5 Takeaways From Los Angeles Clippers’ Early-Season Play

Griffin is a dark horse contender for the MVP this season, but he’s falling in love with his outside shot a little too much to start the year. The power forward has proven he can hit the 18-20 foot jumper, but that’s not his strength. Having center DeAndre Jordan basically spending all of his time in the paint doesn’t help, but Griffin needs to get back to posting up and attacking the rim more consistently.

The starting front line for the Clippers, DeAndre Jordan and Blake Griffin, are not rebounding at the same rate compared to last season. Jordan is averaging 11 boards per game after averaging 13.6 last year. Griffin is only averaging 6.9 rebounds, down from 9.5 per game. The third big man, Spencer Hawes, is a stretch-five who hasn’t rebounded the ball well either, as he’s averaging just 3.7 per game.

The new owner of the Clippers has provided a great boost of energy and new excitement to the franchise thus far. After going through the unfortunate events forced upon them by former owner Donald Sterling at the tail end of last season, it appears the team is back on track and confident in Ballmer.

Los Angeles has surprisingly struggled, for their standards, on the offensive end of the court early in the season. After leading the entire NBA in points per game last season at 107.9, the Clippers are currently 16th in the league at 100.7 this year. This team might just be in an early-season funk, but they’ll need to pick it up offensively as they compete in the deep Western Conference.

This has been one of the Clippers’ main issues for a couple seasons now, but they still don’t have a good wing defender on this roster. Matt Barnes remains the closest thing to that distinction, but he’s now 34 years old and growing less effective. The combination of J.J. Redick and Jamal Crawford is extremely poor defensively. Los Angeles might need to swing a trade for that kind of player prior to the deadline.