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Brice Johnson

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Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#61 » by esqtvd » Wed Jul 12, 2017 9:41 pm

og15 wrote:This is true, it's not like Whiteside's play in Miami corrected any assumptions made about his attitude and character. He's also known the be quite the black hole offensively. Criticizing Doc about Whiteside while for the most part the majority of us are saying we want good character players and guys who are unselfish, well it seems like it was the character that prevented Doc from going after Whiteside, not his game. So it's a bit contradictory there, you make a good point.


Miami also sucked and had no chemistry to worry about disrupting. They took a flyer on a low risk/high reward guy and had the PT to throw at him. When pretty much the whole league passes on a guy, pointing fingers at Doc is silly.

And the problem with the shoulda-coulda draft game is every late-round jewel is surrounded by a dunghill of other guys who washed out. Hell, Whiteside was picked 33rd by Sacramento in 2010 and washed out of the NBA within a couple of years, then banged around the D-League for a couple more. That makes the Kings picking him a miss!
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Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#62 » by JGOJustin » Thu Jul 13, 2017 2:43 am

When you win 51 games w/ Blake and Chris missing a combined 40 plus games, that means more than issues with Roster Construction. WAY more.

And it was a chronic issue during CP's run here. The year before last, we won 53 with Blake missing 42 games. 42! Don't tell me there were severe issues with roster construction when the team is winning 50+ games year in and year out with their best players missing significant time EVERY YEAR in the Chris Paul era.

The true misfortune of the CP era is health, not roster construction. Their roster surrounding their stars is comparable to what the Thunder surrounded KD and Russ with, what the Cavs surrounded Bron/Kyrie/Love with.

Our best players simply weren't good enough, and their health played a huge part in that.
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E for Effort...and Excuses (What Happened to Expectations?) 

Post#63 » by Ranma » Thu Jul 13, 2017 2:57 am

It's funny how Doc apologists come up with any and all excuses. With arguably 2 of the 10 best players in the league, regular season success is expected. Every team deals with injuries, roster construction precisely would help teams deal with that and likely even prevents such issues. Doc hasn't won jack without having a team full of star players and can't seem to do so even with them. The whole selling point of his arrival was that the team should have higher expectations. It's something he himself stated and has since went away from because he hasn't delivered.

If you can't build a roster healthy or otherwise capable enough to get past the second round of the playoffs for the past 4 seasons with a stacked team, then you shouldn't be in the business of building rosters. Not only have the Clippers not improved under Doc's watch, but the team has actually stagnated and taken steps backwards in wasting Chris Paul's prime years. Elite teams are judged by postseason success not the regular season. If you want to congratulate Doc for that, I have a gold star for the both of you.


Helene Elliott, Los Angeles Times (8/22/13)
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New Clippers Coach Doc Rivers Wants to Meet Expectations Head On


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Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#64 » by esqtvd » Thu Jul 13, 2017 9:40 am

JGOJustin wrote:When you win 51 games w/ Blake and Chris missing a combined 40 plus games, that means more than issues with Roster Construction. WAY more.

And it was a chronic issue during CP's run here. The year before last, we won 53 with Blake missing 42 games. 42! Don't tell me there were severe issues with roster construction when the team is winning 50+ games year in and year out with their best players missing significant time EVERY YEAR in the Chris Paul era.

The true misfortune of the CP era is health, not roster construction. Their roster surrounding their stars is comparable to what the Thunder surrounded KD and Russ with, what the Cavs surrounded Bron/Kyrie/Love with.

Our best players simply weren't good enough, and their health played a huge part in that.


Y'know, I thought the same thing. The 51 wins with CP and BG missing significant time, plus Austin starting at 3 different positions and often playing anywhere but his natural position of SG [because JJ can play nowhere else] in my opinion was a hellavan achievement for both of the much-reviled Riverses.

It was anything but the season as planned, and they still won 50 games AGAIN.

I think "The true misfortune of the CP era" was cap room. Period. We couldn't afford a bench. No late-20s draft pick was ever gonna contribute. Even the Tribe Called Bench turned into the Tribe Called Stench in the playoffs under Vinnie, and the glue guy, Lamar, never even played again after that season.

