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 99-99 in regulation and 0:11.1 remaining, the Sixers have possession:

Most hardcore basketball fans are programmed with the ability to instinctively determine the legality of a buzzer-beater most of the time. Watching it initially, I thought Iguodala hit it. Did you?

On second review, I have no idea. If the ball is still on Iguodala’s fingers, it’s barely grazing the hair on his knuckles.

UPDATE: NBA.com offers a better look (about the 1:29 mark of the reel), and the ball appears to still be in Iguodala’s hands:

The Sixers execute poorly in overtime, while the Clippers put together a string of solid offensive possessions. Baron attacks, the Sixers fall asleep when they let an unmanned Rasual Butler set up early along the right side of the arc, the Clips pick up a bucket in transition and Butler manages to create something off the dribble.

Defensively for the Clips, Maureesse Speights is less comfortable against Al Thornton than Rasual Butler. Al’s got more muscle to contend with Speights, who likes to bully smaller defenders to get himself inside. That adjustment helps the Clippers in OT, as does their good pick-and-roll defense (on one possession, they blanket both a Green/Brand S/R up top and an Iguodala/Speights S/R counter on the side.

Overtime is almost anticlimactic without discounting the really important development: The Clippers win a game they badly needed.

Some bigger themes of the night:

Keeping Kaman on the floor with five fouls
My position is fairly dogmatic on this issue. Lifting productive players with two fouls in the first quarter is ill-advised, as is sitting them with five midway through the fourth quarter. It’s unwise not to maximize that player’s number of possessions, and yanking him doesn’t do that. On the possessions between Chris’ 5th and 6th fouls, the Clippers play the Sixers even. They convert two field goals on consecutive possessions when Kaman delivers pinpoint passes – the first to Thornton against a swarming double team, the second to Telfair when Chris is one-on-one against Elton Brand. On the other end, the Sixers score on a contested, unstable 20-footer by Iguodala and, of course, when Speights goes to the stripe when he draws Chris’ 6th.

The Sixers’ mismatches
Thad Young is the kind of 4 who will give the Clippers fits this season with Camby and Kaman as the starting frontcourt. Both are decent defenders, but neither has the athleticism to defend a player like Young who is so dynamic from the perimeter. This is where the Clips miss Blake Griffin, who’d be a natural cover to combat Young’s versatility. Young keeps the Sixers in the game through much of the first quarter. Mike Dunleavy adjusts by sending in Mardy Collins to work on the defensive end against Thad Young, and to Collins’ credit, he does an effective job keeping Young in check. Collins is useful in a limited defensive capacity. On the other end, though, posting Mardy Collins doesn’t strike me as the best way to bust the Sixers’ zone, but that’s the kind of offense you see from the Clippers in the latter minutes of the third quarter.

In the fourth quarter once Kaman fouls out, the Clippers don’t have an answer for Maurreese Speights, who exploits a mismatch against Rasual Butler in the Clippers’ zone. Sometimes there’s value in the zone to protect a defense against a guy like Speights when you don’t have a natural defender who can match up, but when that zone features Butler who, albeit a sound perimeter defender, doesn’t have the bulk to deal with Speights on the block, it doesn’t give you the best chance to win. Speights generates five points over possessions inside of two minutes against an undersized Butler.

Al Thornton’s late fourth quarter
In addition to the layup on the pass out by Kaman, Thornton muscles his way to the hoop for the Clippers’ two most important buckets of the night. On both possessions, the Clippers trail by two. The first comes on a drive from the left wing against Thad Young. Al goes middle and unleashes a running right-handed hook. The second occurs when Al beats on the league’s best one-on-one perimeter defenders with a left-handed baseline drive.  makes a strong stand on the drive, but Thornton bursts to the hoop and hits a high-degree-of-difficulty shot high off the glass.

The parallels to the New York game are unsettling, and there are sequences in the second half when the Clippers are unable to get a decent look, most of those instances their own fault. Eric is uncharacteristically impatient, Mardy Collins plays an unnecessarily central role in the half-court offense, and Baron tries to create when there’s better stuff available on the weak side. And because they’re not getting stops, the Clips aren’t able to generate more than two fast break points in the second half, zero in the fourth quarter.

