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Clips' fine line between elite and excellent

When the Clippers were plowing through an undefeated December, there were a number of popular points in favor of calling them contenders. For a while, they were the only team in the league that had both a top-5 efficient offense and a top-5 efficient defense. The Clippers’ locker room was the happiest place on earth, with players’ sons trading a little trash talk with Blake Griffin and generally being endearing and hilarious. There were two well-defined five-man units, each thriving and learning each other’s tendencies. The team’s flaws were very manageable, and its combination of athleticism and confidence intimidated opponents.

The electricity generated from the collective buzz is important for a team’s psyche, but you can take only so much satisfaction from the drubbing of a lottery-bound team ranked in the bottom third of the league in both offensive and defensive efficiency. A win over Memphis on Wednesday night would be a helpful salve, but the shadows of recent home losses to San Antonio and Oklahoma City will recede only so far. That’s when the whispers started that the Clippers are just shy of elite, that there’s no shame in being the fourth- or fifth-best team in basketball, but that might not get you past a conference semifinals.

That’s the pressure that hangs over the Clippers now, even as they win three out of every four games. Barring a collapse by San Antonio (which will be without Tony Parker for another three weeks) or Oklahoma City, the Clippers will have to outperform their seeding and pull off an upset against an elite opponent to exceed what they achieved in the 2012 postseason.

Kevin Arnovitz, ESPN

The Fundamentals: Clips need further evolution from Blake Griffin to contend

All of which brings us to the Clippers’ Blake Griffin — a consensus star, albeit one whose role and capabilities seem particularly misunderstood. Griffin is not his team’s best player, but he bears the burden of his amazing athletic ability; a big man so quick and so explosive would seem capable of doing anything, and thus Griffin is largely expected to do everything. Even Clippers teammate Chris Paul expects the world of Griffin, despite the fact that the 23-year-old big man is still finding his way through the league.

And given the lack of systemic help from Del Negro and his staff, that’s exactly what the Clippers need. The more hats that Griffin can wear within L.A.’s offense the better, as every new dimension will bring with it a new set of valuable alternatives. That versatility is the real measure of Griffin’s offensive value, and of far greater reward than topping some arbitrary 20-points-per-game standard. The Clippers need Griffin’s work as a roll threat, which forces opposing defenses to collapse and opens up room for shooters all over the floor. They need Griffin’s off-ball movement, which so often helps to extract value from a busted possession. They need his unconventional post-up game, his emerging mid-range jumper and his stellar-for-his-position playmaking. The scoring itself is nice, but it’s hardly as nice as the wealth of ways in which Griffin can attack opponents:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpB-wwkrFME[/youtube]

In that, Griffin’s ability to live up to a lofty defensive standard may be most important of all. He’ll rely on his teammates plenty on that end of the floor, but the responsibilities of his position leave him little choice but to be aggressive and engaged at all times. There are no breaks and there will be no respite; Griffin has to be consistently terrific in rotation if the Clippers are going to seriously contend on the level of the Spurs or the Thunder. Anything else would create too many problems in a potential playoff series against an upper-echelon team. That’s quite a charge, but one suiting the confidence the Clippers have in Griffin’s overall development.

Rob Mahoney, Sports Illustrated

Clippers must figure out a way to improve

"Regular-season games are regular-season games," forward Blake Griffin said. "It's important to win them, but the games we're looking forward to are the games in the playoffs."

In the short-term, sole possession of the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference playoffs was on the line, and in the bigger picture, the Clippers needed to get a victory over a West playoff team, something they haven't done since before the All-Star break. In fact, the Clippers are 0-6 against teams seeded sixth or higher in the West since Jan. 14. In other words, they're 0-6 over the past two months against teams they could face in the first round of the playoffs.

"We need to start beating some of the upper-echelon teams," Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro said. "We haven't done that. I'd like to see us play with an edge and with an intensity of what's at stake. Our guys know that. Talking about it is one thing, but we have to go out there and perform. We've won some games of late, but we've lost to a few top-tier teams and that doesn't sit well with me or anyone on this team."

"One of my old coaches used to tell me and another player that you're pretty good as is, but I'm going to need you to be 1 percent better," Chris Paul said. "I got to be better, Blake has to be better, everybody has to be better."

"I couldn't care less what seed we are," Paul said. "We need to be playing the right way when the time comes and we're not there yet."

"I don't know what it is," DeAndre Jordan said. "But we have to figure out soon what it is or it's going to be a quick postseason."

Arash Markazi, ESPN Los Angeles