You were right ahead of me. Plaschke is nothing if not provacative. Yesterday it was Vecsey; today’s it’s Plaschke.

When I read the first few paragraphs I was outraged—he’s just rehashing this now?—but I calmed down when I saw that there was some meat on the bone, substance to the hypothesis as you say.

The problem I have is that he doesn’t integrate it into the last six weeks of the 08-09 season. The conflict is there, but there are very obvious reasons why it’s at a primitive stage. If we’re writing about this issue at ClipsNation, we would talk about the number of games BD missed in the preseason, the number of actual practices he has had and how many of those have been with the team at full strength—that is, with Camby and Kaman on the floor together—and the number of games out of those first seven that it has been true. Then add the teams that the Clippers have played.

But the other thing that you don’t hear about here is Dunleavy, who is always saying something on the sidelines, whether it’s about defense or calling plays or saying “dive!” to get guys to cut to the basket, constantly yelling “go!” in every game this season, and trying to get the Clips to run and get early offense. Didn’t mention that. Milph are doing a good job of picking it up and mentioning it, because they’re trying to defuse and smooth the waters of this potential conflict.

Add to that the idea that the primary way to run is off of rebounds (and defense), which gets us back to Kaman-Camby. Kaman-Camby is just getting started, and eventually they’re going to face teams that really don’t match up very well, and they’re going to establish some beefy rebounding margins. And that’s going to create opportunities to run and get early offense. And Dunleavy has no intention of putting the brakes on that.

It’s similar to Dunleavy’s comments on shooting the three. He was even a bit prickly, outraged that someone could even ask him whether he liked the 3 pt shot. He said something like “you’re asking me that? Really? I led the league in 3 pt. shooting. Of course I like the 3 pt shot. You just need to have guys who can make it. And now we have those guys.” End of discussion.

We all have our frustrations with Dunleavy. But when I read this article and look at his quotes, I like everything he’s saying, just the same way I liked every move he made over the tumultuous summer.

As far as BD fitting into Dunleavy’s offense goes, it’s just a matter of getting playing time and going through it. The half-court sets can run very smoothly and be very effective, but it takes time. The Clippers were very effective and played to their strengths in 05—06, especially in the playoffs. Their offense stalled a bit in the first half of 06-07 when it featured a player with poor offensive skills and the old PG was tweaked, but it got better in the 2nd half of the season, and the Clipper offense still didn’t have a diverse and highly skilled 3 pt attack. It’s going to get much better and run very smoothly soon enough, and the Clips are also going to run and hit 3s.

I would have rather seen Plaschke write about the way that the Clips just went through a sort of “preseason” against elite teams, how they got things started with a nice home win against direct competitor 2-5 Dallas, and how the next four games are crucial and could be definitive. But we can’t have everything.

we didn’t call this early on. As Plaschke said, surely the Clippers knew what they were getting. Zhiv, I’m not sure that you can really compare this team to the 05-06 team, because that team’s strengths were based on half court sets, which fit into MDSr’s rigid play calling. To that end, the iso’s we’ve been watching have been painful. BD is who he is, and he needs to freelance to be successful and happy. Hopefully, MDSr will just let them play. Finally, BD’s going to be vocal as he’s the true leader of this team and will do what he can to get his way. MDSr’s failure to fight that natural urge of his to be defensive to me signals that BD will get his way.

This will be interesting. Hopefully they will figure out a way to win.

we just haven’t played good enough defense to do it more often. Every turnover we seem to immediatly push the ball upcourt, every rebound we’re pushing to Baron for a quick attack. The problem seems to be that if the inital push is rebuffed, we don’t have enough shot clock to run a full play and get either a really late set that is easily defended or a 1 on 3 play with a shot and no rebounding down low.
  
   We also don’t have the players that excel in that sort of offense (Warriors style), or have played it that much (Baron and Camby are the exceptions, and Thornton seems to be getting it now). With Kaman and Camby we can’t have a shot every 15 seconds and expect them to be involved in every possesion and play 35+ minutes a game. The best sign I’ve seen that other members of the team are onboard with running more is Kaman starting to beat the opposing center downcourt and cutting hard to the basket. This led to 2 or 3 easy basket opportunities down low last game, with a high chance to get a rebound if there’s a miss. Seeing Camby play I can already tell he wants to push the ball every time. Heck sometimes he brings it up himself and does entry passes to a posting player with mismatches on small gaurds.
  
     I really think its a feel thing with the team and arn’t too worried. My friend, who roots for the Cavs, noticed the other day that Kaman seems like the smartest guy on the floor for us (and noted that’s not a compliment). Kaman just seems to know the sets better, same with Paul Davis and Mobley. How many times have we seen Kaman telling people to rotate away from the ball handler for an isolation or pick and roll play. The two or three extra seconds it takes to setup these plays affect all aspects of our play right now; from preventing turn and shoot plays from our guards to getting post players immediately double teamed when they have to start a move with 4 seconds left in the shot clock. This is going to go away as soon as people become more familar in the sets.

 I’m pretty confident that we’re going to have a much more uptempo team than previous years. We just need to do it in a coordinated fashion so we’re not losing points when we switch to an uptempo offense; for example Mike Taylor has shown the tendency to go to the rim against 2-3 guys when he’s running the uptempo offense, once he figures out how to wait for some teamates he’ll have a much easier drive with the option of a kickout for 3.