we can totally beat mavericks and suns no doubt

One, if you took this team, B. Davis, Kaman, Camby, et al. and changed the name on the front of the jersey, where would ESPN put them? Higher than eleventh I bet.
Second, it’s not any of my business but… Kevin Arnovitz is okay, but he’s no Clipper Steve.
IMO, there are at least six people (probably more) who contribute to this blog who might be better writers and are certainly as well-informed about the subject as Kevin A. So why does ESPN recognize him and not the best of the lot, Clipper Steve? Uh… might it be that Arnovitz goes by his real full name and not a kinda goofy pseudonym? There’s nothing wrong with the name, “Clipper Steve”, but when ESPN goes looking for an “objective” panel, they might not want their list to read: “John Hollinger, Chad Ford, Bill Simmons, and uh… Clipper Steve”. It kind of loses some of it’s objective, ESPN-ish tone, right? So, instead, they go for Clipper expert blogger, “Kevin Arnovitz”. And never mind that the his site isn’t particularly active or accurate. Maybe Clipper Steve really should use his real, whole name. I’d certainly be fine with that.
I mean, as long as I don’t have to use my real name I’m fine with that.

I don’t see us finishing under the .500 mark barring injuries. It seems they are just betting on the clips will be the clips. Hopefully the clips will change that this season.

35 wins could happen. As could 55.

If you look at the team without Al Thornton and could replace him with a generic average small forward, this is probably a 42-45 win team. Al Thornton is probably going to play a huge part in deciding the team’s fate. If he consistantly plays like the Al that single-handedly beat the Hawks, then this team creeps up on 50 wins. If he plays like the Al that struggled for long stretches, the team really could drop below .500. If its bad enough, Buckets will probably start to get the bulk of the minutes, but that only helps anchor the team around .500 while Al figures it out.

To climb above 50 wins I think either Cat has to significantly return to form, unlikely, or Gordon has to be ready to contribute strongly early and often. Unfortunately I think again unlikely.

But if both of those guys do step up, and BD does the whole magical makes-the-game-easier-on-everyone thing, that’s how you climb up to 55 wins and beyond.

Cue up the moody conspiracy music….

I appreciate the writing of KA and frequent his site. However, ClipperSteve provides insight and articulation that is unsurpassed. I have even read some of CS’s posts to my wife and she is impressed with the high quality of writing and humor (She is the wife of a Clipper fan, not a basketball fan per se).

My pursuit of information on the Clippers is satiated on this site.

The “front page authors” add MUCH to the site.

As well, I am very appreciative of the other contributors who post here. Since CN authors don’t rely on foul language nor petty insults to communicate, the site is infinitely more enjoyable to read. The inside jokes are brilliant e.g. “Felton” and “Falked”.

Go incredible ClipperSteve and all of you who add to my passion for the Clippers!

I personally am interested to see how the Clipps will play. You have BOOM who is all out offense and will probably have about 21 ppg this season being that there is no one with a crazy O game on this team, other than Caveman. With Camby and Kaman it appears you will probably be a fairly D oriented team, but BOOM isnt a very good D player. There is some legit skill on this team, and you guys are better than the Nuggs. However, if BOOM or Kaman or Camby get hurt for a significant amount of time, (especially BD) you guys are gonna be in some trouble. You have quality front court depth but week in the guard position, I wasn’t an EGordon fan at Indiana, at least he can learn from Baron.

I only put the Dubz ahead of you guys due to our depth. We are a wash on starting line ups, but our bench is definitely stronger, being that we have people like Azubuike, who would’ve started for your team. And this is still with Monta out that I like the Dubz better, Marcus Williams is going to be a stud for our team, he is a past first guard who can pass to Maggette Jack AL and Biedrins. Also Turiaf and BWright will be great this year, and we still have Monta’s return to look forward to. It’ll be a great season, and we’ll see who’s better on the 15th of November if I’m not mistaken, could be Dec though.

Either way F@$k the Lakers!!

who starts at the 2-3 for you guys, Thornton and Mobley? Cuz Kelenna could start over Mobley

Mobley would be the back up pg, cause he is way more skilled then Gordon at this point. I’m not sure, but did EG even have a legit summer league?

who is not as good as JHart. But those two just reinforce my point that if BD gets injured, you’re screwed. You guys have a good squad, but your bench is incredibly weak. But like I said we are both ahead of the Nuggs, and I think LaL, Hou, No, Uta are locks and its a 5 way fight for the last 4 between us two Dal SA and Pho.

Nah i came here cause I was bored and wanted to see what other teams were saying about the Warriors and such. And I’m not “butthurt” about anything. I’m actually excited to see how my very talented and young Warriors team will gel without thier leader. I just forgot that you guys aquired JWill, who isn’t very good at all anymore, and I dont know how I forgot about Hart, he’s alright. Otherwise I know your roster pretty well, I believe you guys have Tim Thomas and Brian Skinner on your bench as well, which is why I made the comment about your weak bench.

So you guys aren’t rebuilding, cause there are a lot of old vets on your team. But your line up lacks and you dont have much talented youth to build around except for Thornton. And you’re not gonna win it all, so what are you doing?

even we won’t probably agree. I would say the days of Jwill leading a team are over but he is still a solid backup especially at the vets minimum that we are paying him. From what we have heard form Dunleavy he intends to plays sort of a hybrid of the warriors all out offense with his lockdown defense strategy. It sounds like he is depending on us running off of missed shots which is something that worked well for us in the 05-06 playoff run.

