DeAndre doesn’t look like he will contribute this year.

it really doesn’t mean much. I do think it is important however for this team to play together against any opponent to get that whole chemistry thing going.

As for Kaman, I’d happily take a full season of Kaman 2.0 before rushing out an error prone vista… i mean kaman 3.0.

But it can only get better. That’s about as bad as he can play.

Just about everyone else suprised me in a good way, including all 3 Davis’s, Thomas, Novak, and Taylor who I temporarily thought should be booted off the squad after a couple horrible passes.

Hart was about what we expected, Thornton continues to have a hard time passing the ball, and with all the infusion of youth and talent, mobley looks that much older but those are minor complaints. If this game was any indication, these are definitely not the same old Clippers. They’ll be a fun group to watch.

They play as expected, Thornton looks like he could score 20ppg, he won’t have terrific all-around stats but his offense looks strong.

B Diddy got wherever he wanted today. Kaman, Al and Camby will get alot of layups and dunks of his dribble penetration.

Ricky Davis looked pretty good, if Mobley game does drop off I think Ricky can do a good job, he’s pretty similar to Stephen Jackson who put up great seasons with Baron.

Kaman looked to be in terrific shape. He missed alot of makeable shots but he’s not going to face alot of teams that will be able to stick Gasol and Bynum on him. Now that everyone knows he is capable of putting up 20-10 he’ll have to work on handling double teams better. He did a great job of rebounding and I expect he’ll eat up the weaker teams this year and struggle against teams with terrific size.

Tim Thomas looked okay too. I think over the years we’ve always overestimated his ability. We see a guy who’s tall, athletic for his size with a nice stroke and wonder why he isn’t a perennial all-star. Yet if we redacted his name I think most teams would be pleased to have a guy like him coming off the bench. He’ll be a solid backup at the 3 and 4.

Paul Davis looked pretty slow. He’ll have to get healthier before he’ll be able to contribute consistently during the regular season. Novak showed us why he’s in the league, he can shoot the lights out. We might be able to get away with playing him even with his horrid D if Camby and Kaman are providing weakside help. Hart looked like a solid backup PG and Skinner is a dependable big man who provides okay depth.

I don’t see Taylor or Jordan giving us much this year but they showed flashes of potential of what they could be in a couple of years.

I can’t wait to see Camby play and see how the team looks with everyone (also the rookie Gordon needs to play so we can gauge if he’ll provide any help this year or not).

Lol, you have a good point newtybar…Preseason is upon us finally, and excitement hasn’t picked up quite yet. Anyhoo, a meaningless Preseason game, 3rd string PG taylor looked ok. Considering Mobley’s age and Gordon’s health, Taylor see some time as a scoring combo guard. I know MDSr has clashed with players in that mold (Ewing/Dooling) in the past, but Taylor could prove mildly valuable.

Kaman 2.0, will he even show?

He tries to do too much.

Skinner’s 4 blks were nice. The front line will be imposing this year.

Thoughts on Kaman:

I don’t think he was trying to do too much. I think he was just trying to gauge his current condition, it’s preseason it’s ok to tweak around a bit.

I know preseason doesn’t mean much, but it’s just great to finally see the guys play. I really want to see Gordon.

On a side note, I feel really bad for Brandon Heath (from my Alma Mater) who was completely ineffective last night…couldn’t even push the ball up the court and completely outplayed by a 3rd string PG Mike Taylor. Sun Yue did not look impressive either and I had pinned him as high potential.

“It’s pre-season, no one’s particularly motivated to play defense”

ClipperSteve – Don’t say that to Baron Davis. Guy was hustling last night.

I was cut off from the net, otherwise I would have had a fair amount to say before this. It was great that the game was on TV. The Clippers showed strength, depth, and shooting skills. The Clipperblog observation was that we’re seeing the “reassembled” (newly assembled?) lineup for the first time, except for Marcus Camby, but I would say that he left out a potential major contributor in Eric Gordon. The Clippers got great shooting when it “counted” (as much as it can count in preseason) from Ricky Davis, a little from Tim Thomas, and a lot from Steve Novak, who is going to be very fun to watch. But Gordon is a big time shooter and physical, athletic backcourt presence as well, and he wasn’t out there.

A breakdown:

Watching Baron Davis was pure joy for this Clip fan. Basketball is more fun and interesting when there is good or at least competent point guard play (a shocking rarity in Clipper annals) and the best we’ve seen, unless I’m mistaken, is Marc Jackson or Sam Cassell in the “good” category, and guys like Gary Grant, Jeff McGinnis, and Marko Jaric in the competent category. In one short preseason session Baron Davis was easily, far and away, the best point guard I’ve ever seen in a Clipper uniform. He puts his will on the game, he’s strong and quick and creative, he gets rebounds and deflections and steals, he gets calls from the refs, he challenges elite opponents like Kobe, he makes plays and makes other players better. And all of this is just obvious, a chemical reaction that occurs when he’s on the court. He’s not perfect or flawless and he’ll make some bad plays and have bad nights, but we have never seen anything like this on a Clipper roster. With all that, he made, I think, four plays that were just sick. Good times.