Chris Kaman vs. Elton Brand
I don’t generally get caught up in meta narratives, but watching Chris Kaman and Elton Brand face off mano a mano was fascinating, particularly in the tight stages of the fourth quarter. The two were playing an informal game one-on-one when Brand ruptured his Achilles tendon in August 2007, which adds a level of curiosity to the match-up.

In the first half, Kaman wins the battle. His best move comes at [2nd, 6:23] when he backs Elton in with his right shoulder, then spins baseline for an soft right-handed hook. Elton gets things started in the third quarter when he takes Chris off the dribble from the top of the circle, spins counterclockwise, then elevates for a jumper over Chris that falls through. Chris matches with the identical right shoulder/right hook from the first half. He follows by draining an open jumper from 18 feet when Elton gets crossed up on a Butler/Kaman angle S/R. Elton gets his say: He drains a face-up jumper from the right side (!) the next trip down.

Watching Elton against the Clips this season doesn’t induce the same emotion from me that it did last season. My visceral feelings about him have diminished. He’s certainly not just another guy out there, but I find myself more able to experience him apart from his legacy with the Clippers, the possessions against Kaman the possible exception.

When Elton Brand spurned Los Angeles for Philadelphia 17 months ago, no party involved was left unscathed. Brand’s previously sterling reputation was sullied, management was again portrayed as horribly incompetent, and David Falk’s name suddenly became synonymous with Satan himself. At the time, there were no winners, only losers. Clippers fans are notoriously hardened (2 winning seasons in 25 years will do that for you) but even this was a bit too much to handle. The Clipper faithful had previously endured “star” players bolt via free agency, but none of this caliber. They saw a temporarily delusional Kobe Bryant “almost” cross the hall, but no one really believed him. They learned that Gilbert Arenas decided to go to Washington instead of L.A. because of a coin flip, which still hasn’t really sunk in yet. Point being, this particular fan base was not exactly weaned on sunshine and lollipops. Clippers fans instinctively expect the worst. That being said, no one was really prepared for the announcement that came on 7/8/08.

It was supposed to be different with Elton. He was everything as advertised: Consistent, heady, reliable. He was the blue-collar, lunch-pail type of player fans could really get behind, and they did. Much in the way the Spurs started to embody Tim Duncan’s traits over the years (Professional, efficient, horrifically boring), it was easy to see the Clippers resembling all the admirable traits of Elton. Over the span of seven years, Elton Brand basically legitimized a franchise that was in desperate need of such a thing. He was a player to be respected and in turn it became more respectable to be a Clipper fan. I distinctly remember a time frame where the announcement of Clipper fan-hood would usually result in a complementary comment in relation to Elton’s beastliness. He made it okay to follow the Clippers – as long as he was always out there busting his butt, you had someone to be proud of. There’s an attachment you naturally develop to players like him. So it was different when he left. It meant more.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of it all was that it was impossible to really make sense of “why” Elton left. The Baron Davis signing was supposed make Elton perfectly content. Just when it seemed like everything was lined up perfectly, Elton inexplicably bailed on the plan. The problem with digging for answers is that it often forces us to the conclusion we didn’t want to believe in the first place. It couldn’t have been about the small differential in money, because Elton isn’t that type of guy, right? Right?

The problem is, as much as fans would like to believe they know players on a personal level, they don’t. Dunleavy and company thought they knew Brand well enough too, but they didn’t. From Elton’s side, you never really know how you’ll react to millions of dollars being flashed in front of your face with a super agent manipulating your every move. Fans weren’t hurt because of something tangible like the loss of statistical production and a likely drop in wins, they were hurt because their built up image of Elton Brand was ruthlessly shattered in a days time. Seven years of built up beliefs about Brand’s loyalty, however uncorroborated, were gone in an instant.

On the court, it would eventually become completely obvious that the Clippers were a mentally defeated and talent deflated unit sans Brand. He’d go on to make the pain even worse in his first tilt against the Clippers by nailing his trademark 15 footer to put the game away for Philadelphia. However with the daggers still freshly planted in the Clippers back, Elton soon received a fork in his own. A torn labrum would require season ending shoulder surgery, his second major operation in two years. With Elton out of sight and out of mind, the recovery process rapidly advanced to it’s final stage for Clippers fans: Acceptance.

