The NBA season is right around the corner and the Los Angeles Clippers 2013 NBA Championship Odds are currently at 33-1 ($100 bet pays $3500). They are 14-1 to win the Western Conference and their over/under season win total projection is 50,5. Below is the overall season preview by Pregame Pro André Gomes. 

A new era in LA

The expectations were at a new high for the Clippers last season. Two weeks before the start of the regular season, the Clippers were able to sign Chris Paul, on a trade involving the Hornets and the Clippers were suddenly more talked about their rival Lakers!

2011-12 Regular Season Numbers:

Chris Paul didn’t seem to be in good shape at the start of the season, but that didn’t stop the Clippers from being one of the best offensive teams in the league. Chris Paul formed with Chauncey Billups a weird but effective duo in the backcourt, while the Clippers were also one of the most athletic and explosive teams in the league.

In my opinion, this athletic advantage from the Clippers wasn’t well used by their Coach Vinny Del Negro, who preferred to implement a half court style in the team, making the Clippers the 6^th slowest team in the league. Chris Paul was also used to play half court basketball in New Orleans, but the Clippers would have been more dangerous if they had decided to play on a faster pace.

The Clippers frontcourt was very powerful with Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, Reggie Evans and later Kenyon Martin, but all of them were limited offensively (with the exception of Griffin, but who still needs to improve a lot) and these players had more problems in scoring on half court sets, with the additional problem that all of them were quite poor from the free throw line.

LA Clippers month-by-month record:

In the beginning of March, the Clippers had their worst moment of the season by losing eight games in twelve and there were even talks of Vinny Del Negro getting fired, but the team bounced back very well with thirteen wins in the following fifteen games. The team also dealt well with Billups’ season ending injury in February by adding Nick Young and Kenyon Martin to their roster.

In the Playoffs, the Clippers had a brutal physical series against the Grizzlies that only ended in the 7^th game and with irreparable damages: both Chris Paul and Blake Griffin were physically limited for the remainder of the postseason. In the following round, the Clippers faced the Spurs and they got crushed in four games, in a very easy series for San Antonio.

Offseason moves 2012-13:

The Clippers were one of the teams that made a lot of changes in this offseason in order to improve their roster. Chris Paul is yet to sign a new contract with the team, so they want to show CP3 that they are willing to do everything to make the team extremely competitive this season, so they can finally convince Paul to sign a long-term deal with the team.

It is unlikely that Chauncey Billups is able to return at the start of the regular season, but the Clippers are hoping that Billups can return by mid-November. Anyway, the Clippers wanted to add more pieces to the SG position and so, they signed free-agent Jamal Crawford. Grant Hill was also disputed by several teams, including the Lakers, but he decided to sign with the Clippers.

Last season, one of the problems of the Clippers was the lack of a “playmaker” on the frontcourt and the solution of the Clippers for that was signing Lamar Odom, with all the risks associated to this deal.

2012-13: A roster with a lot of depth

There aren’t a lot of teams with more depth than the Clippers this season.

Chris Paul is one of the five best players in the league and so, we can expect a better season from him this season. He is coming from a season where he averaged 19.8 points, 9.1 assists, 3.6 rebounds and 2.5 steals per game, while shooting 48% FG, 37% 3pts and 86% FT. And still, we have to take in account that he wasn’t physically at 100% in the start of the season due to representing the players in the lockout negotiations during the offseason and also because this was the first time he changed teams on the NBA and took his time to adapt to a new team, with a new coach and new teammates, on a season that didn’t basically have a training camp.

For this season, everything will be easier for CP3 and so, we can expect a MVP level season from him.

In last season’s playoffs, Eric Bledsoe showed that he can be an excellent option to the team coming off the bench. His speed and aggression is a weapon that Del Negro will have to explore this season. It is unlikely that the team’s style will change this season, but Del Negro should set a higher pace on the team’s game whenever Bledsoe is on the court, in order to take advantage of his speed.

While Billups doesn’t recover from his injury, Jamal Crawford will get most minutes at the SG position. Billups has a lot of psychological skills and he is billed as a good leader, but the truth is that he will need to play better than he did in the 20 games he played last season for the Clippers, as shooting 36.4% FG while attempting 11 FGA/game isn’t a good synonym for efficiency…

Jamal Crawford is also coming from a tough season in Portland, where he didn’t match the expectations the team had for him. This will be the first time on his career that Crawford will play alongside a star PG, so it will be interesting to follow his shooting efficiency, having in account he will receive some excellent passes from CP3.

But the big key for the Clippers this season will be their frontcourt production.

Blake Griffin played in every regular season game for the second season in a row and no doubt that playing alongside Chris Paul helped him offensively, as even though Griffin had less points per game last season, he was more efficient with 55% FG, while he had just shot 50% on his rookie season. Griffin’s problem was his regression for the free throw line, as he shot just 52% FT, while he had shot 64.2% FT on his rookie season. This lack of efficiency from the free throw line was well used by his opponents at the end of the last season when they put him on propose on the free throw line in the clutch moments of the games.

The Clippers would be fine last season if Griffin was the only poor shooter from the free throw line. But the problem is that all frontcourt players were terrible on this area of the game:

Blake Griffin                      52% FT
DeAndre Jordan              52% FT
Reggie Evans                     51% FT
Kenyon Martin                 37% FT

The big news for this season is the signing of Lamar Odom. But we’ll have to wait to know what version of Odom shows up. But assuming he plays at a similar level that he showed when he played for the Lakers, then the Clippers will finally have a playmaker on the frontcourt that they severely missed last season.

Caron Butler and Grant Hill will fight for the minutes at the SF position, even though both players can also play in the SG position if necessary, therefore the Clippers are well served with these two players.

Final Thoughts

Nobody is talking about the Clippers for this season mostly due to the offseason changes the Lakers made, however the Clippers have the same expectations this season that they had last season.

My doubts about this team reside especially in the ability of their Coach Vinny Del Negro. I’ve never been a fan of him and we only have to see what an elite coach like Thibodeau did in Chicago immediately after Del Negro left the Bulls.

The Clippers would be a much more dangerous team if they played at a faster pace in order to take advantage of their athleticism and especially their depth, but I doubt that will happen. Any team that has Chris Paul is almost immediately a good offensive team like for example the Suns were with Steve Nash over the last few seasons, so the main challenger of Del Negro will be to improve their defense.

The Clippers were a mediocre team on defense last season by being even out of the top 15 in terms of defensive efficiency. It’s incredible that the Clippers while being one of the best teams of the league in terms of offensive rebounding can’t do the same in terms of defensive rebounding, while they also couldn’t defend without fouling a lot. If this tendency continues to happen this season, then the Clippers will never become title contenders with Del Negro leading the team and that’s in my opinion the most likely scenario for the team this season.

I expect the Clippers to have a nice regular season, as the Pacific Division is relatively weak this season, they have one of the best players in the league in Chris Paul and they have a roster full of depth. However, when they reach the postseason, the story will be different and the challenge in terms of making adjustments will be bigger and I don’t believe Vinny Del Negro is good enough to put the team playing at their best during the postseason.

 Follow Andre Gomes on Twitter @GomesCapper

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