Lance Stephenson to Start at SF in Opener

[og15]

I was initially partial towards Johnson, but after watching the mess that was the bench, I'm content with this set-up.

Due to the alternative being a bench 1-3 of Austin/Crawford/Lance where it just looks like three guys fighting for their isolation time, I like this lineup. Out of those three guys, Lance is the only one that can play SF, and to me you have to seperate those guys.

Similar to Jamal, Lance ends up taking a backseat when playing next to CP and Blake, as they should, and that has reigned him in. He's able to attack closeouts as a slasher, and hopefully he can focus on defending and rebounding.

It would be nice to have him hit the three point shot like he did in 13-14, and his combined 3PT% from 12-13 to 13-14 on 432 3PA was 34.3% 3PT, and that would also be an acceptable range for him to land in.

What happened to this?
https://youtu.be/Npcj9WLml2M?t=284

Defensively, Lance has tools. He's a good on ball defender, but of course defense requires more than just on ball abilities, but that in itself can be valuable for this team if he commits to it.

[Lindecision]

i'm not sure he was ever a lockdown defender in indiana. from what i recall his metrics don't point toward that and more point to him being ok.

for all the hype that doc and some other media guys give him, he is definitely overrated. but he has some strengths and in a focused role in the starting unit i think he can maintain that bulldog mentality to our benefit, while reducing his off-ball weaknesses.

Well, from what I remember Lance as a Pacer was a lock-down 1 on 1 defender but his team defense let him down. I don't know, I could be wrong. Lance as a Pacer flourished in a limited role, which is looking like its what he's gonna have here from now on. I definitely think he can be a lot more effective for this team than Matt Barnes, on both ends.

[BlzMwt]

^barnes was a really good cutter tough, which i don't think lance is as skilled at

if lance isn't able to hit open shots AND doesn't cut well, he's gonna hurt the floor spacing unless he's the one with the ball in his hands but in that case, he's taking away usage from paul and griffin which is a negative

[QRich3]

Yeah Lance is a mess off the ball, both on offense and on defense. I'm afraid we're gonna miss Barnes a lot more than we think.

This is why I didn't like the trade, and why I hoped Crawford would be traded and Rivers signing somewhere else. You can't play with half your team only being useful with the ball in their hands. Lance should be the playmaker of the 2nd unit, but because Crawford and Austin are only good at that very thing, he has no room there. So he's now in the starting unit where we have the best playmaking PG in the league and the best playmaking PF in the league. I really hope he doesn't mess up what we had with our starting unit, cause it's what made us special.

In Indiana he played with an off-ball PG in George Hill, a mostly off-ball franchise player in Paul George, and bigs who didn't need to have the ball either. This is different, here we are good because we have Paul and Griffin initiating everything.

Hopefully he'll help make the defense better by embracing the Tony Allen pit-bull role, and even if we stop having a top offense, we make up for it by having a good defense. Hanging back in the P&R and being more conservative should help there too. But I'm not much of an optimist if I'm honest.

[nickhx2]

my guess as to why lance's defensive ratings were marginally positive was because his unfocused off-ball team defense ate up most of what he brought one on one.

i think even if he doesn't shoot that well from 3 it's not great but it's kindaaaaaa ok because he's still very good with the p/r. so if he still ends up sucking, the spacing isn't gonna change because nobody guarded barnes at the 3 anyway, and he'll either have a lot of space to drive or he can just re-initiate a p/r all day. rondo's biggest flaw was that he couldn't shoot, but he made up for it by being aggressive with the extra space he was given, and i think lance can do that as well.

just saying, obviously it's not ideal if he is sub 30% from three but at least he'll still give us things to work with as a starter. more ideally we should just ship out crawford and put lance back on the bench, but we all know that's not happening. i hope doc takes note how much better the offense looked with crawford out for the past couple games.

[og15]

Yeah Lance is a mess off the ball, both on offense and on defense. I'm afraid we're gonna miss Barnes a lot more than we think.

This is why I didn't like the trade, and why I hoped Crawford would be traded and Rivers signing somewhere else. You can't play with half your team only being useful with the ball in their hands. Lance should be the playmaker of the 2nd unit, but because Crawford and Austin are only good at that very thing, he has no room there. So he's now in the starting unit where we have the best playmaking PG in the league and the best playmaking PF in the league. I really hope he doesn't mess up what we had with our starting unit, cause it's what made us special.

In Indiana he played with an off-ball PG in George Hill, a mostly off-ball franchise player in Paul George, and bigs who didn't need to have the ball either. This is different, here we are good because we have Paul and Griffin initiating everything.

Hopefully he'll help make the defense better by embracing the Tony Allen pit-bull role, and even if we stop having a top offense, we make up for it by having a good defense. Hanging back in the P&R and being more conservative should help there too. But I'm not much of an optimist if I'm honest.

Luckily Lance can't play poorly enough to make the teams offense not be a top offense. At worst the team will still have a top 5 offense, so if that can truly be balanced than something a lot better than the 16th ranked defense of last season, with better and more versatile one on one defenders, then I'd say that is a positive in the end.

Whether that balance can be achieved though, we'll see...

[QRich3]

Wish I was that sure! Even if everything were to go right for us, there's gonna be a few teams with improved offenses in the league this year, Warriors, Cavs, Thunder, I can see them all overtaking us. Even the Wizards if the pace-n-space style they've been running this pre-season works out as it looks it will. If we start having problems, I can see half a dozen more overtaking us.

Our defense should improve just by the virtue of playing more conservative as Doc said we would, and as we have been in the bit of pre-season I saw. If Lance can help shoulder some of the load, awesome, but I don't really see him as a difference maker except the nights he's guarding one of the superstar wings and gets motivated by the spotlight.

