Doctor MJ wrote:It's a bit unclassy to make the post I did after one game, and I'm a little embarrassed by it to be honest, but I've just been in conversations with folks telling me that Paul's teammates are awful from the 3 despite me pointing out that the Clippers have been elite from the 3 according to the data all year. I just detect a stereotypical perspective of people arguing for the guy leading the worse team: "Ugh look at how awful everyone around him is?". And I'm just pointing out: They aren't perfect, but people need to be able to keep perspective and see the good as well as the bad. We've seen what Chris Paul's teams do when he has a weak supporting cast, these Clippers are far better than that, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.
Nah don't sweat it, I just thought it was a bit premature, but I see where you're coming from. To be honest, the Griffin/Jordan/Redick/Barnes is an awesome offensive core with some fit problems but lots of talent. Problem is, they're a bad defensive unit, and what's behind them is even worse (on both ends). So I see where who was arguing with you comes from too: Curry and Harden are guys that carry their team's offense, but they are carried to be good teams by great defensive units. Paul doesn't have that luxury, he is able to get his team to be a better offensive team than those two, but the Clippers are a worse/similar team because they aren't good defensively. And there's not a lot neither of those 3 guys can do to significantly improve their team on that end.
Doctor MJ wrote:Re: Jordan. My issues with Jordan are specific. They at times are big enough he's hurting his team so I'm not saying they are minor, but I don't think there's any doubt that he at times can be quite helpful. My howling reaction to Jordan really came because of Doc: I think it's so problematic to let a guy adopt a stat-heavy game and then praise him as the best defensive player in the world when he has clear weaknesses to work through...and to do it while he's a pending free agent. I'm not expecting Machiavellian feats of negging from Doc, but at this stage to me the market for Jordan is north of who he is as a player, and the Clippers may well be forced between offering him a deal large enough it keeps them from making any serious improvements to their team or letting him walk.
Yeah, your issue with Doc happens to a lot of people, that's often the problem when discussing the Clippers online: people evaluate the personalities before the actual performance. Not saying I don't understand it, but it should go separately. Anyway, we've already discussed this on the GB, but whatever fallacy Doc was selling worked to get Deandre 3rd in DPOY, and to evaluate the Clippers properly you still have to separate that from what he actually thinks. I know it's still early in the postseason, and a lot of people are gonna think I'm a homer or whatever, but I honestly think Doc's coaching so far this playoffs is among the very best of my time. He does intentionally cover and mask DJ's weaknesses, and puts his strengths to use pretty well, so it's not like he really believes what he says publicly. And I think by now, paying Jordan $19M is not that great of a problem, with the cap rising, his offensive level, and the hope that he's gonna get much better on defense. Which I think it's pretty realistic to think. And this takes me to my next point:
Doctor MJ wrote:Re: Harden. I'm in this weird boat with the Beard. I've been a proponent of his since his time in OKC, on record at the time saying I trade Westbrook before I gave up Harden, and often times defending him since then against people who to my mind just won't acknowledge his brilliance...
I think it shouldn't be fair to have this series count too much against Harden if he doesn't perform well. It's just a bad match up. For whatever reason, Doc and Frank understand very well how to stop him and how to funnel him to the spots he feels more uncomfortable at. Like yesterday, he had quite a few turnovers on side and high pick'n'rolls that were not completely his fault. Scouting was just really good and Jordan did a great job of anticipating the timing of Howard's roll/show, and it left Harden a few times with no option but force the issue. But that's not something that just happens to him, Doc did a similar thing to Curry in last year's round one, aggressively trapping him and taking him out of a few games.
Harden's defense though, there's no excuse for that. Like I said before, I don't expect a guard to pick up his team's whole defense, but I expect him to not break it open at least. He had so many brainfarts yesterday that led to Barnes open baskets after a cut, that inexcusable. And that's gonna be an issue cause they are shifting the order of who guards who, putting Ariza on the PG (even if it's Austin) so he can switch on P&R's, and making Terry/Prignioni guard Redick when they're really not fit to, and if you're gonna be hidden on Barnes and still manage to be the one that consistently hurts your team the most... then I can't consider you a good player, let alone an MVP. But yeah, I expect he's gonna get better as the series go by.
Doctor MJ wrote:Re: One game shouldn't affect Paul's standing. This is where it gets interesting. It's not about the one game, it's about people thinking seriously about how they've judged Paul's supporting cast and how they've let that shape their opinion of Paul's candidacy here.
Put another way: It's not about "Wow, these guys can hit 3's without Paul", it's about "Huh, these guys have been hitting 3's all year, why did I think of them as if they were standing around helpless?".
Well, I already mentioned before that I think his disadvantage with the other guys is his team's defense. But even then, you can't just look at it as "
Well, Redick is a 44% 3PT shooter and Barnes is at 36%", because that's not who they are, that's just who they've been this exact season. Both those numbers are career highs and about 3% over their career averages, and Paul is definitely a part of that. Not the only, or even the main factor, but definitely a big influence in those guys shooting that well. All of them playing together for a while has helped with familiarity, and that's always an underrated part of basketball teams over-performing. And obviously, Doc/Woodson's game-planning this year, positioning Blake on the elbows and the high post on half-court offense, and having him help distribute and helping space the floor, is also a big part of it.
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