The page is turned now. Of last year's team, we only have Blake and DJ back, and Austin. Wes is still on the books, but so what. Oh, and Brice, who was never here in the first place.

Well, I can see why Jerry West was interested. Wouldn't be surprised if it was his idea [or at least agreement] that CP be the one to go. Sounds like Doc didn't try too hard to keep him. :wink:
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Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#65 » by madmaxmedia » Thu Jul 13, 2017 4:31 pm

Clemenza wrote:Alright let me get this off lol

I'm not debating that Doc hasn't been the greatest. But what I'm saying is, is that you can't blame him for not playing late 1st and 2nd round picks. Those players don't play on perennial 50 win teams. Those players are way more likely to be out of the league within 3 to 5 years than they are to contribute on a winning team. To criticize Doc for those transgressions are unfair. He isn't perfect or above criticism though.
You judge players individually not where they're drafted. You guys go overboard with stats. You very well might be Doc Rivers with this logic. So if Doc drafted DJ, Draymond, Rudy Gobert, Brogden,MaCaw, etc. Doc would be validated in not playing them because they were 2nd round picks right. Or would it be best to see what they bring as individuals and not where they were drafted? What would the standing be of the newly acquired Dekker and Harrell(both 2nd year players- one a late 1st rounder, Harrell is a 2nd rounder) be if they started their careers with us and not Houston? They're already penciled into the rotation as "trusted players with experience" but would this be the case if they were drafted by Doc?

And plenty of teams passed on Hasssan not just the Clippers. That' s just the way of the NBA. To give Doc crap for cutting Joe Ingles is disrespecting Joe Ingles's improvement as a basketball player. When he was with us, he was a fringe NBA guy. Hell doc deserves credit for being one of the only teams to actually give him a look in the first place. You can't operate in hindsight. At the time, LAC needed guard depth and Jared appeared to be the better fit. It didn't work out, it happens but you can't evaluate in hindsight. At the end of the day Blame Doc for his rotations, but not for Ingles, or damn Hassan Whiteside man that's ridiculous.


I'm not going to nitpick any particular decision in a vacuum. But I thought not nearly enough attention was paid to long-term roster strategy under Doc.

I get that you don't want to only use 20/20 hindsight to bash him, but at the end of the day we have absolutely NOTHING from our developmental pipeline under Doc, besides the coach's son castoff that actually has improved well beyond any of our expectations (but we're not going to get carried away either, he's a good role player and not much else.)

Guys like DJ, Eric Bledsoe were very raw when we drafted them and didn't necessarily play a lot their rookies seasons, but were high upside players that developed over time that we invested in them. But under Doc it seemed like the prevailing theme is to either trade our picks for veteran help (most of which flamed out), or 'contribute now' draftees with low upside. So when these supposedly more NBA-ready guys can't contribute early, yes they're cast aside because they have little upside.

Again, regardless of each draft pick, regardless of whether Diamond Stone could ever contribute in the NBA, the bottom line is that our developmental game has been absolutely ATROCIOUS over the years. THAT is why we were never able to get over the hump with our Big 3, not the salary cap. Injuries for example can be an excuse because they are different for each team, but EVERY team has to deal with the salary cap, yet we're the team that never got out of the 2nd round. I think the most 'Doc Rivers move' ever by Doc was trading Lance Stephenson and a 1st for Jeff Green at the trade deadline, only to have Lance outplay Jeff the rest of the year, and then lose Jeff to free agency in the offseason (not that we wanted him back.)

And we're the team that treadmilled while a team we beat in the playoffs took off like a rocket to become one of the best dynasty teams in NBA history. I can be more or less okay with Doc Rivers as our head coach moving forward, but I absolutely hate him as the guy in charge of basketball operations.
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Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#66 » by nickhx2 » Thu Jul 13, 2017 5:05 pm

very well said, and sums up almost all my feelings.

great organizations use all the options available to them as optimally as possible. doc rivers has never done that, and that's why the clippers core 4 never got past the constraints that other cores did.
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Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#67 » by og15 » Thu Jul 13, 2017 5:21 pm

JGOJustin wrote:When you win 51 games w/ Blake and Chris missing a combined 40 plus games, that means more than issues with Roster Construction. WAY more.

