| Decisions Get Tougher After Landing Griffin Authored by Matthew Gordon - May 21, 2009 - 7:41 pm
| Current Featured Columns | | Merry Christmas, Raptors Fans The Raptors might not be playing good basketball right now, but there are plenty of things for Toronto fans to be thankful for this holiday season.
A Melo Behind The SuperstarsCarmelo Anthony has never been one of the league's most efficient offensive players.
 |
2009-10 Season Preview: Portland Trailblazers
The 08-09 Blazers transitioned into a young, perennial playoff team and they will need to prove themselves to be a fringe championship contender this season before competing for that distinction in earnest during the 10-11 season.
|
 |
New Season, Same Worries
The page has turned on a new season, but the Pacers are still struggling to find a second option behind Danny Granger and to stop opponents from lighting up the scoreboard.
|
 |
What To Make Of Gilbert And The Wizards
The Washington Wizards are probably the toughest team to predict in the NBA this season, but we saw good indicators despite a rough night against Atlanta.
|
|
More from RealGM's Columnists
|
| |
Wizards forward Caron Butler had already come out publicly in the hope that his team could snag Griffin, for example, while the Thunder would have loved nothing more than to ensure that the bullish post player would team up with Kevin Durant to headline his hometown team.
Although the Clippers had the third-best chance of winning the lottery, I hadn’t expected them to be the ones with the first pick. There was no discernible storyline to their getting Griffin, they already have depth up front, and they seemed like a great fit for Spanish guard Ricky Rubio. When they won, it got me thinking of dozens of different trade scenarios, most involving them landing Rubio plus sweetener, with Griffin going to either the Grizzlies or the Thunder, two teams with an obvious need at his position.
When Clippers general manager Mike Dunleavy made it abundantly clear that the team would take Griffin, a message reinforced by the team’s strategic use of the player’s image to sell season ticket packages, it appeared quite obvious. Reminiscent of when the Raptors wasted no time in overtly alluding to Andrea Bargnani as their first pick in 2006, the Clippers abandoned all inklings of a crafty maneuver or smokescreen. It seems to have made more sense this time, with the draft seemingly simpler than it did three years ago due to the talents involved, but it creates a lot of work for the Clippers front office this summer.
Randolph Must Go
No one was really surprised that the Knicks moved Zach Randolph last fall, or that another team was willing to dump its ballast to give the troublesome big man another shot. However, the trade that sent Randolph and reserve guard Mardy Collins to the Clippers for Tim Thomas and Cuttino Mobley exactly six months ago has to be questioned from both sides. The Knicks were 6-5 at the time of the deal, two of their losses coming in Boston and in San Antonio; they would finish the season 32-50, second last in the East. Meanwhile, the Clippers were well on the road to destruction already, with no need to pick up Randolph’s massive contract.
Regardless of the merits of the trade then, the Clippers have Randolph now, and he’s possibly the league’s most horrendous fit next to Griffin. Griffin’s strengths – a burgeoning back-to-the-basket game, shot creation and fierce rebounding – are exactly what will inevitably interfere with Randolph’s own attempts to do roughly the same things. Griffin’s weaknesses – positional man defense, shot-blocking and keeping hold of the ball – are, unsurprisingly, Randolph’s own failings.
Furthermore, the Clippers have to be wondering if Randolph is the best influence for Griffin. Griffin is a smart player who’s anxious to learn and comes from a strong family background of basketball; intangibly, he’s everything a coach could want short of a LeBron-style throat-slashing instinct.
Randolph, to the contrary, is often plainly uninterested on defense, has a reputation for selfishness, and hasn’t displayed the kind of locker-room leadership that the Clippers will undoubtedly want from Griffin in the coming years. While the Clippers were content to trade some excess contracts for Randolph, it’s doubtful that they’d want to see Griffin become a clone.
(I won’t comment on Randolph’s well-publicized off-court issues. The New York Times’s John Eligon put them into context with his article, “A Chance to Steady an Up-and-Down Life”, two years ago this July upon Randolph becoming a Knick.)
They can’t occupy the same court, especially defensively (see the shot-blocking woes experienced by the Knicks’ previous Randolph/Curry frontline as an obvious example), and the Clippers have already committed to Griffin. They’ll have to find a team to take the last two years of Randolph’s maximum contract, which goes past the hallowed summer of 2010. Since they’ve tipped their hand on Griffin so early, they might have to take back some contracts worse than the ones they traded.
