The Key to beating OKC is....

[Quake Griffin]

what do you guys say?


My keys are:
1) limit turnovers and keep the turnovers the out of bounds variety.
2) Westbrook must see a body every time he turns the corner.
3) Better for us to lose the series with RW and Durant shooting over the top than selling out to stop them and letting Ibaka, Collison, Fisher get off on us.

i hope RW and Durant avg 40 a piece each game....as long as the other guys don't get off.

[Neddy]

what do you guys say?


My keys are:
1) limit turnovers and keep the turnovers the out of bounds variety.
2) Westbrook must see a body every time he turns the corner.
3) Better for us to lose the series with RW and Durant shooting over the top than selling out to stop them and letting Ibaka, Collison, Fisher get off on us.

i hope RW and Durant avg 40 a piece each game....as long as the other guys don't get off.

i can honestly say that my knowledge of basketball stopped somewhere in high school JV level, despite the fandom of myself and my wife's undying love for the clips... unlike baseball where i ran a SABR stat site before Michael Lewis' Moneyball was ever printed...

having established my limited knowledge in X's and O's,

1) limiting turnovers is always a good thing, especially against the league's top teams. I agree wholeheartedly with this one.
2) again, Westbrook needs to be physically challenged, and so does Durant. between the two, I actually think Durant is the softer one. go at him and beat him up a little.
3) i dunno if it's better to have their two stars beat us, or have the supporting cast beat us. i guess percentage wise, it would be wiser to have their supporting cast try to beat us but that would also mean (at least to me, OG may have much more in depth analysis on this one) that Westbrook and Durant are being playmakers to have others involved. I don't really have a strong opinion on this one.

but may I add a few more?

4) don't get in foul trouble!!!! we could have closed the GS series early if we weren't in foul trouble, especially blake. he played only about 18 minutes or so from what i remember in one game due to foul trouble. I think he played about 3 minutes in the first half in that game. that is unacceptable.

5) put a bigger body on Durant than we have in the past. I have seen Doc put Jamal, JJ, even Collison on Durant. that won't get it done. we need bigger body on him. i understand that a player like baby can easily be outmatched with Durant's quickness, but now we have Granger. he is taller and lengthier than both Barnes and Dudley.

6) be flexible with the bench for better match ups. i can't see our Collison/Jamal/baby bench rotation matching up well against neither Westbrook nor Durant. I think we will need bigger bodies on them to be successful. Granger maybe able to match up better against durant, as i have said for #5, and how about bringing willie on Westbrook, or even Bullock? and have Jamal run the point when we need CP to have some rest at point.

again, my fandom for the clippers supersedes my knowledge in intricacies in basketball, but these are my humble opinions regarding the next round.

[og15]

Keep the ball out of Durant's hands as much as possible, the best way for us to guard him is to not let him get the ball.

Limit our turnovers because similar to the Clippers, they can be deadly if they get out on the break, so try to keep them in the half-court as much as possible, especially Westbrook.

Go hard at Westbrook and try to force him into more mistakes than he would like to make. CP has really been taking the defensive challenge, but Westbrook has a lot of physical advantages over him.

[mttwlsn16]

Gotta be rough w KD

[Neddy]

just a thought that popped up in my head...

the NBA has to buy the Clippers from Sterling first, after the owners make their vote. that means whatever the new owner pays for that is higher than what the NBA bought this franchise from Sterling, will be their profit.

the higher we go in this playoff run, the higher the NBA's profit will be when selling it.

I see us going very deep......

[theFRANCHISE]

honestly think its keeping ibaka and sefalosha from scoring. Let durant and westbrook take all the shots.

[mttwlsn16]

just a thought that popped up in my head...

the NBA has to buy the Clippers from Sterling first, after the owners make their vote. that means whatever the new owner pays for that is higher than what the NBA bought this franchise from Sterling, will be their profit.

the higher we go in this playoff run, the higher the NBA's profit will be when selling it.

I see us going very deep......

I thought DTS just gets whatever it sells for from the highest bidder, and the nba just heads the negotiations?

[50CALguns]

Is...

Playing well.

[50CALguns]

Blake has to wake up.
Doc has to start coaching.

GET THE FUGKEN BALL INSIDE, DOWN LOW. Stop stepping out of you range (Blake). Pass out of the post quicker (Blake). Have Redick, Paul, Crawford in the right spots to RECEIVE the pass out of the double team (Doc).

Everything else should fall into place.

Plus (maybe this is for next year but), FEED DeANDRE like he's a real post player, not just an afterthought.

[LACtdom]

1. Limit Opp offensive rebounds
2. Don't let KD draw fouls and get to the FT line as much as he has been.
3. start attacking the basket early on (perkins is a foul machine and it would be bonus if we could get ibaka in foul trouble)

[Quake Griffin]

1. Limit Opp offensive rebounds
2. Don't let KD draw fouls and get to the FT line as much as he has been.
3. start attacking the basket early on (perkins is a foul machine and it would be bonus if we could get ibaka in foul trouble)

1 and 2 will be so hard

Ibaka attacks the offensive glass without regard and KD is just annoying to watch, a referee darling and you just can't breathe on him.