And it was a chronic issue during CP's run here. The year before last, we won 53 with Blake missing 42 games. 42! Don't tell me there were severe issues with roster construction when the team is winning 50+ games year in and year out with their best players missing significant time EVERY YEAR in the Chris Paul era.

The true misfortune of the CP era is health, not roster construction. Their roster surrounding their stars is comparable to what the Thunder surrounded KD and Russ with, what the Cavs surrounded Bron/Kyrie/Love with.

Our best players simply weren't good enough, and their health played a huge part in that.

It could possibly just be a reflection of how valuable Chris Paul as well as Blake Griffin are to winning games. Over Paul's Clippers tenure, the Clippers had a winning percentage that would equal 56 wins a season when Blake was NOT playing and Chris Paul was playing. Chris Paul missed 21 games this past season, but 43 of those 51 wins were with Paul playing. The team was 8-13 in the games he missed.

The thing about the post-season though is that it becomes about matchups and strategy and adjustments more so than the regular season. The Clippers problem obviously outside of being injured in 3/6 seasons they had that group was that on a yearly basis, they had matchup or roster issues due to the personnel, which going into the post-season, we knew was a problem. You can go back and read the posts before the post-season in 14-15. I know I said, and there were others who said "this teams lack of depth and the bench that loses every lead is going to come back and haunt the team". Guess what happened vs Houston? Sure CP and Blake choked in game 6, but the last three games of that series, a guy like Redick who should be playing 28 mpg but had been playing 40 mpg couldn't make shots he would usually make due to fatigue. Austin, Crawford, Barnes, they couldn't make OPEN shots. The Clippers bigs bench bigs were useless on both ends. There were no other options because the team was as shallow as they come.

The 15-16 teams was not bad they played elite defense over about 50 games. Aldrich was a great backup C. Despite Green sucking in general, he could have been useful against GS in some form. Obviously the problem that season was that Blake was injured most of the year, then when he came back he was not fully healthy and was bad, and then he was bad in the playoffs and re-aggravated his injury, and of course Paul got injured too.

The 15-16 team after the dust settled with all the mis-matched players that Doc and his crew acquired, that team was probably one of the better and more balanced Clippers teams. The main problem was that injury ruined both the regular season and post-season, so we never really got to see anything out of that group. Of course bad planning with player acquisitions by getting players who don't fit, and again, this isn't hindsight, go and read the pre-season posts and predictions and comments I and others made after some of the moves. That in addition to not having enough quality depth again became a problem because the Thunder only won 55 games. If the Clippers didn't have the mis-match roster early on, and if they had someone better than old man Pierce at PF when Blake went down, the team might have been able to fight for 3rd. Paul's injury was a freak accident, so buttefly effect on that one, but of course Blake's injury was structural, so the team still wouldn't have had Blake.

One of the big problems is that if you look at the trail of asset management on the team, it is awful:

    Dudley + 1st Round pick === Cap Space
    Barnes + Hawes + 1st Round Pick ==== Jeff Green rental


Now, just imagine the Clippers were offering a team Crawford + Dudley + Barnes + Two 1st Round picks, what they could have gotten back? Crawford, Dudley and Barnes all had great contracts, doesn't have to be all three, but let's say 2 of the three. Portland traded You make that offer during the 14-15 season, and you could have gotten back an All-Star or close to type SF. Instead the total result of all those players and assets (minus Crawford) was actually nothing at all. The Clippers had a very small margin between success and failure, and asset mis-management like that, despite other factors is something that sets you back.
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Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#68 » by nickhx2 » Thu Jul 13, 2017 5:23 pm

crawford + dudley + barnes + two first round picks = my sanity back
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Re: RE: Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#69 » by esqtvd » Thu Jul 13, 2017 7:56 pm

madmaxmedia wrote:
og15 wrote:So yes, you can't necessarily throw out any and every rookie and not multiple weak rookies. We've seen how even a veteran poor bench can lose leads and essentially lose games in their few minutes of play, so of course, the team shouldn't throw out lineups with 2 or 3 rookies or 2nd years guys without them being for enough to be playing.


