clipperlover wrote:Ranma wrote:
Those guys really don't get it. First of all, you can't win a championship if you can't make the WC Finals.
During the 6 season Lob City era, here are some numbers:
1. 12 of 15 WC teams(80%) made the playoffs (80%). 11 of those 12 made it multiple times with Spurs, Clips and Griz making it all years
2. 9 of the 12 teams that made the playoffs made it to the 2nd round (75%). 7 of them did it multiple times (58%)
3. 5 of the 12 teams that made the playoffs made the WCF (42%). Spurs, GS and OKC did it multiple times (25%)
It isn't like making the WCF was some unachievable feat. Nearly half of the team that made the playoffs did it, but not the lob city team. The Rockets and Griz only made the semis twice during the Lob City era, but both made at least 1 WCF.
The Lob City team didn't fail because of personalities. They failed because they lacked championship level defense. When you are trying to win a Championship, but you have a line-up consisting of Redick, Crawford and Blake together nearly 20% of the time, you aren't stopping too many playoff opponents. In the 4 games they lost to the Rockets in the Semis, they gave up 117.75 PPG. But, they want to blame it on BS. Chris Paul and Blake Griffin could have been best friends and it wasn't making Griffin a better defender.
With this year's team, we are going to see the difference.
Yes, yes! I've said this many times, we want to make it about chemistry and all this other stuff, because they are more enticing stories, and yes, chemistry is important, but talent and on court chemistry is far more important than being friends or actually even liking each other. Ask. Shaq and Kobe. Rodman was on ESPN with Pippen and said he never hung out with Jordan and Pippen outside of the court, and they all knew he had his own other life when basketball wasn't happening. Those guys won 3 together.
I just mentioned it on the GB because I see it over and over again. NBA fans in general undervalue defensive talent, and this is why many people are bad at judging how truly talented some teams are because their focus is always on offensive and specifically ppg talent. So talent gets judged on how much scoring a team has while neglecting whether those scorers can also defend and neglecting in general how much defensive talent a team has. What this causes is for people to ascribe greater talentedness to teams with more PPG guys and shooters, and lesser talentedness to teams with defensive guys.
The Lob City Clippers couldn't win first because they were injured significantly in half of their seasons together, health is a huge part of winning. Secondly because they were never a very good defense when they were healthy. Their best defensive group was 15-16, Blake was injured most of that season and then re-aggravates his injury in the post-season, and Paul broke a finger the same game. Even then, the regular season injury gave them unfavourable seeding too. If they had the 15-16 defense in 13-14 and 14-15, so a guy like Mbah along with Matt Barnes, and an improved though still flawed Austin on defense, that would have made a difference.
The 12-13 loss to Memphis, Blake's ankle injury and limited unproductive minutes was huge in determining the series, but look at their defense in the last few games. They made a poor offensive team in Memphis look elite on offense. Houston was a 107 Ortg team in 14-15 during the regular season, just above average, they had something like 124, 115 and 110 Ortg in those last three games. Yet most people will look at those games and say "well they just couldn't score, they didn't have a take over guy". Well, yes, the fatigue was a factor, so was all the role players bricking their open shots, but even if some of those things worked out, if the Clippers produced to their regular season offense, they still lose two of those games, just by closer margins.
What does teams needed was of course better star health, but personell wise, more like Danny Green at SG and Andre Iguodala at SF. Yes, it's not impressive when it comes to ppg, but that's the talent that makes you not have to score 115 ppg to win games.