For Elton, things haven’t gone as swimmingly. Perhaps in a twisted form of karmic retribution, Philly fans by and large have turned on Elton and the signing, declaring him a bust just 51 games into his 5 year, 80 million dollar deal. There’s no shortage of ammunition against Brand; the stylistic differences and decreased athleticism are plain to see. It’s been accepted that Elton’s contract (signed right before the economy tanked) is way too pricey for a player of his production level. Ironically, the few million dollars in bonus money Elton accepted to go to Philadelphia are now working against him ten-fold. It’s hard to say how patient the Clippers would have been with Elton on a big deal coming off injuries, but at least they’d have a reason to stay loyal to one of the franchise’s all-time great players. Philadelphia holds no such obligation.

With Elton’s numbers severely declining in virtually every statistical category, Philadelphia head coach Eddie Jordan has moved him to the bench. Elton himself isn’t pleased, but it’s no secret that he simply doesn’t fit in with Philadelphia’s personnel or game plan. Every feed he gets feels forced, as if the rest of the Sixers are going out of their way to incorporate him into the game. It’s a far cry from the way Brand was utilized in his time in Los Angeles to say the least. The story isn’t finished, but this a fall from the elite for Elton, and it’s happened insanely fast in just 17 months.

Is it incorrect to say the perception of Elton has changed quite a bit around these parts during that span as well? It’s tough not to have some sympathy for Elton when he gets booed, or misses shots he used to make with scary consistency, or gets parked on the bench. He’s not the player he used to be, and that’s depressing to see, regardless of the circumstances. Will you be sympathetic, unforgiving, or devoid of any real feeling altogether when you see Elton on Saturday?

I know one thing: I’ll be nostalgic. As much as I’ll try to fight it, I’m sure I’ll crack a little smile once I see that funky jumper again. Memories.

Opening night is always a little dizzying. It’s difficult to measure the new versus the familiar, and to banish what you want to forget while still recalling the stuff that’s useful to remember.

Though all five Clipper starters Tuesday night are alumni of last season’s miserable squad, it’s clear that the 2009-10 Clippers are a measurably improved team.

A few notes:

• This is a far better conditioned squad, and it’s evident in Chris Kaman’s arms, in the team’s third quarter run, and in the fact that the Clippers rack ass all night, never taking a single possession off. There’s a reason the Clippers were a lousy third quarter and an awful rebounding team last season: They were out of shape. Basketball is a frenetic, aerobic game and there’s absolutely no way to remain competitive if you can’t match your opponent’s physical effort. The Clippers lose the game, but not because they can’t endure.
• The Clippers do little to help themselves in the first quarter: Nine turnovers and a barrage of contested jumpers, compounded by the decision to go small when Marcus Camby runs into foul trouble. I had a chance after the game to ask Mike Dunleavy about his reasoning. “[Ron] Artest and [Lamar] Odom are quick for the big guys and and big for the small guys,” Dunleavy said. “That’s their strength and advantage. You’re always trying to play that game. That’s actually one of the spots where we really miss Blake. He’s our big guy who can play the smalls and make them work.”
  
  I don’t envy any coach who has to match up against Odom, but I think the Clippers — who are already compromised in the defensive post against a team like the Lakers — give up too much by going that small that soon.
• Craig Smith’s second-quarter explosion is a highlight of the evening, and offers a flashback to 2006 at [2nd, 8:22]. It’s a play you saw the Clippers run for Elton Brand a thousand times: A guard (usually Cuttino Mobley) sets a cross-screen for Brand in the lane, as Elton dashes to left side for an entry pass against either Mobley’s defender or, at the very least, his own guy who is still recovering. Here, it’s Eric Gordon laying out a screen on Luke Walton as Rhino rumbles to the left block with Farmar now defending him on the switch. The Lakers are able to recover, but Smith has solid position as he takes the entry pass from Sebastian Telfair, and he dispatches Walton quickly with a baseline spin move and layup. It was a good set then, and it still is now.
• Eric Gordon has become a solid pick-and-roll player, and he demonstrates some nice interplay with his big men tonight. There’s a particularly good-looking possession early [1st, 10:05] when Eric gets a high screen from Marcus Camby above the left elbow. It’s a strong pick that takes Kobe Bryant out of the play and leaves Andrew Bynum backpedaling against a driving Gordon. Chris Kaman is set up on the right blow, covered by Lamar Odom. Once Eric beats Bynum, Odom is forced to collapse. So what does Eric do? What any good playmaker does — dishes the ball on the move to the wide open Kaman for an easy layup. It’s one thing to be able to penetrate, but it’s quite another to leverage that skill to create shots for others. Gordon has a tremendous night: 21 points on 16 true shots, with three turnovers and four assists (including this one), and it’s nice that he gets to do it in front of a national audience that rarely gets to watch his gutsy brand of ball.
• Given what they’re up against, the defense does solid work. The Lakers challenge the Clippers in the post all night, which puts a lot of pressure on the Clippers’ help defense. By and large, the Clips make sounds decision about when and from where to dispatch that help. There are a handful of blown rotations, but more times than not, the Clips are quick to the ball. They post a defensive efficiency rating of 98.7 for the game — a significant accomplishment against the Lakers, with or without Pau Gasol.
• Baron Davis and Al Thornton both fall victim to their lack of shot selectivity. Davis’ shot chart is especially ugly — 1-for-10 from the field without a trip to the stripe. The good news? The most efficient scorers take the bulk of the shots: 18 true shots for Kaman, 16 for Gordon and 13 for Camby. Thornton’s 4-for-11 is mitigated somewhat by his work on the boards: Nine total rebounds, which helps the Clips win the rebound rate 52/48.

