Dr Positivity wrote:While this is a very good post, I’m not surprised the Clippers at all did well on offense. Prime Blake is one of the best offensive bigs in the league while being mediocre at best on D, and they have other shooters like Redick and Crawford not known for defense. Deandre got a pretty fraudulent DPOY but he always seemed like the type of guy that’s overrated on defense, active from a rebounding/defensive perspective, but not really positionally IQ friendly. In some ways he is valuable on offense getting lots of Oreb and ultra high efficiency. In my opinion they also carried themselves like an offensive first team to me... I believe there are going to be some teams that have worse offenses because they’re burning their legs out on defense and grinding it out with opponents, and other teams that are going to play a finesse skill friendly style, maybe a little bit soft (not because of CP3). I felt like the Clippers were closer to the latter and it’s one of the reasons they didn’t break through in the playoffs.
With that said CP3’s offensive on/off supports he was that good in the regular season, and if anything it just gives more credit to him that the Clippers were good defensively many of their years despite not really having the roster for it, and if one assumes Deandre is overrated on that end. Still, one can say CP3 is a top 20 all time regular season player but not a top 20 player when considering the playoffs
I've always tried to bring attention to the fact that the Clippers failed on defence, not on offence in the playoffs. And to an extent, I understand if people are lower on CP3's playoff defence than his regular season defence. I actually somewhat critique the Clippers' make up, because there's evidence that CP3 would benefit more from better defensive players around him, rather than offensively inclined players.
His best offensive teammates were Griffin, Redick and Jordan, right (and let's just not suggest Crawford here - his 48 TS% and marginal playmaking do
not warrant a good playoff player)? If I look at the same period from before (2013-2017) where CP3 played well in the playoffs, this is what I find:
CP3 with all 3 on the court: 707 minutes, 110.6 ORTG, 26.8 PP100, 57.5 TS%
CP3 with 2 of the 3 on the court: 449 minutes, 113.9 ORTG, 33.1 PP100, 60.6 TS%
CP3 with 1 of the 3 on the court: 307 minutes, 113.1 ORTG, 37.6 PP100, 62.4 TS%
CP3 with none of the 3 on the court: 63 minutes, 115.7 ORTG, 39.7 PP100, 66.7 TS%
Now in no way do I think that the offence is expected to be better without Griffin/Redick/Jordan on the court, and there are all sorts of small-sample-size/opponent quality qualifiers here, but this indicates that there's a good reason to believe that CP3 didn't
need all of this firepower to have a solid offence.
CP3's on/off court ORTG in the playoffs was 112.3 with him on, and 104.3 with him off. In games that CP3 played, the off ORTG drops to 103.3.
CP3 without Blake had 110.7 ORTG, Blake without CP3 had 103 ORTG. With both, 112.8.
CP3 without Redick had 111.5 ORTG, Redick without CP3 had 105.3 ORTG. With both, 112.8.
CP3 without DeAndre had 121.7 ORTG, DeAndre without CP3 had 106.1. With both, 109.9.
Note the trend? Without CP3, the Clippers were decent on offence (don't forget, they played some real tough defensive teams here, ~102 defensive rating) and absolutely elite with him, almost irrespective of whomever he played alongside.
Now, even if a larger sample would create a bit more sense (i.e. the ORTGs without the other offensive stars might be a bit lower than what they are) and that
does place a larger creative burden on CP3, the evidence here ties in with the fact that CP3 has been able to turn it up when required, health permitted of course.
On defence, the Clippers have had a DRTG of 109.2 with him, and 110.8 without him. Blake has 109.4 and 110.3 here, Redick has 109.3 and 110.3, DeAndre 109.7 and 109.8.
Of the higher minutes players during that Clippers run, CP3 has the second best defensive on/off at -1.6 to only Matt Barnes (-5.05) and a few guys with some
really bad on/offs - eg Crawford +5.40, Rivers +6.40.
So, CP3's defensive impact numbers are a bit weaker than they are during the regular season (-2.1) but still okay, and this coincides with a period where his DRAPM ranks 20th in the regular season (+3.76) in the Ryan Davis RAPM. Of course, the Clippers overall playoff defence is pretty bad anyway.
We've seen CP3 have insane defensive impact in the playoffs at certain junctions, e.g. he was amazing in Houston on defence with a smarter set of defensive teammates.
So, I do accept the notion that eminence brought up earlier - his defensive impact may have been "worse" in the playoffs, but it was still the best of the Clippers predominant players (and
way better than the "dead weight" and "old Celtics alumni" players that showed up a lot during that period, so I don't personally knock him down
too much. I do think that a different overall team makeup may have changed things considerably for the Clippers. It's easy to look at offensive help and go, "he failed with all that offensive help!" but changing some of that offence for defence may have made the Clippers a better team.
Of course, the big disclaimer here is that most of this musing is under the pretence of a healthy CP3, which has been the largest criticism/falling of him in the playoffs anyway.
