WCQF: P2 | (4) LA Clippers vs Utah Jazz (5) | UTA 4-3

[Throwback24]

I expect the Clips to lay down tonight.

[Woodsanity]

Here's a question. Who's a better coach Doc Rivers or Quin Snyder?

I think Quin Snyder is an extremely underrated coach. He should be a top candidate for coach of the year considering what he's accomplished with this team this season. The Jazz's main starting line up only logged 152 minutes together through the regular season... for comparison...the Clippers starting unit logged over 800 minutes of playing time together in the regular season. That gives you a grasp of what the injuries did to the Jazz this season. It was never ending...but they kept it together.

There are still some things I question about his process, but overall I think he's got a vision for the team that's more long term than what I'm looking at as a fan. I think the Jazz are damn lucky to have this guy at the helm. Plus... he looks like an 80's movie villain, or ax murderer...I like that too.

As for Doc... I don't know. I think people have their pitchforks out, but maybe he's not as bad at coaching as people think. How many 50 win seasons do the Clips have under Doc???? They've had some tough breaks in the playoffs no doubt, but I think they have an odd roster that makes coaching decisions especially difficult now that Blake is out. I'd say he's probably a better coach than GM, but people want to just blame Doc for loosing games vs a Jazz team that's just better than people realized, or want to give credit for. This Jazz team is built to cause matchup problems for just about anyone...they have tons of depth, (and their depth has a lot of time on the floor due to the ridiculous amount of injuries this season), ISO Joe, Hayward, Ingles is a top 3 shooter in the league,... They're super long at every position, and they are a top 3 defensive team anchored by a complete freak of a player in Gobert. They're a nightmare team for anyone to play in a playoff series. Rick Carlisle made a comment about the Jazz earlier this year... He said "playing against this team is like a 3 hour long dentist appointment".

Clips are a great team. Maybe they take series if Blake was healthy...maybe not. Pretty damn even series either way you look at it. The fact is that the West is stacked. Spurs, Houston, GSW, Grizz, Jazz, Clips... It's a gauntlet for any team to make it to the finals.

If I'm the owner of this team, I'm hesitant to just clean house. They clean house right now, and they're going to be back at the bottom for 4 years minimum.

To be fair look at what Vinnie Del Negro accomplished just before:

2010-11: 32-50 - Rookie Blake, DJ was just a 7/7 guy, Eric Gordon injuries, and CP3 was not there yet
2011-12: 40-26 (49-50 win pace) - Added CP3, made 2nd round of the playoffs, lost to Spurs
2012-13: 56-26 - Added Jamal Crawford, lost in 1st round, but this is up there with the best seasons Doc Rivers had

Rivers has had 57, 56, 53, and 51 win teams, each year getting a little worse. So it's either we overestimated how good this squad can be or Rivers and Del Negro both suck.

Just hearing Rivers talk in press conferences, honestly I can't believe he's an NBA head coach. How he said that Gobert didn't effect them, OBVIOUSLY in the last two games he's had a tremendous effect defensively, the Clippers killed the Jazz in the paint without Gobert. Then he said that the Clippers played good defense the last game, when actually the Jazz who have three .400 3pt shooters, a .398 3pt shooter in Hayward and Hood is .373, and the team struggled behind the arc, and it was mostly just good looks missed. There are other points he's tried to make, but the truth is we figured out how to slow down the pick and roll with Paul/DJ, and now with Gobert we can defend the rim.

The biggest issue with Doc isn't his coaching but his atrocious job as pres of bball operations. The man has gutted the Clippers roster and traded picks like cotton candy.

But I do agree Rivers isn't really anything special as a coach, the only thing he did well was give DJ confidence as a player while VDN constantly sat DJ due to hack a DJ.

The Jazz are quite frankly a much better constructed and balanced team.

[Catchall]

I expect the Clips to lay down tonight.

I don't expect them to just lay down. CP won't. The other guys though, I'm not sure. The Clips' rotation is so thin that they have very little margin of error. If Crawford and Redick don't get rolling, they might feel it's an uphill battle.

[MartinToVaught]

I expect the Clips to lay down tonight.

The ultimate Clipper move would be to win tonight, get everyone's hopes up, and then embarrass themselves in Game 7.

