RealGM

So a discussion in the CP3 thread on the player comparisons board got me thinking about this. Rotations shorten in the post-season. Let's make the assumption that Blake is back and healthy in the post-season, how could the Clippers maximize their production via the rotations.

The thought that keeps coming up for me is Pierce. What do you do with Pierce? Generally you want to shorten your rotation to about 8-9 players, but with this roster, it is quite hard to see how Doc is going to pull that off. A rotation like this make sense:

Starters:
Paul (PG - 35) / Redick (SG -29) / Mbah (SF - 14) / Griffin (PF - 35, C - 3) / DJ (C -35)

Mbah's minutes are very flexible, it is based on the opponents, how they are playing him, etc, but he's a guy whose minute probably decrease in the post-season. You can always quickly pull him and put Green in. Maybe Doc decides to start Green, we'll see (assuming Blake gets healthy). Griffin will probably be used at C in some short spurt small ball lineups, maybe about 2-3 mpg.


Bench:
Rivers (PG - 13) / Crawford (SG - 19, SF - 5) / Johnson (SF - 16) / Green (SF - 13 PF - 13 ) / Aldrich (C - 10)

This is obviously still a 10 man rotation, and the problem is that of course it is hard to see Pierce totally removed from the rotation, but the reality is that while Green is nothing special, I'd rather see him there. Realistically for me also, that's probably too many minutes for Jamal, and I don't love the 3 guard lineups with Jamal at SF, but based on what we've seen, it is likely.

What do you guys think should and will be the Clippers general playoff rotation? Will Doc cut it down to about 8-9 players, meaning probably someone like Aldrich just plays spot minutes and the bench lineups are mainly small ball? Will he keep 10 guys in the rotation? What happens with Pierce, and how do you even fit him in?

i just don't see how aldrich gets any minutes in the postseason. doc stumbled onto him earlier in the season, got some good use out of him but he's now pretty much just an afterthought while crawford and austin throw up all kinds of incomprehensible shots. doc will take small ball to the grave.

and it just seems that the fact of the matter is pierce will get playoff minutes because of who he once was.

also i can see luc getting his minutes reduced in favor of, or even marginalized completely out of the rotation for jeff green, which would be pretty painful. so end on end i think 9-ish guys with luc and cole getting phased out completely. or maybe wes instead.

Doc is not going to DNP his best friend Pierce. At all. Doc fears that the Clippers will lose in embarrassing fashion if Pierce doesn't start.

Doc Rivers is 59-47 in the playoffs when Pierce is a starter, with one sweep, three conference finals visits, two Finals visits and a championship.

Doc Rivers is 18-24 in the playoffs when Pierce isn't there. He has two 3-1 collapses, and has a ceiling of a 2nd round exit. He has never made the conference finals by himself.

Doc weighs the fate of the playoffs upon friendships. He'll favor Paul Pierce for being a former member of the Big 3 Celtics, Jeff Green for being a former Celtic, Jamal Crawford for having defeated Doc's Big 3 Celtics before, and his son Austin. Favoritism will be Doc's undoing. And if they do lose to the Warriors, he'll pull the ultimate moves for Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony and DeMarcus Cousins, using Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan as his immunity idol.

I assume the goal is to win and with that being said you have to forget about favorites. if blake makes it back his minutes will be limited to start. I believe cp3, and jj have to go 35 plus depending on how the game is going. dj has to do more in the 37 plus range. you know pp and jamal are going to play because of experience in nothing else. if it were me I would start green and see if he can do something. I do not like the idea but you really have no choice. luc can not score at all and there for not much help. wes is useless at this point. I am sure austin will play I just hope it is not much. i think cole has a part in this and hope he does well. I see doc playing 10 guys but the bottom line is the starters have to have the biggest share of the time.

the goal is to win and you are supposed to forget about favorites.

but we are talking about doc rivers here. and we are talking about a doc rivers who has a paul pierce and jamal crawford on his team at the same time.

For the last 3-weeks, I've worked 7-days a week, for about 9hrs a day. I've done this because I realize that the job won't get done if I leave it up to the people around me...so I'm putting in the extra time to get us over the hump.

If CP3 wants to be a champion, he's going to have to play 43 minutes a game.

It's not fair, it's not right, we all wish things were different -- but it is what it is. He can play his usual 37 minutes and watch Austin dribble the ball off of his foot every night, or he can put in some overtime and give us a real shot to win a title.

We can sit here all night punching our calculators for the perfect allocation of minutes, but any rotation will be formidable if CP3 is on the floor.

DLaren wrote:For the last 3-weeks, I've worked 7-days a week, for about 9hrs a day. I've done this because I realize that the job won't get done if I leave it up to the people around me...so I'm putting in the extra time to get us over the hump.

If CP3 wants to be a champion, he's going to have to play 43 minutes a game.

It's not fair, it's not right, we all wish things were different -- but it is what it is. He can play his usual 37 minutes and watch Austin dribble the ball off of his foot every night, or he can put in some overtime and give us a real shot to win a title.

We can sit here all night punching our calculators for the perfect allocation of minutes, but any rotation will be formidable if CP3 is on the floor.

Doc's not going to do that though, soo....

doc overplaying cp3 in game 6 is part of why we had no chance at the end.

