MartinToVaught wrote:JoeyLightYears wrote:Clipps definitely make the playoffs this year and the last five years without Blake. They always have a good record when he is out
Oh please. A full season without Blake would look more like this series than those regular-season runs. There's a big difference between beating the Phillys and Orlandos of the world in the dog days of the regular season during a temporary stretch when the rest of the team knows Blake will be back soon and going without Blake for an entire season. I didn't see that so-called "free-flowing offense" that Blake was holding us back from in this series, and the defense got even worse without him.
I know you are a huge Blake homer and all, but of course the team makes the playoffs without Blake. The 7th seed won 43 games for crying out loud. As long as Paul played 74 or 82 games like he did in 14-15 and 15-16 they would win 50+ games. If he missed 21 games like he did this season, then they are looking at mid 40's at best which still gets them in the playoffs, though at the bottom.
We already have a good sample size to know what they could do. They played 47 games without him last season in which they played the whole range of teams around the league and had a 55 win pace and a top 3 defense. The issue isn't about regular seasons success, it is that the playoffs are different from the regular season. JJ Redick can find ways to escape in the regular season and be effective, not every team has defenders that can contain him. In the playoffs, teams with one good playmaker are generally doomed to lose. They can win if for example they are in the early 2000's East where every other team is also a one playmaker type team, and if they have a very very good defense, but if you start playing balanced teams, well that's too bad.
The more free flowing offense did happen, I tried to deny it at first, but it is true. Blake does hold the ball and slow down the offense more, but he's doing it to look to be a playmaker. Now maybe he shouldn't, maybe he should always be on attack and he can create out of the attack instead of standing still, that's another discussion. Saying "where was that offense now" obviously is closing our eyes to the fact that Redick's off ball movement and shooting was a big catalyst to that. You take that out, and it is a different story.
Redick was putting up 21 pts/36 on 48/48/89 shooting in 15-16. Redick put up 11.2 pts/36 on 38/35/85 shooting in this series. Redick was the Clippers "second option" when Blake was out, but like I kept saying that season, yes, it works in the regular season, but in the post-season one man teams don't work because of course what happens if the ball is taken out of their hands, or they have a bad game? Also, at least in the West you are going to play teams that have two players either close to, as good or better than your one man while having comparable role players, so what happens then?
Look at Westbrook when the Thunder made the WCF in 10-11 and the finals in 11-12. He had series performances and game performances that if Paul had, the Clippers just won't win, we would say he choked. Well Westbrook had Durant and he had Harden, so a series we would say Paul choked if he played like that would be a series that OKC would win. Now look at this season, Westbrook has a bad quarter, okay some awful ones, but that happens, and the game is lost, the series is lost earlier than we expected even.
