The Clippers are in turmoil and have announced they “want to win now.” Is this possible? Since trading away Marcus Camby the Clippers have played around 8 points worse than an average NBA team. Surprisingly, most of the poor play has occurred when Steve Blake is in. Blake had played great for Portland this year, but if you look at all minutes since the Camby trade the Clippers performance breaks down as follows:
- Blake or Novak in (mostly Blake) the Clippers in 342 minutes have played 14 points worse than average.
- Rest of time the Clippers have played 2 points better than average,
It may be that Blake is having trouble learning the offense, I do not know, but he has clearly been hurting the Clippers. Some other amazing stats:
- In the 94 minutes Outlaw and Baron are in together, the Clippers play 11 points better than average.
- Butler, Baron Davis, Gordon, Kaman and Gooden have been solid, playing 4 points better than average in 128 minutes.
- Butler, Davis, Gordon, Kaman and Smith have been great: In 53 min this lineup plays 18 points better than average.
- In 55 min with Outlaw and Gooden in and Kaman out the Clippers play 11 points better than average.
Building around the things that work should enable the Clippers to win some games. Perhaps then LeBron can be convinced that a nucleus of Kaman, Gordon, Outlaw, and Baron and a coach of his choosing is where he wants to land in 2010.
Winston fails to mention Blake Griffin, who should only add to the Clippers’ future.
ADDENDUM
Haralabos Voulgaris e-mails:
There is really nothing meaningful Adjusted numbers can determine from such small samples, his biggest minute sample is 128 minutes and you really can’t do anything to predict future success on a sample that small, in fact even using a whole season’s worth of your most-used lineup. For instance, in 2009 Boston’s most-used lineup played 4267 possessions (their starters). If you tried using one year of lineup data to predict future outcomes you would have faired much worse than using two full seasons’ worth of lineup data. I’d have a hard time stating with any level of authority any findings better than or worse than average using one full season of data, without a very sophisticated modeling technique. I can’t imagine using the clearest of crystal balls could draw any conclusions using 100 minutes of data.