Wednesday night’s matchup against Phoenix will tell us a lot more about the Clippers’ flexibility as a team. It will also reveal something about their resilience, because there are no moral victories at home against non-playoff teams.

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.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

An NBA source has confirmed that Stefanski has shopped power forward Elton Brand, last off-season’s blockbuster acquisition. That same source indicated Brand is unlikely to be traded because he has four years and $65 million left on his deal and has health concerns because his last two seasons ended in injury.

Here’s a tough one for you (and one that’s purely intended as a hypothetical exercise): Would you rather have Brand with four years and $65M remaining, or Zach Randolph with two years and $33.3M? When you factor in character, which is the more odious contract?

For the sake of the game, suppose the Clippers don’t have Blake Griffin in the mail.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

An unfortunate coincidence.

That’s the vibe that seemed to fill the Wachovia Center last night after 76ers forward Elton Brand, clutching his dislocated right shoulder, walked off the court midway through the third quarter of a 93-88 win over the Milwaukee Bucks.

Sixers officials said Brand was undergoing an MRI exam after the game. No timetable on his return was immediately available.

All week, the talk swirling around the Sixers was about whether Brand’s commanding inside presence, bought at the cost of $80 million this off-season, had caused a loss of identity for the young, formerly running-and-gunning team.

When general manager Ed Stefanski fired Sixers coach Maurice Cheeks on Saturday, many wondered if the problem was less Cheeks and more the Sixers’ roster, which did not seem to match its fastbreaking intentions…

Brand had scored four points and grabbed six rebounds when he left the game.

The injury occurred when Bucks forward Luc Mbah a Moute slammed into Brand under Milwaukee’s hoop. Both fell to the court; Mbah a Moute then rolled over Brand, who was whistled for his second foul. At the time of Brand’s injury, the Sixers trailed by seven.

“The way he popped up, I thought he was fine,” said guard Lou Williams, who tied a career high with 25 points. But when Brand walked past the Sixers’ bench, his teammates saw the divot in his right shoulder…

Brand missed two games earlier this month with a strained right hamstring. That was when the initial question surfaced about his impact. Had Brand’s inside game forced the Sixers out of last season’s run-and-gun style, which led to a playoff appearance?

Then there’s this from lowposts.com:

(Mike Dunleavy is in his cigar parlor replaying the Elton Brand injury on his 70-inch plasma screen.)

Dunleavy: Baahahahhaahahaahahahaaaa! Baaaaaaaahaahaaahahahahaha! (catches breath, wipes tear away from eye, rewinds, watches Brand fall again) Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahaha! (checks Pacific Division standings online) Heh. Ahem.. (drinks deeply from brandy snifter, shuts off television, sits in dark, waits for rooster crow to signal sunrise).

UPDATE: Brand received an MRI last night which revealed a fracture of the humeral head (bone) and a tear of the labrum, which was expected with the dislocation. Sixers team physician Dr. Jack McPhilemy does not feel the injury will require surgery at this time.  Brand will begin rehabilitation immediately and is expected to be out one month.