[mudsak]

First off... I absolutely have to give you (and any devoted Clips fan) the benefit of the intimate knowledge you have for your team. I am admittedly on the outside looking in, and I respect that your opinion is from a more complete perspective. But... I do think Clips fans have become a bit jaded by this string of early playoff exits. There is a sense of discontent, and the fans want change. Do you feel removing Doc right now gets this team to the WCF next season... or maybe this season had he been gone? I guess maybe that's not a fair question considering the effect Doc has had as a GM with control over the roster decisions.

Not when you never get past the second round of the playoffs. That's treadmilling, not success. Plus, we were a hair's breath away from missing the 50-win milestone this year anyway. Our win totals have declined every year of the Doc era.

The Clips were likely a 60 win team minus the injuries endured this season. When they finally got healthy they went on a full rampage to close out the season.

Getting past the second round of the playoffs at least once when you've had three all-stars, a supposed "elite coach," one of the highest payrolls in the league and several great chances to do it is not an unfair expectation at all. It's not like we're expecting a dynasty here. We'd have been thrilled with just one measly WCF appearance with this core.

Tough to argue that point. I think they have the highest payroll in the league if I'm not mistaken? I'd be frustrated at this point myself.
But let's take an objective look at their playoff runs over the last 5 season...
2011/12 : Rd1 Grinded past a GREAT Grizz team | Rd 2 - got smoked by a phenomenal Spurs team
2012/13 : Rd1 Lost to the Grizz this time...that Grizz team was good enough to make it to WCF
2013/14 : Rd 1 Beat Warriors | Rd2 - Got beat by a red hot OKC Thunder team
2014/15 : Rd 1 Beat a Great Spurs Team in a brutal 7 game series - Rd2 Choked this series away to HOU
2015/16 : Rd 1 Luck buries you with the loss of your 2 best players.
2017/18 : Rd 1 Lost Blake, but your roster is starting to look tattered, and aged. Young, well rounded Jazz team is tough matchup. Maybe the Clips can still take it, but doesn't look promising.

If you look back at their recent playoff history I think they've really only completely blown ONE series... (Rd 2 - Houston in 2014/15). The other losses were to legitimately great teams, and the Clippers competed in every one of those series (the did get smoked by the Spurs once. The other losses injuries played a big part. This Clippers team has competed at the highest level for years now... I think it's tough to argue that this team hasn't been successful over the past 7 years. Maybe they haven't quite reached the potential that most fans believe they can, but they've still been a great team on the verge for several years now.

There's a reason why pretty much the entire fanbase is united in wanting Doc gone. He has made zero adjustments at all this series. This is his *third* playoff series against Joe Johnson, yet he still has no idea how to stop him. He's giving playoff minutes to Jamal Crawford and washed-up Pierce.

Honestly, I have to give some credit to Joe Johnson on this point. Doc did in fact make some adjustments in aggressively doubling Joe. He also put LucMb on Joe, as well as trying Bass on Joe...it's just that nothing has been working to stop him. Joe is tough to guard, and if you guard him well he might still make the shot. Double him and he'll kill you with a kickout to the 3. The Clips lack the right player to put on Joe. As for other adjustments...with Griffin out I feel that there's a limited amount of adjustments the Clippers can make at this point. Who exactly is supposed to step up at this point? CP3 is logging (Please Use More Appropriate Word) minutes, Redick has been stifled by Ingles in most games, and they NEED Crawford to heat up, but he's just past his time at this point. The Jazz are a deep and well balanced team, with a well-run system style scheme... No Blake makes this series an uphill battle for the Clippers regardless of Docs adjustments.

We won't get a single decent GM if we don't let them pick their own coach. It's a bad-faith move to try to force Doc on the next GM.

I can agree with this... and I think you have to bring in a new GM to try to re-do the roster. Maybe that GM decides to ax Doc...maybe not.

All in all... I respect your views, and appreciate you sharing them here. You're absolutely right that you, and any devoted Clips fans have the intimate knowledge about your team, and Doc. I do think some of the frustrations may boil over, and the pitchforks come out though ... Try not to be too down...It's been AWESOME to see CP3 go completely ape-sh#t in this series, and the Clips are still one of the leagues best teams...and they've been at the top tier for a while now.

[MartinToVaught]

Do you feel removing Doc right now gets this team to the WCF next season... or maybe this season had he been gone?

I don't know if a new coach would get us farther. I do know that keeping Doc means staying on the treadmill, though. He is a horrible playoff coach and that's been proven in Orlando, Boston and LA. What we see every year is what we're going to get. He's a known commodity and he's not going to change.

