Game 12: Los Angeles Clippers (7-4) @ New Orleans Pelicans (2-8) - 8:00 PM

[Forte IV]

It's a bad loss, but it's still the beginning of the season. I don't get why people are freaking out. The real team hasn't even played together yet tbh. I'm not worried about bad games in November. I've been in the championship mindset since July.

These games count in the standings. When it's playoff time and we're stuck in the 4th seed again like the Lob City days, we'll be wishing that inexcusable losses like this one didn't happen.

Yet every single year the standings come down to the last few games and people never mention early games being the reason why. Every team has bad losses throughout the regular season. We've had 3 back to backs in 16 days. Guys get gassed. Wanting some perfect 82-0 season is unfeasible.

[MartinToVaught]

It's a bad loss, but it's still the beginning of the season. I don't get why people are freaking out. The real team hasn't even played together yet tbh. I'm not worried about bad games in November. I've been in the championship mindset since July.

These games count in the standings. When it's playoff time and we're stuck in the 4th seed again like the Lob City days, we'll be wishing that inexcusable losses like this one didn't happen.

Yet every single year the standings come down to the last few games and people never mention early games being the reason why. Every team has bad losses throughout the regular season. We've had 3 back to backs in 16 days. Guys get gassed. Wanting some perfect 82-0 season is unfeasible.

Nobody's expecting 82-0. Beating a bad Pelicans team missing nearly all of its best players still shouldn't be too much to ask for. Especially when this whole season so far has been a parade of excuses and "just wait until..."

[madmaxmedia]

I'm sort of in between about how bad these losses are. I mean the games without BOTH Kawhi and PG are gonna be tough, it's last last year's team but without Danilo and Shai. I mean NBA basketball is really driven by your best 2-3 guys players- your strong links matter more than your weak links.

But going forward we need to play better defense for sure, hopefully there won't be too many nights where we are missing both Kawhi and PG, and many more night both will be playing (understanding that there will be load management games too.) When we are at less than full strength we need more from Lou than ideal, which means his defense being exposed too.

And the standings do matter- a couple of days ago we were looking pretty good at 7-3, but now we need to hopefully go on a good run to catch up.

As far as Kabengele goes, he looked really raw to me in summer league, and really looked like a development project. So how he looks right off the bat doesn't really concern me right now. By end of year we should have a better idea of what his floor and ceiling might be.

[esqtvd]

Tonight, Trezz and Zu were both about even in plus/minus, but Zu got most of his minutes playing against a rookie center. How he would have done against the quicker and more experienced Favors [20 points/20 rebs, plus+13] is conjecture. Obviously Doc didn't want to risk finding out.

Regardless, we didn't lose the game at the center position; IMO we lost it not defending the perimeter, something Zubac is of zero help with one way or the other. Green had a poor game, too--minus-10 on 1-4 shooting in 18 minutes.

https://medium.com/@flybyknite85/g-league-game-2-mfiondu-kabengele-d0d9acc73c2b

Dude I couldn't agree more about the perimeter issues. Guards are getting a switch on Lou and then skewering him on offense. We really need to watch more games with fully healthy rosters. I can't shake off the feeling that we really need to add 1 or 2 more pieces to fix some of our holes. I really didn't think that coming into the season...

This game was lost inside with the pelicans getting 19 offensive rebounds and Favors having 20 rebounds. Give guards a second chance to shoot and some nights they will make you pay it was a throw away game with the poor unit choices

Can’t fear Favors because he might be able to shoot like we didn’t play Marc Gasol already. Went small and he punished us for it

A lot of those offensive rebounds were off missed 3s that came down well away from the rim. Favors had 9. I'm not going to read a lot into that. That more Zubac would have made any difference is at least questionable.

You're not the only one who's asking the same questions. All Clipperdom is. I can only offer that Doc a) doesn't trust Zubac in most matchups with anybody except traditional battleship-slow 7-footers and/or b) doesn't want Zubac and his confidence destroyed by getting torched by them.

In either case, I think my description of Doc "curating" Zubac's minutes is apt. Like a kid pitcher you baby to keep his ERA out of the stratosphere, or shielding a young left-handed hitter from tough lefties--for both his good and the good of the team.


This is the 21st century, and Zubac is a 20th century center. So is Trezz and he's undersized, but we're gonna use somebody who moves faster than a fire hydrant. Boban has numbers off the scale--his per-36 numbers are Hall of Fame--but there's a reason he still has fewer career minutes in 5 years than SGA did in one.

[Roscoe Sheed]

Is it me or does it seem like good players (like Conley and Holiday) play like hall of famers against the clippers and guys you’ve never heard of play like all stars (like Frank Jackson). Seems like guys play their best against the clippers- not just this year but in the past as well

[Max Headrom]

So, two games in a row the last 2 minute report confirms the refs blew huge calls in favor of the other team. These NBA refs are a complete joke and I wouldn't mind if they started using robot refs because the refs are God awful