I respect the Los Angeles Clippers. I respect them a lot more than most people.
I think Chris Paul is an all-time great, and a top 30 player in the history of the NBA . I think the Clippers are a well-constructed team (well, their starters are). I think that Blake Griffin is a great, well-rounded power forward and anyone who calls him just a dunker is a moron. I think that J.J. Redick is a lethal piece, and an off-ball shooter of the sort which is becoming more important in this league and which Houston desperately needs. And while I do think that Golden State is going to steamroll everyone at this point, the Clippers are the one team that could make things tough for them.
So, I can tolerate losing to the Los Angeles Clippers.
I cannot tolerate losing to Austin Rivers. And Austin Rivers, Austin freaking Rivers, led the Clippers on a 23-0 run which ended this game by the start of the fourth quarter.
I’m just going to close this out with two simple thoughts, which I am sure I have noted at some point in the past.
First, I don’t think Josh Smith’s biggest problem is his three-point shooting. Josh Smith’s biggest problem is that he’s not as good finishing in the paint as you would expect from an athletic power forward with his skills. Part of that is because just like with his three-point shooting, Smith goes for teardrops and fancier layups over just bulldozing his way into the paint. Sometimes those shots works. But a lot of the time, as we have seen throughout this series, they don’t.
Even if Smith stopped shooting the threes that we know are just part of his game, I don’t think he would be an effective scorer even then.
Second, Trevor Ariza has been a fantastic perimeter defender in this series. But Trevor Ariza cannot guard three players at the same time. And while Houston really has only one perimeter threat, everyone on the Clippers is dangerous. Paul is the point god, Redick can shoot, Crawford hits the stupidest shots ever taken, and so on.
Harden’s defense has slipped over these past three games and I suspect that will be in the headlines after this game. This is especially so because he did get lazy on an Austin Rivers breakaway score and everyone knows you can judge how well a player did by the highlights. But that problem is exacerbated by having to play Harden alongside Jason Terry for so long. Redick went off in the first quarter and scored 11 of Los Angeles’s first 22 points because Terry was stuck guarding him.
And yet the Rockets need Terry because no one else can hit a three pointer. It’s a problem that I don’t think will be solved in this series, and it will be a major reason for Los Angeles’s likely series victory.
And that is all I have to say for now. Forrest Walker and I will be getting together tomorrow to discuss this game on the Red94 podcast. Check in for a more detailed analysis, or rather an analysis when heads have cooled down after this travesty.