The Clips were likely a 60 win team minus the injuries endured this season. When they finally got healthy they went on a full rampage to close out the season.

CP3 and Blake are both injury-prone. There is always going to be stretches of the regular season where one or both of them are out with an injury. You have to factor that in going into the season, so the "if the Clippers stayed healthy..." line of analysis doesn't really work.

Even then, outside of the fluky start to the season this team had in November and the late string of wins against mostly tanking teams, they looked like crap regardless of which combination of players was on the court at any given time.

If you look back at their recent playoff history I think they've really only completely blown ONE series... (Rd 2 - Houston in 2014/15).

We also blew the Grizzlies series in 2013 and the Thunder series in 2014. We had a three-year window with great chances to make the WCF and couldn't stop choking.

As for other adjustments...with Griffin out I feel that there's a limited amount of adjustments the Clippers can make at this point. Who exactly is supposed to step up at this point? CP3 is logging (Please Use More Appropriate Word) minutes, Redick has been stifled by Ingles in most games, and they NEED Crawford to heat up, but he's just past his time at this point. The Jazz are a deep and well balanced team, with a well-run system style scheme... No Blake makes this series an uphill battle for the Clippers regardless of Docs adjustments.

Here's an idea: glue Jamal and Pierce to the bench, and start giving some minutes to Brandon Bass, Alan Anderson, Brice Johnson and Diamond Stone instead. None of those guys could possibly do worse than Jamal and Pierce. And maybe they'd provide some different looks that the Jazz aren't ready for. That's what a real coach would do, but Doc isn't a real coach. He's a cronyist who plays favorites.

[Woodsanity]

Do you feel removing Doc right now gets this team to the WCF next season... or maybe this season had he been gone?

I don't know if a new coach would get us farther. I do know that keeping Doc means staying on the treadmill, though. He is a horrible playoff coach and that's been proven in Orlando, Boston and LA. What we see every year is what we're going to get. He's a known commodity and he's not going to change.

The Clips were likely a 60 win team minus the injuries endured this season. When they finally got healthy they went on a full rampage to close out the season.

CP3 and Blake are both injury-prone. There is always going to be stretches of the regular season where one or both of them are out with an injury. You have to factor that in going into the season, so the "if the Clippers stayed healthy..." line of analysis doesn't really work.

Even then, outside of the fluky start to the season this team had in November and the late string of wins against mostly tanking teams, they looked like crap regardless of which combination of players was on the court at any given time.

If you look back at their recent playoff history I think they've really only completely blown ONE series... (Rd 2 - Houston in 2014/15).

We also blew the Grizzlies series in 2013 and the Thunder series in 2014. We had a three-year window with great chances to make the WCF and couldn't stop choking.

As for other adjustments...with Griffin out I feel that there's a limited amount of adjustments the Clippers can make at this point. Who exactly is supposed to step up at this point? CP3 is logging (Please Use More Appropriate Word) minutes, Redick has been stifled by Ingles in most games, and they NEED Crawford to heat up, but he's just past his time at this point. The Jazz are a deep and well balanced team, with a well-run system style scheme... No Blake makes this series an uphill battle for the Clippers regardless of Docs adjustments.

Here's an idea: glue Jamal and Pierce to the bench, and start giving some minutes to Brandon Bass, Alan Anderson, Brice Johnson and Diamond Stone instead. None of those guys could possibly do worse than Jamal and Pierce. And maybe they'd provide some different looks that the Jazz aren't ready for. That's what a real coach would do, but Doc isn't a real coach. He's a cronyist who plays favorites.

I wanna puke whenever I see Crawful and Pierce on the court. Honestly if Crawford's butt was super glued to the bench the Clippers would be far better off. You would think Doc would realize this by now but he is inept.

[Catchall]

Boy, ESPN is really hyping this game -- e.g., "Is this the end of Lob City? Will this Clippers team stay together? What will Chris Paul do?" It's media muck-raking and putting some unfair pressure on the Clips, imo. I guess it's in part because ESPN is broadcasting this one, but they're really trying to manufacture drama.

