LA Clippers (16-8) @ Charlotte Bobcats (3-23)

[TheNewEra]

No more Gomes please

[TheNewEra]

Bledsoe catching a rhythm

[Leor_77]

This last quarter is taking way too long. RIP to Whitney Houston, by the way.

[LOJ]

Cook started to drive to the rim and my feed literally just froze.

[thanumba2clippersfan]

Clippers win 111-86. Nicely done

[areg789]

Cook started to drive to the rim and my feed literally just froze.

Well, good win and it was nice blowing them out. Gotta get ready to beat those Mavs once again to finish the six game road trip on Monday.

[LOJ]

A nice comfortable win on the road.

Awesome.

[TheNewEra]

All we do is Lin

[mkwest]

[mkwest]

Nice laugher on the road. We're now assured of coming off of the Grammy road trip with a winning record. It would have been nice if we took the winnable Cleveland game.

Everybody got to play that was available to play. It's kind of funny. If you look at the boxscore, you'll see that the Bobcats shot 43 free-throws and only turned the ball over 4 times. You don't normally expect that to result in blowout loss. They're going to get a good pick this season and I hope they select the right player.

[og15]

Nice laugher on the road. We're now assured of coming off of the Grammy road trip with a winning record. It would have been nice if we took the winnable Cleveland game.

Everybody got to play that was available to play. It's kind of funny. If you look at the boxscore, you'll see that the Bobcats shot 43 free-throws and only turned the ball over 4 times. You don't normally expect that to result in blowout loss. They're going to get a good pick this season and I hope they select the right player.

Didn't even notice that, wow, so they were really just missing a lot of shots. That sucks, they need some shot makers on the team.

[thanumba2clippersfan]

I like that we handled business like we should and blew them out. At the same time I feel bad that the Bobcats are just this bad.

[mike3]

well was busy while this was on but can tell i missed out on a nice viewing of us guys taking care of buisness how we should. Watched highlights on nba.com.. that CP3 behind the back pass to a streaking Griff for the huge dunk was just great to watch.

Good win team! and Bledsoe back, great to see despite getting in foul trouble

[mkwest]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY6gvNcSzRM[/youtube]

DJ & team interviewed about the jumper

[og15]

Everyone get's the "easy" games, and after a couple of easy games to balance out some of the games against more difficult teams, the Clippers offense is now ranked first in terms of offensive rating.

Sadly, the defense is still ranked 24th out of 30. Team defense still needs to pick up, let's look at the "four factors" and where the Clippers rank.

Opponent eFG%: 48.5% | League Avg: 48.2% | Ranked 16th
Opponent TOV%: 13.5% | League Avg: 14.2% | Ranked 23rd
DReb Percentage: 73.6% | League Avg: 73.6% | Ranked 18th
FT/FGA: .257 | League Avg: .211 | Ranked 28th

TOV% I don't care much for, you can be a great defensive team without forcing that many turnovers, and you can be a poor defensive team while forcing a lot of turnovers due to gambling. If the team forces more turnovers (shot clock violations, jump balls, bad passes) through good rotations and solid defense, awesome, but gambling more isn't of any benefit.

In terms of eFG%, Clippers FG% defense is 44.4% (15th), league average is 44.3%, so it's not bad. The Clippers 3PT defense though is where the problem comes.

Clippers give up 37.1% from the 3PT line, 5th worst in the league, while the league as a whole gives up 34.3% on average.

The Clippers are not doing a good job of running opponents off the 3PT line. I know Vinny is big on defending the paint, and that's good, but defending the paint and giving up open three's (especially) in the corner makes your defense worse. The best defense is to defend the pain and 3PT line, but give up contested long mid-range jump shots. Some coaches have adjusted to this reality, but some still lag behind, but the reality is that 33% 3PT is equivalent to 50% FG on the score board, and teams just don't shoot 50%+ from the long mid-range shots. They hit them similarly to 3PT shots, and there's no extra points.

Defensive rebounding isn't bad, with the team and players we have inside, it could be better, but this is one of the perils of having two really athletic guys, they can grab rebounds without boxing out, so sometimes that will get them in trouble.

Lastly, FT/FGA, which is one of the Clippers biggest problems. Fouling can be good, and fouling can be bad. Right now for the Clippers, fouling is being bad. Clippers opponents shoot 75% from the line, and in general, the league hits about 75% of it's free throws. One doesn't want to give so many freebies, especially through things like letting teams in the bonus early. It was interesting when mkwest noted that the Bobcats shot 43 free throws last night.

Both a mix of some defensive principle changes (guarding the 3PT line better), and better discipline (being more cautious of cheap defensive fouls) will help the team improve on defense. K-Mart has been a culprit in one of those areas as he's averaged 6.1 fouls / 36 minutes so far in the games he's played, haha. He's not usually that foul prone, so I expect that to normalize. Reggie is what he is, he's aggressive and he fouls a lot, it would be nice for him to tone down some of his reach in type fouls against guards, but I don't know if it is possible for him, and it makes him the player he is.

[LOJ]

Cool vid mk, and nice post og15. At times our defense looks very good. For those short stretches I am dancing inside and hoping that it's the beginning of legit change. Then we fall into the same habits, we literally look like at times we get lazy on defense, it's very aggrevating. Simple things like putting your hands up when guarding the 3pt line should be obvious.

[TheNewEra]

Great notes for the game and the team.