Season Preview: Los Angeles Clippers

I'll likely throw in an interruption to this sometime soon. It'll likely be another rant and potential trade option. Just giving you the heads up.

Los Angeles Clippers

Starting 5:
PG- Baron Davis
SG- Cuttino Mobley
SF- Al Thornton
PF- Marcus Camby
C- Chris Kaman

Off the Bench
Guards: Eric Gordon, Jason Hart, Mike Taylor, Dontell Jefferson
Forwards: Tim Thomas, Ricky Davis, Steve Novak
Centers: Brian Skinner, Paul Davis, DeAndre Jordan

Oh yeah, the other LA team. Two things stand out to me when I take a first glance at this roster, they have a lot of rookies (5) and they have a lot of centers (also 5). Clippers were in the news a lot as they managed to swipe Baron Davis from upstate and bring him down from Oakland and the Golden State Warriors, then effectively have the 76ers swipe Elton Brand away from them. In a move of desperation, they managed to land Marcus Camby for cap relief and a conditional 2nd round pick (basically nothing), and also signed Heat castoffs Ricky Davis and Jason Williams (who subsequently retired). Oh yes, also as recent news, they signed Paul Davis. I have a hunch they did this just to get three Davises on the roster. Now they just need to trade for Dale Davis and Big Baby Glen and they'll have a complete set!

Ok, ok, all joking aside, the roster is another one of those, "looks great on paper" aka "I would play with it on my PlayStation (or XBox or whatever)" rosters. One major concern is firstly, will Baron Davis replicate another 82 game healthy season? Second is can Baron Davis play under a micromanager like Mike Dunleavy Sr.? Things are sort of pointing to no for me. Since Nelly allows his players free reign on the court in Golden State, Baron has been kind of allowed to just "do his thing" for a while. However, if we look back one team prior, Baron had problems with Byron Scott on the Hornets. He's something of a free spirit, and the fact that Elton Brand would no longer be on the team not bothering him has also showed that he only really wanted two things out of this deal: guaranteed money on a longer contract (5 years, $65 mil) and to be in LA (his hometown), hence the Clippers. Big picture wise, he doesn't care about winning. That being said, when he's on the floor, he'll likely contribute in a lot of the ways he normally does, exploding to the basket and chucking up hordes of horrendous shots. Given that you have a rebounding frontcourt of Marcus Camby (13.1 rpg last season, 2.9 offensive boards) and Chris Kaman (12.7 rpg last season, 3.1 offensive boards) that's not a horrible prospect. However, I expect for him and coach Dunleavy to butt heads and I don't really anticipate Davis to play with much fire now that he has what he wants (money and proximity to Hollywood).

While I anticipate a spike in the offensive rebounding and putback buckets that both Camby and Kaman will be getting, the offense likely won't run through them very frequently what with the blackhole tendencies of Al Thornton and Ricky Davis. Granted having proficient rebounders on the glass like Camby and Kaman will help, the strategy of chucking up bad shots from the perimeters and hoping that you get the putback only really works in pickup games at the park. Eric Gordon hurt himself before we could really get a look at how well he really plays, but looks to be something of a perimeter threat. Cuttino Mobley and Tim Thomas are the reigning vets now in the system, and while serviceable, aren't anything special. All in all it's not a bad looking team, but I really don't see them getting it together anytime soon, hopefully they do, but I could be wrong. I'm still not entirely sold on the Kaman/Camby frontcourt though theoretically it should work.

Best case maybe break even, so maybe 41 wins, which is an improvement, but not enough to get them out of the lottery and into the playoffs.