[DEEP3CL]

Clippers are dead team walking, they may play a spirited game on Friday but Utah has clearly figured them out. The Clippers are too predictable in the last 5 minutes of a game. The fact that they can't run anything other than screen-roll is doing them in. I always said that you can't run any post offense through Griffin or Jordan because they lack offensive moves in the post. You have to credit the Jazz and coach Snyder, they have outplayed and out coached the Clippers in every way this series.

lakers had skipped some really good assistant coaches of their own... then ended up in the hand of Byron Scott

Fail post...has nothing to do with what I posted yet you harp on Byron Scott ? What does that have to do with this series ? Irrelevant post

[og15]

I think Clips fans maybe have unfair expectations of their team at this point

Getting past the second round of the playoffs at least once when you've had three all-stars, a supposed "elite coach," one of the highest payrolls in the league and several great chances to do it is not an unfair expectation at all. It's not like we're expecting a dynasty here. We'd have been thrilled with just one measly WCF appearance with this core.

I read this from a lot of Clippers fans, but I just have to disagree very much. I probably have a different logic than other fans, but I have no clue why a WCF appearance is glorified so much, it's a meaningless "accomplishment". Okay, let's say the Clippers beat the Rockets. Forget the stars, all that was required was for the supporting players to hit their open shots at a "normal" percentage in one or two of the last 3 games of the series, and the Clippers would have won.

So the Clippers win that series, they battle with GS and likely lose, a lot of mis-matches, Blake was already tired in the Houston series, as well as Redick, so I don't know how they are surviving one more series against a much better team.

Okay, so now we have this team with one WCF appearance, same team. 15-16 Blake and Paul get injured and we lose. This season Paul and Blake are both injured in the regular season, and Blake gets injured in the post-season like he did and we are in the same spot. Am I supposed to now be content with Doc and the front office, and with the state of the team because they went to the conference finals two seasons before? Why does that even get upheld as anything relevant? Heck, even if they had gone to the conference finals in 12-13 also. Let's say Blake doesn't get injured after game 4, Grizzlies series was tied 2-2, that's a normal outcome from a 4v5 matchup like that after 4 games. Clippers win the series in 7 games. Clippers beat the Thunder who are without Westbrook and go to the WCF. Clippers lose to SA as that team had a lot of issues including the gradually declining Odom, DJ not having the same confidence or impact that he has now, and even Billups playing and killing the team. VDN still gets fired.

So now they have two WCF appearances, exact same team, exact same injuries, same situation right now. Why is that somehow impressive or better? Do we have some special bragging rights now that "well we had that one great team that got to the WCF twice, oh the good days". What special thing did they do? Beat Houston and beat an injured Thunder team? With the exact same situation, what does that change?

I seriously don't understand why it gets so glorified, and yes, I know, people aren't ultimately content with that, but it is lifted up so much as if it would or should make any difference. To me it doesn't. Doc would still be coach with his faults. The team would still have no reliable two way wing players, the front office would still be in question. Paul would still be prone to ticky tack injuries, Griffin would still have his stress related injuries that make one afraid for his future health, and this team would still be a bad matchup vs GS. WCF appearances wouldn't have changed what FA's they could or would have gotten, money still talks, and it wouldn't change their future potential as a group right now. Why would we have fans have been thrilled?

All that we would have no is that we can "brag" that "well we went to the WCF twice, so yea, take that other fans". In the end the goal is to build a winning franchise, to consistently produce the best product and best teams possible, and hope to compete and be a contender as many years as possible. That comes from ownership and management, and if the team can have that, I would be thrilled.

[og15]

Everyone is talking about Westbrook's awfull suporting cast, lets look at Clippers without Griffin...

Paul------- ----- Westbrook
Redick --------- Oladipo
Mbah a Moute - Roberson
Speights --------Gibson
Jordan --------- Adams
Crawford ------ Kanter
Rivers ---------- Mcdermott
Pierce ---------- Grant
Felton ---------- Abrines


I dont see any major advantage for Paul, am i wrong?

I'd MUCH rather have LAC's supporting cast no question

yeah... I think the Clippers are clearly the better team here. 1st off... Paul is the opposite of a loose cannon. He is the epitome of a player that makes the rest of his team better. Any one who wants to point the finger at CP3 as being a choker is out of their mind...he's arguably been the best player in the entire playoffs thus far. Just unreal performance. CP3 has also had a team specifically constructed to fit around him... Westbrook is dealing with a complete patchwork situation that's not quite built for him yet.

Negating Griffin obviously makes a HUGE difference to the Clippers roster.