[East Bay Sports]

1. Limit Opp offensive rebounds
2. Don't let KD draw fouls and get to the FT line as much as he has been.
3. start attacking the basket early on (perkins is a foul machine and it would be bonus if we could get ibaka in foul trouble)

1 and 2 will be so hard

Ibaka attacks the offensive glass without regard and KD is just annoying to watch, a referee darling and you just can't breathe on him.

Normally agree on KD, but Tony Allen was getting away with murder in the last series and Durant was still ticking. He gained a lot of respect from me in the last round.

That said, I don't think OKC can hang with you guys as strange as it sounds. Just take the Memphis blueprint of team defense vs the individualistic offense of OKC and the Clippers win in 6.

[TheNewEra]

need Barnes to go to the Tony Allen level. Barnes is a tough defender but he needs to see how Allen handled Durant early.

[Quake Griffin]

1. Limit Opp offensive rebounds
2. Don't let KD draw fouls and get to the FT line as much as he has been.
3. start attacking the basket early on (perkins is a foul machine and it would be bonus if we could get ibaka in foul trouble)

1 and 2 will be so hard

Ibaka attacks the offensive glass without regard and KD is just annoying to watch, a referee darling and you just can't breathe on him.

Normally agree on KD, but Tony Allen was getting away with murder in the last series and Durant was still ticking. He gained a lot of respect from me in the last round.

That said, I don't think OKC can hang with you guys as strange as it sounds. Just take the Memphis blueprint of team defense vs the individualistic offense of OKC and the Clippers win in 6.

on the ball? off the ball? or both?

I thought his off the ball work was EXCELLENT and half the battle. I don't remember watching it thinking he was being too physical or fouling him like that.

anywho...this series might require more Granger and Dudley....they need to find their games quick.

[East Bay Sports]

1 and 2 will be so hard

Ibaka attacks the offensive glass without regard and KD is just annoying to watch, a referee darling and you just can't breathe on him.

Normally agree on KD, but Tony Allen was getting away with murder in the last series and Durant was still ticking. He gained a lot of respect from me in the last round.

That said, I don't think OKC can hang with you guys as strange as it sounds. Just take the Memphis blueprint of team defense vs the individualistic offense of OKC and the Clippers win in 6.

on the ball? off the ball? or both?

I thought his off the ball work was EXCELLENT and half the battle. I don't remember watching it thinking he was being too physical or fouling him like that.

anywho...this series might require more Granger and Dudley....they need to find their games quick.

Allen was hand checking like it was 2002 lol. I am all for it and wish the league wasn't so soft in general at this point, but in 2014 with the soft rules and KD being KD, I was surprised Allen was allowed to be as physical as he was. I think a lot of it is because the Grizzlies have worked to get that reputation as the scrappy hard fighting physical do what it takes to win team. I hope it doesn't revert in the conference semis to KD drawing tons of touch fouls, but it wouldn't shock me sadly.

[og15]

honestly think its keeping ibaka and sefalosha from scoring. Let durant and westbrook take all the shots.

Well his only works if Durant and Westbrook shoot poorly, if not, this isn't a viable strategy. Really though, Sefolosha can shut himself down for us.

Guy averages 6.3 pts, 8.7 pts/36, he's not really who is be worried about. I do agree that limiting Ibaka's efficiency would help, but the other guy is Jackson, not Sefolosha.

[og15]

1 and 2 will be so hard

Ibaka attacks the offensive glass without regard and KD is just annoying to watch, a referee darling and you just can't breathe on him.

Normally agree on KD, but Tony Allen was getting away with murder in the last series and Durant was still ticking. He gained a lot of respect from me in the last round.

That said, I don't think OKC can hang with you guys as strange as it sounds. Just take the Memphis blueprint of team defense vs the individualistic offense of OKC and the Clippers win in 6.

on the ball? off the ball? or both?

I thought his off the ball work was EXCELLENT and half the battle. I don't remember watching it thinking he was being too physical or fouling him like that.

anywho...this series might require more Granger and Dudley....they need to find their games quick.

We have no clue what Dudley can do this playoffs as he hasn't played much. Granger has been a bit disappointing, so hopefully he can pick it up and be useful. I think we can score against OKC, the question is how well can we limit them?

[Quake Griffin]

Normally agree on KD, but Tony Allen was getting away with murder in the last series and Durant was still ticking. He gained a lot of respect from me in the last round.

That said, I don't think OKC can hang with you guys as strange as it sounds. Just take the Memphis blueprint of team defense vs the individualistic offense of OKC and the Clippers win in 6.

on the ball? off the ball? or both?