In order for us to win it all, CP, Blake & DJ need to have a full tank of fuel going into 2nd round / WCF. I think the goal should be to get our bench good enough so that we don't have to shorten our rotation until the 2nd round. Not even the Point God can sustain a possible 20+ game run of 40+mpg and put up the clutch numbers we WILL need him to put up in order to win it all.

CP-JJ-Luc-BG-DJ
what I want from there on, is

Pablo-Wes-PP-Cole

what will happen is

Austin-Jamal-Green-PP

Luc is probably gonna fall completely out of the rotation against good teams. Maybe not in the first round, but if they get to play against the Warriors, they are very aggressive in forcing guys like him off the floor. Pablo is nearly out of the rotation already, and Pierce will surely fall completely out of it, or play just a few spot minutes.

So it will probably be Paul/JJ/Green/Blake/DJ with Austin/Jamal/Wes/Cole coming off the bench. That's the way I see it playing out.

I think you are right on Q. the exception would be wes with pp getting a few more minutes. doc will use him, jamal, and austin until they play us out of the playoffs. the sorry for the negative but doc just does not get it sometimes. this team needs more discipline from the everyone not named cp3 and jj.

og15 wrote:

DLaren wrote:For the last 3-weeks, I've worked 7-days a week, for about 9hrs a day. I've done this because I realize that the job won't get done if I leave it up to the people around me...so I'm putting in the extra time to get us over the hump.

If CP3 wants to be a champion, he's going to have to play 43 minutes a game.

It's not fair, it's not right, we all wish things were different -- but it is what it is. He can play his usual 37 minutes and watch Austin dribble the ball off of his foot every night, or he can put in some overtime and give us a real shot to win a title.

We can sit here all night punching our calculators for the perfect allocation of minutes, but any rotation will be formidable if CP3 is on the floor.

Doc's not going to do that though, soo....

It's a players league, if CP3 insisted on carrying more of the burden nobody would be able to stop him from doing so.

Iverson played about 42 minutes a game when he was making his deep playoff runs. CP3 is 30, but we're not asking him to play as erratically as Iverson did -- we're not even asking him to carry the scoring load, we just need his basketball IQ on the floor for 43 minutes a night.

If Doc has to play his son meaningful minutes he can move Austin to the 2-Guard when he shares the floor with CP3.

iverson was also probably the worst defender at PG of all time and put all his energy into offense. i also don't recall him being all that efficient.

furthermore, teams are smarter about minute management of their stars than they were before. just because lots of players ran up the minutes back then doesn't mean they necessarily should now.


and it's not just that. don't forget what doc rivers does. your deity of a coach basically thinks it's ok for jamal crawford to take the reins and be lead ball-handler and decision maker when cp3 is on the court and tired. we've seen for years now that this is a foolish strategy but it's one that rivers has leaned on time and time again. it's just insanity to think that cp3 can play for 40+ minutes a night.

it won't work the way you think it will. we saw what a tired cp3 looked like last year and that was an ineffective one.

the only thing that matters to me is CP3, Blake, and DJ being healthy for the playoffs. Whenever CP3 tries to push himself, he pull his hammy or junk.EVERY SINGLE TIME.

yep.

tired cp3's generally equal injured cp3's. that's part of why blake being out for so long is kind of scary. if the team tries to jockey for that 3rd seed and overplays cp3, there is a reasonable vulnerability there the team has to worry about.

DLaren wrote:

og15 wrote:

DLaren wrote:For the last 3-weeks, I've worked 7-days a week, for about 9hrs a day. I've done this because I realize that the job won't get done if I leave it up to the people around me...so I'm putting in the extra time to get us over the hump.

If CP3 wants to be a champion, he's going to have to play 43 minutes a game.

It's not fair, it's not right, we all wish things were different -- but it is what it is. He can play his usual 37 minutes and watch Austin dribble the ball off of his foot every night, or he can put in some overtime and give us a real shot to win a title.

We can sit here all night punching our calculators for the perfect allocation of minutes, but any rotation will be formidable if CP3 is on the floor.

Doc's not going to do that though, soo....

It's a players league, if CP3 insisted on carrying more of the burden nobody would be able to stop him from doing so.

Iverson played about 42 minutes a game when he was making his deep playoff runs. CP3 is 30, but we're not asking him to play as erratically as Iverson did -- we're not even asking him to carry the scoring load, we just need his basketball IQ on the floor for 43 minutes a night.

If Doc has to play his son meaningful minutes he can move Austin to the 2-Guard when he shares the floor with CP3.

Iverson is not a great comparison. The East was so weak that the Sixers opponent in the ECF wasn't even as good as the Clippers first round opponent in just about each of the previous 4 seasons, That team won games where Iverson would shoot like 5/27 and have under 20 pts because they were an elite defense and the opponents are not the same caliber as what the Clippers are playing.

This is also a different league where teams are more cognizant of minutes played, and it's not a slow paced iso game like the late 90's / early 2000's (mainly in the East) where you could just rely on one star isolating all game and if you were lucky, good defense.

All that would happen with this strategy is a tired and less effective CP to end games while the other team's best players will be more rested and more productive.