FIRST ROUND PLAYOFF PREVIEW: Clippers vs Suns

[esqtvd]

[esqtvd]

I'm not listening to sportswriters' "expert" opinions on PG
they're just guessing, they don't know spit
the latest from PG himself

watch them play with his leg lol

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[ERClips]

Personally I like our chances on the road rather than home.

[Scoundreldays]

I think he comes back game 3

[MartinToVaught]

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All the pressure is on the Suns, and we all remember what happened last time the pressure was on them.

[Clemenza]

Suns lost a lot when they traded Bridges and Cameron Johnson to the Nets. Those were the guys that defended and made them really solid, especially Bridges. CP3 is almost a shell of himself and Ayton is soft asf. Our biggest worry imo is KD and/or Booker goin' off. They're real top heavy as their bench is suspect. Clipps in 6!

[madmaxmedia]

Russ and Bones need to be attacking Cockpuncher as much as possible, hammy out in 3 games.

[madmaxmedia]

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All the pressure is on the Suns, and we all remember what happened last time the pressure was on them.

Not sure if this is a boon or a curse, but there you go.

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[donemilio21]

.

Not sure if this is a boon or a curse, but there you go.

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I think this guy is the Jim Cramer of basketball. if he chose Clippers, put your bets on the Suns

[og15]

Suns lost a lot when they traded Bridges and Cameron Johnson to the Nets. Those were the guys that defended and made them really solid, especially Bridges. CP3 is almost a shell of himself and Ayton is soft asf. Our biggest worry imo is KD and/or Booker goin' off. They're real top heavy as their bench is suspect. Clipps in 6!

Johnson is an okay defender, but nothing special, they mainly just missed depth without him when he was out.

Bridges and Crowder were their defensive guys, and I agree, without Bridges, they lost an important go to man defender. Now, Okogie is actually a very solid defender, though much weaker on offense, but if course KD makes up for that.

Okogie will obviously guard Kawhi, if PG was still playing, Clippers could at least force one of Booker / KD to work more guarding him. We'll see what the George situation ends up being.

Ayton gets a lot of dismissal, some fair, but some excessive making him less than he is. Supposedly he was playing a lot of the season injured. Looking through his season numbers, and breaking it down, lost in the Bridges offensive explosion and subsequent trade was the fact that Ayton after he was supposedly no longer healing up averaged 19/10 on 60% FG over the last 27 games and averaged 23/11 on 61% FG from the end of January to end of February.

There's a decent chance Ayton puts up pretty big numbers in this series and people (Clippers fans) are hating on Zubac (or Plumlee or both) while not really noticing the details that Ayton is feeding off the attention being placed on Durant, Booker and then even CP getting into the mid-range and Zubac and Plumlee having to help or shade or stunt are giving openings to Ayton out of necessity of the defense. Instead they will interpret it as the C's not defending well or whatever other simple solution there is.

It's the double whammy for C's. They help and get blasted for their man getting points and offensive rebounds. They stay home and people complain they aren't helping enough. There will need to be a lot of helping of the helper and getting a body in the big.


According to BBallRef, the Suns have a +13.6 NetRtg with KD on the court. The individual player he's played the most with on the Suns is CP3, a lot of those minutes also include Booker, and they are +16.7 pts/100 with the two man combo of CP/Durant which roughly represents their starting lineup.

The Clippers 5 man unit with Westbrook/Gordon/Leonard/Batum/Zubac is +14.7 pts/100. Now the sample size is 69 minutes compared to 193 minutes of the Suns Paul/Durant combo, so obviously it has less predictive value. Clippers two man unit of Westbrook/Leonard is only +2.8 pts/100.

Basically the Clippers will likely need the bench to do a lot of work with PG out in order to keep up, unless they have some strategic secret in the works.

[esqtvd]

Suns lost a lot when they traded Bridges and Cameron Johnson to the Nets. Those were the guys that defended and made them really solid, especially Bridges. CP3 is almost a shell of himself and Ayton is soft asf. Our biggest worry imo is KD and/or Booker goin' off. They're real top heavy as their bench is suspect. Clipps in 6!

Johnson is an okay defender, but nothing special, they mainly just missed depth without him when he was out.

Bridges and Crowder were their defensive guys, and I agree, without Bridges, they lost an important go to man defender. Now, Okogie is actually a very solid defender, though much weaker on offense, but if course KD makes up for that.

Okogie will obviously guard Kawhi, if PG was still playing, Clippers could at least force one of Booker / KD to work more guarding him. We'll see what the George situation ends up being.

Ayton gets a lot of dismissal, some fair, but some excessive making him less than he is. Supposedly he was playing a lot of the season injured. Looking through his season numbers, and breaking it down, lost in the Bridges offensive explosion and subsequent trade was the fact that Ayton after he was supposedly no longer healing up averaged 19/10 on 60% FG over the last 27 games and averaged 23/11 on 61% FG from the end of January to end of February.

There's a decent chance Ayton puts up pretty big numbers in this series and people (Clippers fans) are hating on Zubac (or Plumlee or both) while not really noticing the details that Ayton is feeding off the attention being placed on Durant, Booker and then even CP getting into the mid-range and Zubac and Plumlee having to help or shade or stunt are giving openings to Ayton out of necessity of the defense. Instead they will interpret it as the C's not defending well or whatever other simple solution there is.

It's the double whammy for C's. They help and get blasted for their man getting points and offensive rebounds. They stay home and people complain they aren't helping enough. There will need to be a lot of helping of the helper and getting a body in the big.


