ClipperBag: It’s Opening Night

Do you feel that? It’s the fresh, 47-degree weather hitting you in the face. It’s the breath of 88-degree summer days faintly whispering from behind. I can’t hear you anymore, hot weather. And you know what it means when the heat goes away and all that you’re left with is a winter jacket and a pair of galoshes? It means it’s opening night. That’s right, people in Los Angeles have a slightly different concept of what Oct. 29 is supposed to be like. I imagine Angelenos waking up at 6 a.m., going for a run in the perfect, sunny weather only to come home just in time to take their wheatgrass shots and get ready for the stressless days that await them. So what if I’m stereotyping L.A.? You would too if you had to walk around the streets of New York in a sweater and a coat right now. For now though, that’s all fine. We can deal with the cold. Because it’s opening night. Clippers fans are starting to get used to a winning team, a winning culture. This year is supposed to be the next step. For so many years, the Clippers produced more duds than Max Bialystock. But not anymore. This is a new time. The offseason is too long – even though it feels shorter than the first round of the playoffs – but we’re finally here: the first day of the season. So let’s get the year started right with one comprehensive ClipperBag, because as Mr. Bialystock once said: it’s opening night. Will Jared Dudley last as the starting 3 in light of his subpar preseason, prompting Barnes to finally start? – @hip2clipp25 I wrote about this briefly last week in our preseason hybrid Last Call when I piggybacked on a D.J. Foster point about Jared Dudley’s shot distribution. And because of that shot distribution, Dudley might actually be best for the starting lineup regardless of what you think of him or Matt Barnes as players. Ultimately, Dudley is the better complement for the starters. Take a look at this shot chart: That’s a graph of Dudley’s shooting from last season. See how right-side dominant he is? And it’s not just about volume. It’s also about accuracy. Dudley is more comfortable from the right corner than the left corner, which is exactly what the Clippers want in a shooter. Blake Griffin is a right-handed post player, which means that – like most other right-handed post players – he likes to line up on the left block. If you have Barnes, a left-side dominant player, out there with Griffin, you end up with both of them clogging up the same side of the floor. It hurts your floor spacing when you have Barnes, who shot 39.3 percent from the left corner and 30.9 percent from the right corner last year, out there with Blake. With Dudley on the floor, it allows for that sneaky, cross-court pass. It allows for Griffin to throw it back out to the top of the key only so his teammates can swing the ball around the perimeter to find Dudley somewhere on the right side of the floor. If you have Barnes hanging out on the left side, wings can double team Blake and recover to Barnes in time to contest a potential jumper. That won’t be as true with Dudley on the opposite side of the floor. So unless Dudley really slumps, it’d be hard to justify playing him with the bench instead of playing him with Blake Griffin. How many minutes should Blake Griffin, Deandre Jordan, Byron Mullens, Ryan Hollins, and Antawn Jameson play per game on average this season? – @avonhun26 Here’s where things get tricky. Minute distribution is going to be strange on this team. That’s partly because there are so many names. It’s partly because talent on the roster skews toward the guards and wings. It’s partly because there are only 240 minutes to give out in an NBA game. If only Feb. 1 came, David Stern retired, and Adam Silver added an extra four minutes to every quarter, the Clippers would be fine. But for now, the Clips have to play in a 240-minute world. The Clips had a similar too-many-players, not-enough-minutes problem going into last year, but there were some injuries and there were some disappointments (see: Grant Hill, Chauncey Billups), which made everything easier. It all sort of fell into place by the end. Those circumstances allowed Vinny Del Negro to play with a more comfortable rotation. At the start of the season last year, we wondered how the heck Matt Barnes was ever going to get into a game. But by the 10th game of the year, we assumed Barnes to be arguably the best player off the bench, someone who deserved an automatic 25 minutes a night. So that’s the disclaimer. Rotations change quickly and often. The “these things tend to work themselves out” mentality somehow almost always ends up prevailing. It shouldn’t, but it usually does. All that said, how exactly is this rotation going to work its way out? We assume Blake Griffin’s and Chris Paul’s minutes will go up from the career-low per-game totals they each posted last year. When you take a look at the projected rotation and throw in minutes based on skill level or talent or past results, you start compiling a chart that looks something like this: Then you get to Antawn Jamison and Byron Mullens and you realize you’re already at 228 minutes. Obviously those bigs have to play more than the remaining 12 minutes in that rotation – and obviously they will play more. If Griffin and Jordan combine for 67 minutes a game, that’s 29 bench minutes a game the backup bigs have to fill. Hollins can take some of those since he’ll be the defensive preference at center and small ball with Barnes or Dudley at the 4 is an option against certain defenses, but that still leaves us short of […]