Mr. Flippy in the house. Kaman was a bit jittery going against Gasol and Bynum, and he looked like he was still trying to get his mojo going. But let’s remember that he was going against Gasol and Bynum, who are supposed to be the dominant C-PF pairing in the league. And Kaman didn’t have his own mate, Camby, beside him. The Clips were basically playing with last year’s team, except with Baron Davis at PG, and they were playing the same team that played for the NBA championship, with Ariza subbing for Radman. The Lakers are supposed to roll right over everybody, and my guess is that they hoped to make some plays, hit some Clip futility, and provide the knockout punch with Bynum coming in. Not that there were any real stakes, but the Lakers have to be thinking that they’re going to have to figure a few things out in order to dominate the Western conference. The thing is—what would this game have been like if Kaman 2.0 had played instead of Mr. Flippy? Kaman just had one of those Kamanights, and it’s okay to see it in preseason. He started rebounding well and picking up turnovers on dumb outlets. He’ll step up and do better, and his confidence will start to build at some point. Let’s not forget the very long stretch last year when Kaman was the only option. He played about as bad as he can play at this point, and the Clips scored points, played defense, and easily won the game.

Ricky Davis. Hit big shots, exactly what was wanted coming off the bench. 3pt threat, key man along with BD in the Clips’ big first quarter. Quieter in shorter minutes in the 2nd half, but he’s going to really help this team.

Tim Thomas. Very happy so far with Thomas as in his new role, with guys like Skinner, Davis, Novak and Jordan playing behind him, and putting Camby into the mix can only make things better. Let’s remember that last year when Kaman (and Davis3) were hurt, Thomas was the starting center, not just the starting PF. He’ll also obviously benefit this year from playing with BDavis. And the other very important thing is that Tim Thomas presented a real problem for the Bynum-Gasol lineup, as neither of those guys wants to go very far away from the basket, and he did fine against the starting Gasol-Odom lineup. The Clips will have their own similar issues with Kaman-Camby, but having Thomas at their disposal will be a big asset. You know things are wacky when I feel good about Tim Thomas, but of course he picked up a groin pull just because things were going too well.

Thornton played pretty well. Defenses clearly have to pay attention to him, which will create opportunities for other guys. Showed some signs of what he can do with Davis running the floor. His 3rd quarter turnovers were a very ugly stretch, the type of thing that you have to write off to “it’s preseason, and we have a 20+ pt lead,” the type of thing that can be corrected.

Mobley did his yeoman defensive duty against Kobe. Kind of like the slo-mo replay where Mobley got into Kobe with his off arm and Kobe went a little nuts and went down on the floor. About all you can say is that the Clips got a flicker of attention from Kobe, between Mobley’s gadfly defense, RDavis hitting bombs, and BDavis making plays on him. But Kobe wasn’t playing a single card last night.

Davis3 looked pretty good last night, didn’t he? A tiny bit of a slow start, then the 3 pt play, later hit the face-up 20 footer. Doubt he’ll play much when Camby is back, but the main thing is that he looks pretty healthy after his injury.

D Jordan had that dunk, which was fun, and a couple of blocks and challenges. The thing to remember with him is that he would have gotten a huge amount of playing time in last year’s debacle. It’s a nice piece of insurance, and kind of fun to see him get a few minutes against young Bynum.

Taylor was pretty great—good 3rd string option. Hart actually made some shots. Novak made a bunch of shots—that guy is a great option that the Clips haven’t had. Skinner seems very solid as well, a bit leaner and more active and quicker than I would have thought.

Didn’t mean anything really, but it sure was fun to watch. Eager to see Camby and Gordon join the group, and to see Kaman get things going.

  i had not watched much of bdiddy before this game, not watching many games besides Lakers and clippers who occassionaly played golden state.

 Have to say one of best words (which i couldn’t come up with in my post of clipper open-to-public scrimmage at Camp Pendleton) to describe his is. … acrobatic. He finds those little cracks in the defensive, spins and twirls and whips up (won’t say flip, due to Kamen 1.8) up the ball in the hoop.

 In my post of Clippers’ scrimmage, i said BD did not stand out as one would expect of an all-star. Well, he looked every bit an all-star in breaking down the Laker defense, and setting up lay-ups and dunks to the Clipper bigs. I agree with post of someone who said
Ricky Davis will have a big season a la Stephen Jackson due to BD. And even Davis3 looked good!!!!!!!

There was a Live feed going around Clippers Board of the game I was hoping you guys would have found out too. The game ws pretty sick to watch.

Highlights:
-Mike taylor is a steal
-We have a strong defesive team which will keep Dunleavy very happy
-We have a never quit attitude we played to the las mintue.
-Chemistry looks very strong on this team. Health is now the number one issue.
-Al Thorton is will destroy all below .500 teams :) We should call him the bulldozer he blows throw rebuilding teams.
-Once Mike Taylor develops solid passing vision he can be a quality 2nd string. He could be the Clippers own Rodney Stuckey.

Downsides:
-Ricky Davis showed some chuckerness in him but he made up for it everytime
-CHRIS KAMAN IS STILL PLAYING LIKE A BUM
-Jason Hart had a little too many missed shots for his own good defense was still solid
-Our rebounding was a little off when needed.
-The team proved they are still a tough team without BD but it’s so much easier with him.
-Injuries made our team look hell of thin.
-Turnovers (4 by Kaman)

Overall this could have been a blowout or at least a double digit win if we stopped silliy turnovers. But it is preseason. A win is a win.