According to BBallRef, the Suns have a +13.6 NetRtg with KD on the court. The individual player he's played the most with on the Suns is CP3, a lot of those minutes also include Booker, and they are +16.7 pts/100 with the two man combo of CP/Durant which roughly represents their starting lineup.

The Clippers 5 man unit with Westbrook/Gordon/Leonard/Batum/Zubac is +14.7 pts/100. Now the sample size is 69 minutes compared to 193 minutes of the Suns Paul/Durant combo, so obviously it has less predictive value. Clippers two man unit of Westbrook/Leonard is only +2.8 pts/100.

Basically the Clippers will likely need the bench to do a lot of work with PG out in order to keep up, unless they have some strategic secret in the works.

Great post.

Kawhi's +/- has been uncharacteristically up-and-down over the past 2 months--he's usually always top of the chart. Over the last 10 games he's about 5th. His offense has been fine but I think he's been cruising just a bit on the other end. At least I hope so--with PG out we're down a premier defender and the Suns have TWO megascorers in Booker and KD.

My eye test AND the stats suggest he's been cruising in the first half--he's actually MINUS-2.3 per 100 [letting Westbrook do the heavy lifting?] but plus+13.3 in the second half.

Anyway I'm hoping that we haven't seen Kawhi at full tilt yet and he's going to hit the jets now that the REAL season has started. And Westbrook averages 17 mpg in the first half and only 12 mpg in the second, so hopefully we're not depending on that KL-RW duo as our main hope.

[sonnyhill]

Even with smaller player rotations in the playoffs, the Clippers are deeper and more athletic than the Suns.

It would make sense to force KD to have to play on both ends of the floor where when the Clippers are on defense, they would switch on every pick-and-roll involving KD as well as sometimes going box-and-one with Russ and Kawaii taking turns playing on KD. On offense, the Clippers should run whomever KD is guarding off of multiple on-ball and off-ball picks with the goal of fatiquing KD.

Also, Russ should have the green light to attack Paul's defense every chance that Russ gets.

I do not see how either Booker or KD can physically match up defensively on Kawaii, especially as Kawaii picks them apart with his mid-range game.

[esqtvd]

It is very good advising to the basketball here!

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[MartinToVaught]

How long did it take you to find the one tweet of anyone advocating for Morris to play?

[esqtvd]

frankly I didn't even notice the Morris mention lol

lighten up Francis it's a joke

Clippers win the series against suns if TY Lue will not traitor the clippers team!

[playaloc916]

If the team limits turnovers, doesn't get demolished on the glass, and the bench picks up the scoring slack, it should be a pretty competitive series. All the pressure is on the Suns. Clips just need to keep themselves in striking distance, and see if Lue has been saving something extra for the playoffs.

- Russ has done a good job playing within his role. I think he knows what's at stake and will have a good series. Hopefully going against KD and CP will give him extra motivation.

- Norm has to ball out. He has to average 20 a game. With PG out, he has to pick up most of the scoring slack.

- I think Bones can be an x-factor. We haven't seen enough of him to know what he's truly capable of, so might as well see it in the biggest stage. His interviews sound encouraging.

- Bigs have to limit the number of offensive rebounds Ayton gets. I recall he was just feasting during the last playoff series.

- T-Mann and EJ should be drawing the toughest defensive assignments. Kawhi needs to conserve energy for the offensive end. The team overall has been disappointing on the defensive end, that has to change.

- This would be the perfect time for those random 3-point explosions from RiCo.

[Roscoe Sheed]

I hope they have a good game plan about the middle pick and roll- the suns have great mid-range shooters in cp3, Booker, Durant and ayton. I know the modern nba game plan is to give up the midrange on defense, but that would be a very poor strategy against the suns

[esqtvd]

yay no matinee

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[og15]

Even with smaller player rotations in the playoffs, the Clippers are deeper and more athletic than the Suns.

It would make sense to force KD to have to play on both ends of the floor where when the Clippers are on defense, they would switch on every pick-and-roll involving KD as well as sometimes going box-and-one with Russ and Kawaii taking turns playing on KD. On offense, the Clippers should run whomever KD is guarding off of multiple on-ball and off-ball picks with the goal of fatiquing KD.

Also, Russ should have the green light to attack Paul's defense every chance that Russ gets.

I do not see how either Booker or KD can physically match up defensively on Kawaii, especially as Kawaii picks them apart with his mid-range game.

Okogie and Craig will guard Kawhi. Booker or KD will probably barely be on him except on switches. Of course the issue we're worried about is that Kawhi alone can't singlehandedly match the offensive firepower that they possess.

I hope they have a good game plan about the middle pick and roll- the suns have great mid-range shooters in cp3, Booker, Durant and ayton. I know the modern nba game plan is to give up the midrange on defense, but that would be a very poor strategy against the suns

Yea, Suns are one team that can burn you from the mid-range, but it will depend on what the alternative option is. The best plan of course is playing off Okogie and making some of the looks for the other guys be Okogie shots (hopefully he shoots and doesn't drive). If the Clippers lose because Okogie (or Craig) get hot from 3PT, that's just life, you take it.

The defensive strategy is make Okogie shoot IMO, but of course that's always easier said than done. We want double digit FGA from Okogie (I'm assuming Phoenix doesn't want that on their end)

As a starter he's shot 38/37 for them, BUT he's super streaky and the right guy to force shots to.

[Cyclips]

yay no matinee

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Of course the NBA put the Lakers in the marque timeslot on ABC.