Yeah, I think the thing with Doc is not just the PT for young players (which not all deserve just because they're young!), but the overall strategy of how to manage and develop a roster over time.

What I saw in Doc was a marked preference for short term at the expense of long term, for wearing the coach's hat instead of the front office hat. And then with the picks we did have, picking guys that he thought could help now (at the expense of possible long-term upside) and then discarding them when they didn't pan out.

But Jerry West was honestly the perfect antidote to this IMO, and as long as Doc is willing to see the other side I am fine with having them as a team.


All true, and I think he'd admit he hit the closing CP-BG [and JJ] window hard. We were not favorites and were humping for seeding with every game. And with late 20s draft picks at best, neither was there access to young talent worth investing much PT in.

He broke his mold last year with 19-yr-old Diamond Stone, even giving him the full 2-year contract. And Diamond looked every bit like a 19-yr old out there in understandably limited minutes. Indeed, if you look at the DeAndre Jordan story, he was pretty useless his first 2 years too and even after that seldom outplayed his contract.

http://www.complex.com/sports/2012/07/the-25-most-overpaid-players-in-the-nba-right-now/overpaid-12
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Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#70 » by JGOJustin » Thu Jul 13, 2017 8:58 pm

By the way, I'm not saying that you guys are wrong or that I disagree with what you all are saying.

I'm just glad JJ Redick and Jamal aren't on the team anymore. More so Redick than Jamal, but both by the end of the window had roles on the team far bigger than their abilities suggested
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Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#71 » by esqtvd » Fri Jul 14, 2017 12:36 am

I've decided to hate Brice
waste of a uni

his best ability is being first to the net to retrieve the ball after their made baskets
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Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#72 » by QRich3 » Fri Jul 14, 2017 9:27 am

Yeah after watching him a few times in summer league, I don't have a lot of confidence he's gonna be a rotation player. His shot selection is horrible and his defensive instincts are not great either. Too bad, I had some hopes a draft pick would pan out for once.
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Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#73 » by og15 » Fri Jul 14, 2017 7:17 pm

He's been that bad? Well at least we got Harrell

Brice's role offensively will be quite different on the team though, so I'm not worried about summer league shot selection, but can he hold his own defensively at any spot, that's the question.
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Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#74 » by nickhx2 » Fri Jul 14, 2017 7:38 pm

the knock on him has always been consistency and caring, right? it's unfortunate that he's not performing well but you get what you pay for
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Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#75 » by esqtvd » Fri Jul 14, 2017 8:22 pm

og15 wrote:He's been that bad? Well at least we got Harrell

Brice's role offensively will be quite different on the team though, so I'm not worried about summer league shot selection, but can he hold his own defensively at any spot, that's the question.


Brice is way too light to bang with the 4s and not quick enough to get out and defend 3s at the perimeter.

Offensively, there are 3 places you can make your living in the NBA:

at the rim
from the Line
from distance

Brice literally gets pushed out of the lane by heavier guys
has no handles to slash and initiate contact
and has no shooting range


no 3, no D, and he gets punked by the bigger kids
mostly he stands around in no-man's land, watching the game
best seat in the house


Montrezl looked ready to beast up though and he's only 6 months older than Brice
3rd year vet at 23
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Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#76 » by og15 » Fri Jul 14, 2017 8:41 pm

Well Montrezl was already producing with Houston, so I expected him to be ahead of Brice in the rotation either way.

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Re: Brice Johnson 

Post#77 » by Clemenza » Sat Jul 15, 2017 3:25 am

Brice has the potential to be a nice role player long as he patents that mid range jumper. Definitely needs to hit the weight room though. I can see him getting injured banging in the paint over the course of some games. More interested in if this Jamil Wilson kid is at least half way legit. He's explosive and built like a tank.. n/h.. lol


Ya'll peep this article on Blake, Doc, and the future of the Clipps


http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2720270-can-blake-griffin-solve-la-clippers-identity-crisis-in-post-chris-paul-era

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