[TucsonClip]

This shot chart details Wes' shooting with the Lakers. I wrote about him a few weeks ago and still think Wes can give us 75% of what Barnes did last year (outside of his slashing/cutting ability).

That said, I would like to see Wes/Pierce start and Lance be sub #1 at SG/SF.

http://clipperholics.com/2015/09/26/clippers-start-paul-pierce-vs-wesley-johnson/

[nickhx2]

those are some impressive numbers for wes. my guess is we'll find out pretty quickly if lance at SF is a good thing or not, and if not wes will switched in and given a good chance.

[mkwest]

true about Lance being the bigger investment, and also true that the other starting 4 are good enough to plug in just about any wing player currently in NBA and be okay, but let me play a little devil's advocate here.

with Pierce, even if we want him to be our starter, his body won't hold up for 82 game season anymore. hell he is only a few years junior to myself and I can't even play a pickup game with my daughter for more than 15 minutes at a time. but we need him come playoffs and I'm sure every one of us in this forum agree that Pierce's old ass legs must be preserved for the end of the season affairs.

Wes is surely a single year investment, and yeah if he works out here with the starters he maybe looking for a big payday elsewhere, but same goes for Lance. Wes is a single year deal? well isn't lance on a team option after this season? so isn't that eventually a wash in terms of being single year deals and if Wes performs and gets something close to what Lance is supposed to be getting next year, I bet Wes will be more than stoked. on the other hand, if we have to coddle Lance to play up to near his contract's worth, I dunno man. I would have to ask, do you want a guy over performing his cheap single year contract or do you want a guy who underperforms his much bigger contract?

having said all this, all can be forgiven regardless of what their value per dollar was for this season if we win it all.

nothing but respect, MK. you know I just like to dissect and debate for the intellectual exercise of it. you still da man.

Likewise Neddy.

Coming into the season, nobody has really proven that they straight out deserve a starting spot imo. There's consequences with whoever you go with. Pierce will have reduced minutes and hopefully have scheduled rests (i.e. sitting out b2b's). Many expected him to get the nod even if only out of respect. I think it was Austin that mentioned that if Pierce is willing to come off of the bench then nobody else should be complaining. Pierce is a leader by example and putting him with those guys at different points in the game could be beneficial to them. They lack discipline. Pierce will get his in the crunch with the starters, so it doesn't make that much of a difference for him to come off of the bench. With Pierce, it's not about how you start, but how you finish.

Wes could surprise us. When the topic of Wes being the Starter over Pierce first came up, I was open to it. I like some of what I've seen out of him at times in preseason. He does bring lengthy 3&D potential along with athleticism that is so coveted in the NBA. He just has to convert those 3's in the game. The knock on him over the years has been that he kills it in practice, but doesn't make them on game night. He had a career high of 36.9% 2 years ago, and I'd be very pleased if he could replicate or better that. If he can do that, he can be an asset to us whether he's starting or coming off the bench. I'm interested in seeing what he can do on a team that isn't bottom of the barrel.

Starting Lance puts him (and every other option for that matter) in a better position to succeed, but it also puts shooters onto the 2nd unit. There's more balance in the 2nd unit when you give them a couple of shooters that either aren't as ball dominant. The original premise was that we didn't have a traditional pg, but many that could handle spot duties handling the ball. The issue with the 2nd unit is that if you're not pushing the ball, then you're going to run into problems in the halfcourt. Putting one of Wes or Pierce with the 1st unit may make that unit slightly better, but having Lance start may be what's better for the team as a whole in terms of fit.

[madmaxmedia]

I think part of it is which do you think helps the first team more- someone to shoot open jumpers/3's, or someone to attack closeouts as a slasher? Forgetting about the actual 2 players in question, my feeling is that we already had a great spot-up shooter in Redick, so having a slasher/playmaker type would be better at the 3. But whatever type of player it is, being able to move off the ball is important too.

I think Lance has a much higher ceiling than Wes, but also a lower floor. Wes is not going to add a lot to the team, but he won't disrupt the offense either. Wes is not a bad shooter at the 3 but he brings very little else on offense, and at his age, he is who he is. I think Lance will have a somewhat short leash to show he can play the right way with the starters. If he does, then he's the obvious choice at 3. If not, they'll go back to Wes.

[Akklaim1]

My only concern is that he is undersized to be a SF in this league. At 6'5", he is gonna gonup against 6'8"-6'9" players.

[Ranma]

Sam Amick, USA Today (10/29/15)

Rivers, who did not know Stephenson previously, was the first to admit that the Clippers had to do more due diligence than normal. Whereas the normal background check would typically warrant approximately 20 phone calls to people who know the player well, Rivers and Clippers general manager Dave Wohl made 61 such inquiries during their research of Stephenson.

"I don't think we've ever made more (background) calls for a player in my life," Rivers said. "We had to make sure, but I've got to tell you that I'm really excited. It's one game (in the regular season), but I think he has a chance to be really disruptive to other teams. And what I love is he gives us another ball handler, and you can see that with the first group."
...

"Lance is good, man," Paul continued. "He's fun. He's got a big heart, a good spirit. I'm happy we got him."

The feeling, quite clearly, is mutual.

"The transition has been great for me," Stephenson told USA TODAY Sports. "All I have to do is be a lockdown defender, be a smart role player, and just make the shots that are open, that come to me. I don't have to do too much. We have a group of guys that already know how to play together. I've just got to be smart, and stick to my job."

Lance Stephenson Showing He May Be the Los Angeles Clippers X-Factor