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The Play: Midway through the third quarter in a 100-93 victory over the Miami Heat, Chris Paul and DeAndre Jordan worked the pick-and-roll to generate an open layup for Paul:
Why It Matters: The Los Angeles Clippers have gone 17-4 since starting power forward Blake Griffin was sidelined due to injury — first with a quadriceps issue, and then after infamously breaking his hand in a fight with a team employee.
Seeing as the Clippers went 17-13 across the first 30 games of the season, with Griffin playing in all of them, does the turnaround in Los Angeles mean that the team is actually better off without Griffin? No. With Griffin out, the rest of the Clippers’ roster has dramatically elevated their play, making Los Angeles more of a full team instead of a team that leans entirely on its starting lineup.
What might be the case, however, is that the Clippers really do improve when Paul Pierce sits. It’s been a career-worst year for Pierce any way you look at it. So far, he’s set dramatic new career-lows in field goal percentage (34.3 percent — next-worst is 40.2 percent) and points per minute. Pierce has played in 34 percent of the Clippers’ minutes this season, and the team is actually getting outscored when he’s on the floor. When he sits, Los Angeles handily beats its opponents by 6.6 points per 100 possessions.
The play above was the Clippers’ first second-half possession without Pierce, who’s shooting 31.0 percent on three-point field goals this season. With Jamal Crawford and Wesley Johnson spacing the floor, Paul had an open key to drive into. The threat of a sledgehammer alley-oop from Jordan threatened Amar’e Stoudemire (#5) so much that he backed away from Paul right as the shot went up.
Paul and the Clippers feasted on points generated out of the high pick-and-roll for the rest of the quarter, with Pierce sitting. A minute later, Stoudemire was replaced by Hassan Whiteside (#21). Whiteside took himself out of this play when attempting to block the shot, meaning that Jordan only had to jump over 6’3″ Goran Dragic to get the tip-in:
On the Clippers’ next possession, Whiteside was once again aggressive in pursuing the shot block, forcing rookie Justise Winslow (#20) to foul Jordan:
If Winslow wasn’t such a stellar defensive player, this would probably have been an easy dunk for Jordan.
Out of conventional answers, the Heat began to hack Jordan on every possession. This slowed the Clippers’ offense down some — until Jordan was replaced with backup Cole Aldrich, one of the efficient players behind the Clippers’ unlikely recent success.
First, Aldrich outworked Whiteside for the rebound, tipping in two points:
With the more disciplined Chris Bosh replacing Whiteside, Aldrich answered on the next possession with a slick pass into the corner:
(Impressively, this is a play that Aldrich has made before.)
On the other end of the floor, the Heat are just 28th in the league in three-point accuracy. Their lack of outside threats meant that the Clippers could confidently pack the key and prevent any penetration whenever Miami executed a pick-and-roll. The result was a contested mid-range shot — or, the least efficient attempt in the game:
The Clippers’ defense held strong with either Jordan or Aldrich in the game:
Los Angeles coach/GM Doc Rivers has rightfully received a lot of criticism for a series of personnel decisions that lack vision, as he repeatedly delves into his own Rolodex instead of looking for new talent. For all the mistakes he’s made, however, this game was a microcosm showing how his team design in 2015-16 is superior even to that of the don, Pat Riley.