Redick... miles ahead of Oladipo. Oladipo barely has more offensive consistency than Crawford. Redick is a brilliant player. The Jazz have done a phenomenal job of taking him out of this series.
Mbah vs. Roberson... hack-a-roberson became a strategy that actually affected that series.
Speights/Gibson - I'd take Gibson here, but Speights can spread the floor.
Jordan/Adams - Jordan is easily an upgrade here. Adams is a bad ass, but Jordan is as dominant a center as you're going to find.
Crawford/Kanter - Both these players seem to negate their positives by the liability they create on the defensive end. Kanter is more consistently reliable, but If Crawford heats up he's capable of completely taking over games. He must be an infuriating player to have on your team...so good, yet horrible at the same time.

The Clippers advantage is that the team has been built more to compliment Paul/Griffin while the Thunder hadn't been built to necessarily compliment Westbrook. The Clippers remaining roster without Griffin is not significantly better than the Thunder's roster. They are better in terms of shooting and offense, but worse in terms of defense and rebounding, but overall I'd give the Clippers a bit of an edge, one being that the team actually has players who can be secondary ball handlers (whether you think they are "good" or not). Raymond Felton, Jamal Crawford, Austin Rivers (though he's been missing / injured for this series). Now, neither supporting roster is doing much significant for you in carrying your offense, but the Clippers are a bit better. Of course when both Paul/Griffin were out this season, they went 3-8 with a 98.4 Ortg in those 11 games, so they aren't "good" either.

Jordan is certainly a better player, his only downfall being that he suffers from the same issue Roberson suffers from when it comes to FT shooting.

Clippers fans have said it every season, but forever, people tend to overrate the supporting cast based on names, one of those is Jamal Crawford who is constantly proposed as a good or positive player. It's like people just ignore his clear terrible post-season statistics because he gets hot one game per playoffs. It's not like Jamal Crawford has value outside of his scoring and basic statistics, he doesn't have any special intangibles. Crawford vs Kanter. At least Kanter can rebound? I guess the difference could be that bad interior defense has the potential to hurt you more than bad perimeter defense even though both can be hurtful.

Redick is an interesting one. I like Redick, but Redick has physical and skill limitations that do make it possible to contain him and limit his effectiveness on defense. He just doesn't have enough size, length or athleticism and he's not an on ball shot creator, so he can't consistently create separation on the ball if he doesn't get it off screens.

Anyways, Clippers can at least cover the secondary ball handler issue to some degree, so that helps a lot, but of course neither supporting cast is going to take you anywhere exciting.

[Young_Star11]

Hopefully Utah finish the Clippers off.

[Catchall]

As a Jazz fan, this is what I want tonight:
** The Jazz hold a double-digit rebound advantage.
** The Jazz shoot a decent percentage of their 3-pt looks.

That's it.

If Favors has a good game offensively, or if George Hill make CP really work on defense, so much the better.

If Paul, Redick and Crawford all shoot lights out and pull off a win, so be it.

[og15]

As a Jazz fan, this is what I want tonight:
** The Jazz hold a double-digit rebound advantage.
** The Jazz shoot a decent percentage of their 3-pt looks.

That's it.

If Favors has a good game offensively, or if George Hill make CP really work on defense, so much the better.

If Paul, Redick and Crawford all shoot lights out and pull off a win, so be it.

Well, they are shooting 40.4% 3PT for the series, so that is very likely

42.1%
40.0%
41.2%
45.5%
36.1%

Their worst 3PT shooting game of the series is still a pretty decent 3PT shooting night. They've killed the Clippers from the 3PT line in the series.

[Zombiesonics]

Jazz finish it tonight. The jazz are just so much better than a Griffin-less clip squad, and the jazz coaching staff is impressive with line ups and strategy.

Cp3 might be the best player in the series, but the jazz have the 4 next best (Hayward , gobert, Johnson, hill)

[Coxy]

As a Warriors fan, I'm perplexed on who to go for here today. The Jazz scare the poop out of me, so I really don't want to play them, so maybe I go for the Clippers. But then again, it's the Clippers, gross.

Guess I'll just hope for a long and exhausting series for both teams.

[og15]

Redick on Diaw? Why is that a logical plan?

[Zombiesonics]

Diaw matched up vs redick lmao, BBQ crossiant!

[Coxy]

Wait, does Doc have Reddick guarding Diaw down low? Mad lolz.

[Zombiesonics]

Hayward FUNERAL GAME, end them! Hayward the most humble star in the league .