Interior Defense
Griffin’s received a lot of criticism for his defense while at the University of Oklahoma, but I think it’s too early to make a definitive judgment. Firstly, there’s the glaring fact that he basically couldn’t afford to commit fouls because his team would crumble if he left the court, resulting in a necessary timidity while going for charges and blocked shots. That will be corrected simply by being on a NBA team, not even one with very good defenders. (And the Clippers don’t have very good defenders.)
Rather than an unathletic, peanut-brained or otherwise inherently deficient defender, Griffin is what I’d call a developing defender. While many scouts embellish a prospect’s defensive potential on the basis of physical stats, and many basketball minds of all types regurgitate clichés about defense being all smarts and effort, Griffin bridges that gap in a tantalizing way.
He’s got great size, especially in terms of width, which will be indispensable when players his size and bigger are backing him down in the post. At 6’9” and 260 pounds, he measures much like power forwards of the past like Karl Malone (Griffin’s best case scenario?), Brian Grant (who our thoughts are with at this moment), Antonio Davis and Kurt Thomas. While all of the aforementioned players were undersized while guarding centers, as Griffin would be, none experienced such a malady at their natural position. Griffin won’t have to slide to the middle on the Clippers, who have talent there if virtually nowhere else.
His combination of smarts and athleticism allows him to get across the court quickly, close out on perimeter shooters, look for the correct position when facing a leaner opponent, and to know what he’s doing the whole time. Harnessing it will require good coaching and perhaps an added veteran teammate who can defend the post. Former Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Camby is a great shot-blocker, and can certainly help Griffin in that respect, but Griffin has a totally different body type and style of play. Case in point: when Camby was teamed up with Nenê on the Nuggets, Nenê was the one matched up with the players Griffin will most likely be seeing. A scenario like the one on the other side of Los Angeles that saw Kareem Abdul-Jabbar help Andrew Bynum would be a wonderful start, although tailored to Griffin’s individual needs.
Fixing the Point Guard Situation… Again?
Griffin’s key support, aside from his likely frontcourt mate in Chris Kaman, will have to come from the backcourt. Eric Gordon is looking like a great fit on that team, as he can take the pressure off of Griffin in the clutch, preventing a repeat of Shareef Abdur-Rahim’s perpetual frustration in Vancouver. Gordon can’t do everything, though, so Griffin will need a point guard to feed him the ball where he likes it, both on the block and on short range jumpers.
For a comparison that Clippers fans will no doubt appreciate, consider Elton Brand, the team’s previous franchise power forward. Although he managed to average twenty points and ten rebounds or eighteen points and eleven rebounds almost every season (look at his career stats – they’re quite strange that way), he was mired on a losing Clippers team and with no MVP consideration. The one year they had a veteran presence at the point in Sam Cassell, Brand’s scoring average reached a career high, he was a finalist in the MVP voting, and the team won its first playoff series since 1977, when it was located in Buffalo. Cassell wasn’t the only catalyst (and indeed, Brand was a prime 27 that year), but his impact was significant.
The functions the Clippers need now from their point guard aren’t that different. Last summer, the team gave Baron Davis the biggest contract they had ever awarded to a point guard, a whopping $65 million over five years. He looked great in Golden State, and has a plethora of skills that could help the Clippers massively, but the team realized that he wasn’t much use while injured. The Clippers either need him back healthy, and dedicated to not shooting ten-plus threes in any given game, or they need to trade him.
As a stopgap, complement or anything else, the Clippers probably need another point guard anyway. Whether through the draft, a trade or free agency, one aspect of their quest to build around Griffin should be to find a player who’s used to finding big men and is a solid citizen. The Clippers have enough worries without attempting to peddle some misshapen combination of Randolph, Davis and someone like Camby or Al Thornton for a superstar. All they need is someone to play a role like Steve Blake did for the Blazers this season, at least for now. If the player’s young enough, he can grow with Griffin.
A Ray of Hope
It’s clear that Dunleavy, lottery attendee Andy Roeser (whose suit liner I loved, by the way), and the rest of the Clippers organization have a very busy offseason ahead of them. Whether they’re successful in the three areas I mentioned: moving Randolph, even if they receive less talent back; instilling a defensive culture, whether through additional coaches, players or both; and acquiring a floor general to keep Griffin happy on offense, they still have Griffin. That much can’t be undone.
The work ahead will be challenging, but it could be rewarding and might even be fun. The hardest days are over. A 19-win season, watching a gimpy Baron shoot a wretched .370 from the field (which, oddly, isn’t his career worst), watching Randolph airball clutch threes… all of those are over. At least if Clippers fans have to endure another 19-win season in 2009/2010, they’ll be able to do it while watching a player they’ll inevitably grow to love. |
