been exceptional if not for the bevy of offensive miscues, sloppy interior passes, a series of botched shots at the rim, missed free throws, and offensive rebounds that slide off the Clippers’ fingertips. Still, they use[...]

Leadership requires more than charisma. It’s something that a player earns when his personal achievement translates to big wins for his team. Baron Davis has been the nominal leader of the Clippers since he signed his five year, $65 million contract in July 2008, but neither Baron nor the Clip[...]

Six thoughts from D.J. and me about the blowout in Phoenix: Chris Kaman controls the game early. He faces only single coverage vs. Amare Stoudemire.  Over a six-possession stint in the middle of the first quarter, Kaman works himself five good looks, draining three of them. He overpowers, outwits an[...]

The league is changing and the seismic shift can be felt most conspicuously in the front-court. Some teams are getting stretchier at both the power forward and center, while others are employing smaller, more agile bigs who can beat you from any spot on the floor. The Clippers, as currently constitu[...]

The book being drafted by most of the league on Chris Kaman instructs teams to swarm the Clippers’ big man with double-teams when he catches the ball at 15 feet. But Spurs coach Gregg Popovich’s reading list is self-authored and it reads something like this: “We’re the San An[...]

We speak abstractly about the razor thin margin between winning and losing in basketball, but rarely do we get such a lucid illustration. I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen a game in which a team has been resuscitated the way the Clippers are Saturday evening. With the game tied 99-9[...]