I thought his off the ball work was EXCELLENT and half the battle. I don't remember watching it thinking he was being too physical or fouling him like that.

anywho...this series might require more Granger and Dudley....they need to find their games quick.

We have no clue what Dudley can do this playoffs as he hasn't played much. Granger has been a bit disappointing, so hopefully he can pick it up and be useful. I think we can score against OKC, the question is how well can we limit them?

Well Ned brought up the question....is it about stopping those 2 or is it about stopping everybody else?

I think it's about making sure not everybody else gets off and making those 2 shoot over the top as best we can because theyre great at getting into the paint.
theyre dangerous when Ibaka is getting open looks and Collison is diving in from the short corner for finishes...or fisher is hitting 3s.

I think to try and shut those 2 down is impossible for us. theyre too good....we don't have the personnel if there is the personnel to do it in the league at all.

but we can certainly make a concerted effort to take away the dives by collision and close out on Ibaka/ block him out....even if it's Griffin face guard blocking him out.

[og15]

I never believe in trying to "stop" or "shut down" stars, I only believe in containing and limiting as best as possible. So when I say limit, I mean I want to see Westbrook shoot as many FGA as he gets pts, if he averages 25, fine, as long as it took 23-25 FGA to get there. It means instead of 32 PPG / 63.5 TS%, I'd like to see Durant put up 30+ but only on .550 TS% (which isn't bad, but it is less than what he usually does).

I believe you can't let the stars produce better than their averages if you want the best chance. If you keep the stars at the least to their to their averages or better yet, a little below and then really limit the other guys, that gives you a good chance if you offense isn't limited more by them than you limited theirs of course.

Memphis of course limited the stars very well and would have won if they had the ability to produce more offense, but they really just didn't have enough offensive firepower to pull it of for them in the end.

This is what Memphis did with their stars:

Durant:
29.9 PPG (23.2 pts/36) / 44% FG / 32% 3PT / .543 TS% / 3.4 APG / 4.0 TPG

Westbrook:
25.6 PPG (22.6 pts/26) / 38% FG / 24% 3PT / .479 TS% / 8.0 APG / 4.9 TPG

Main supporting players

Reggie Jackson:
12.1 PPG (16.3 pts/36) / 47% FG / 48% 3PT / .637 TS% / 4.9 APG / 2.1 TPG

Serge Ibaka:
13.0 PPG (12.5 pts/36) / 60% FG / 33% 3PT / .647 TS% / 2.9 ORB / 1.0 TPG

Now if we do that we probably would win, but we probably aren't a team with the personnel to try and go that route. Some of those stats need to be understood relative to minutes. Durant's 4 TPG looks bad, but it was in 46 MPG, so it isn't really a bad turnover rate, though his 30 PPG also looks better than the actual rate of scoring he was producing because he was on the floor so much, We can, should and I believe will score better and more effectively than Memphis vs OKC, so we won't need to hold them to such poor performance to have a chance, but we need to limit them well enough, and when I say that, I don't mean PPG numbers, I mean efficiency.

For example, I would be content with Westbrook averaging 30 PPG in the series of he's taking 28 FGA/at, raw individual PPG with poor efficiency doesn't really mean that much in the grand scheme of team offensive performance. What is true though is that we certainly don't want Jackson and Ibaka combining for 25 PPG on 64% TS because that puts a lot of pressure on how much we have to limit Durant and Westbrook.

Serge and Jackson's scoring volume isn't the issue, but we probably don't want them to be so efficient. So I agree with both ideas, yes, we want them to be kept out of the paint, we want them to shoot over top, but we don't want to focus on the role players in the sense that we have Durant scoring 35 PPG on 65% TS on us, because that volume and efficacy will make up for how much you are limiting the role players.

[og15]

I don't remember when and to what extent (if any) Westbrook's return from injuries were affecting him in the games against LAC, but his regular season production against us this season was not very good. Someone on the general board said he killed us and I just couldn't remember it, so it promoted me to check.

Westbrook vs LAC:
19 pts / 4 rebs / 10 ast / 5 tov / 38.9% FG / 50% 3PT
12 pts / 6 rebs / 5 ast / 3 tov / 38.5% FG / 00% 3PT
13 pts / 5 rebs / 6 ast / 3 tov / 23.1% FG / 50% 3PT
30 pts / 11 rebs / 6 ast / 1 tov / 50% FG / 00% 3PT

Total:
18.5 PPG / 6.5 RPG / 6.8 APG / 3.0 TPG / 39.7% FG / 23.1% 3PT / .476 TS% / 100 Ortg / 31 MPG

So certainly Westbrook was not killing us by any means during the regular season this year, in fact, we held him in check quite well. Out of all the teams who played 3+ games vs Westbrook (LAC, LAL, PHO, SAS), the Clippers did the best defensive job on him. He'll play more minutes, but if he gets that production just with increased raw numbers due to minutes, I'm actually not going to have any issue with that on defense.