Low and behold.

Here is a comprehensive list. Fazeek is just a winner. Al Thornton is pretty even with Stuckey, and both are way ahead of Thaddeus Young.

I think someone posted this earlier this year.

Here is some worrying info about this year’s Clippers rookie class:

DeAndre Jordan: 1.9 PAWS/40

Jordan may be tall and athletic, but that hasn’t translated into productivity. His limited collegiate minutes suggest he is purely a project, and Win Scores agrees. While on the court, Jordan was somewhat productive, but that productivity reversed when playing top 100 teams, as he posted a -1.7 PAWS/40. This large swing in productivity suggests his stats were generated by abusing the short and under talented, none of which is to be found in the NBA.

Eric Gordon: 0.3 PAWS/40

While Gordon is young and can cite a coaching distraction, his statistics clearly indicate an overrated prospect. Among basketball fans, there seems to be a consensus that Gordon is likely top 7 prospect and certainly lottery worthy. Statistically, there are several worrying signs, including a high volume of turnovers and a low assist-to-turnover ratio. Furthermore, there are signs Gordon feasted on the weak, as he put up a -2.9 PAWS/40 against Ken Pomeroy’s top 100 teams.
By the numbers, teams should steer away from selecting Eric Gordon and save themselves millions of dollars and handfuls of losses.

Underlying Hollinger’s analysis appears to be a negative attitude towards Clipper management, or at least that they can produce a viable team or concept of winning. Hollinger is not alone in that.

I personally dieagree with the WIN player-win analysis. It goes too far IMO. But I do agree with the general point that those three will need to produce the wins.

John R is correct that if Gordon and Thornton are important. However, he fails to discount, as he must, the effect of games that will likely not be played by thte two historically injury-prone anchors (and even Kaman only played 56 games last year). Thus, 42 wins as a goal is realistic for this team.

Of course it’s not at the Hollinger-level of anti-Clipper prejudice-maybe arrogance or disdain are better words-but WoW wasn’t exactly generous:

”...the franchise record set by that immortal team from 2005-2006 will not be threatened.”

Thanks for that.

I would add that the article does have more than a hint of attitude to it, and that hint gets stronger when you realize that it is based on a positive assumption. WoW makes progress over a lot of the trade analysis by accepting the basic idea that Kaman and Camby will play very well together. But the FElton article about Philly is a good contrast. In that one, WoW (at least to this Clipper fan) seems to be saying, we all think that Philly just became much better by adding FElton, and let’s break this down to show that, yes, they should now be as good as anybody in the East besides Boston.

Compare that to the tone of the Clipper article: that one seems to be, wait a minute, the Clips just added a WoW monster, to go along with Baron Davis. That should more than make up for the loss of FElton and Maggette. But even with those numbers we’re pretty sure that the Clippers can’t really be that good, so let’s go in and figure out how they’re still mediocre.

Whatever. I spent some time over there, which I’ve only done a couple of times before-they seemed to forget their Fabulous Fazekas post today-and it seems like a fun numbers game. There’s a fair amount to discuss and question-how did Kaman go from 1.0 to 2.0?-but it is what it is. Somewhere they said something about “that’s where coaching becomes a factor,” and the whole thing brings me back to Dunleavy, whose stock is rising quite a bit for me these days.

I don’t know that people are remembering or giving credit to Dunleavy for the role he played in the major transformation of FElton from 04-05 to the “immortal” 05-06. We all appreciated FElton (no more) for years prior to that season and thought he was as solid as it comes, but Dunleavy had higher expectations, put him on a program, and FElton’s game improved dramatically. (His win score probably went up too.) We faulted Dunleavy when he chose to favor QRoss over a win-score guy like Maggette, and Dunleavy’s stock reached an all-time low in 06-07. It’s worth noting that FElton’s numbers were way down that year as well. People refer to coming off the achilles of 07-08, but FElton was down through the year before that, and now he will be away from Dunleavy and his coaching. Just some things to factor into the conversation, Kaman, meanwhile, finally notched up to 2.0, and seems to be showing signs that it wasn’t an aberration. Dunleavy and his staff (Kim Hughes), system, and expectations seem to be having very beneficial effects on some players.

The “Dunleavy factor” perhaps pertains to some of the Clippers young players who may not be registering in the WoW approach. John R has mentioned how Thornton will benefit from going from utility PF-SF minutes to being the starter at SF, and it seems from his comments at summer league as if he understands very clearly what he needs to do to improve. When you look at Hollinger’s prediction for Thornton vs. the results, and look at the FElton improvement 04-06, and Kaman’s progression, it seems like draft picks Gordon and Jordan may have a brighter future than WoW predicts.

Dunleavy may not be much of a game coach and he’ll never get the Trailblazer meltdown or Ewing substitution back, he messed up badly on Korolev, and he bears responsibility for the 06-07 failure but has never admitted it. But he is professional, works hard, demands a strong effort, knows what he’s doing, and has very good results emphasizing preparation and defense. He seems to be making very good choices about personnel for the most part. And even better and more importantly, he is making certain players much better as they learn and work and play for him.