Also I think either way we will have more wins then the warriors because I think our team is just better this year. Should Dunleavys stick to his word and we run a fast paced offense then we will be a very scary team to play. But I also think that our team could adapt and play a little slower for post season. Overall I optimistically think that the clips will squeak into the 8th spot right infront of Portland and GS will be in 10th.

that if you guys run a fast paced offense, you will be a good offensive team, thats what I assumed you would be doing all along. But its when your starters are in need of rest or there are injuries that would worry me. We also have the advantage of playng about 50% of our games in oct, nov, and dec against the east. Where as you guys have a very tough opening to the season. I know that even if you lose you have the morale from the vets to keep yourselves up and like I said Dubz, Blazers, Suns, Mavs, Spurs and Clipps fighting for the last 4 spots. I give slight edges to SA Por and Pho because of their personnel but SA and Pho will be worse than last year. Dal has the best odds of missing completely, new coach, new system, same old underachieving team, followed by the Clipps. But no one knows, yet

I don’t know if the stats back this up, but it feels like we happen to be talking about the two teams with the largest degree of roster changes in the West this summer, both in terms of number of players as well as talent. Think about it – the Lakers, Jazz, Spurs, etc. changed their teams very little (mostly because their success didn’t force them to change) but we’re trying to compare two teams where we have practically no history on which to base our assertions. I think both teams have fairly substantial upside but chemistry (just as it would be on any team with a bunch of new guys) and injuries (just as every team suffers when major injuries befall key players) are question marks for their success.

For the W’s, the biggest question mark IMHO is how well will Maggette integrate. For the record, I was never a big Corey fan in LA – he picks up way too many offensive fouls, plays D with far less enthusiasm than O, and he just feels like a player who will never be a true leader who can carry a team on his back (and I say that while even conceding he could average 25 a night, which I admit is a bit of a paradox). Perhaps the W’s don’t need leadership from him, but I always viewed him as a player who had some great strengths but could have been so much more (and that’s why I think Dunleavy always got on his case). Like All-Star so much more… and he never got there.

Perhaps the W’s are exactly what he needs to elevate his game in all areas, which would be too bad for us Clip fans but I’ll take consolation in the fact that I’m confident it was never going to happen here in LA. Either way, you are right – nobody knows yet. That’s why we have to play the games.

We have Capitan Jack, and although many people around the league are down on this guy, he has revitalized his career and attitude here. He is averaging career highs here, like Baron, and he has accepted and flourished in his role as a capitan. Also Jack is a stand up guy. He expanded his private school that he built with his own money in his home town of Port Arthur Tex with the help of donations. I’m not a fan of private schools, because they deminish public schools, however where Jack is from public school is already junk, and its a cheap private school that focuses on minorities.

We have Corey to do what Corey does best, get to the line. Free throwing is sort of a weakness, and we replaced a sketchy free throw shooter in Baron and picked up Corey, a top tier ft performer in both attempts and percentage. Especially without Monta, Corey is going to need to score 25+ a game at the beginning of the season, and being that he is athletic and plays fast, he will fit right in to our system. People also under estimate how big of a contributor Turiaf is going to be, the Fakers were pissed when we grabbed him, and he adresses our big flaw rebounding and toughness down low, also Corey will help with offensive boards as well. Corey is going to have a career year.

You know me, I’m never one to fault optimism. This discussion does seem to be a fairly typical best-case scenario for GSW, and lots of semi-informed speculation on the Clips.

My main objection here is in the discussion of “BOOM,” where the Clipper fortunes seem to be based on the likelihood of some sort of injury. This is odd/ironic for two reasons. I think some of us felt that way about BD when he went from the Hornets to GSW, but in GSW he was quite durable, and they clearly got the benefit of taking the risk that he was going to be able to play at the highest level. Now that he was on the court and extremely effective for them, GSWfan raises the health issue when he joins the Clips.

This is compounded by the fact that Monta Ellis is actually injured and will be out for the first few months of the season at the least. So somehow this becomes an argument where Marcus Williams will be a solid pass-first PG and all that GSW needs, while Jasons Williams and Hart are somehow inferior. Obviously, this isn’t the reality of the situation. GSW lost Davis, and there were questions whether Ellis was going to be effective moving over to full-time PG (since he’s not a pass-first PG), and that was before Ellis was hurt. Here in Clipland, we really thought that the Warriors wouldn’t match on Azubuike because of the questions about Ellis at PG and GSW’s lack of depth at the position, and that was before Ellis got hurt. If the Ellis injury had happened before the RFA Azubuike situation, is there any way that GSW would have matched? Doubtful. And interesting.

GSW has a lot of good players and a great, fun coach. Maggs is going to do well, and he’ll get a boost from playing for Nelson, but he’s a complementary player. It’s going to be fun to watch, but GSW will be challenged, especially missing a scorer who can make plays like Ellis. Most of us, at least here at ClipsNation, would take Kaman and Camby over Biedrins and Turiaf in a heartbeat, and we’d certainly take Kaman-Camby-BDavis over Biedrins-Turiaf-not Ellis, wouldn’t we? Still, there are all sorts of different forms of optimism, and we’re all just hanging out waiting for the season to start up.

And yes, it was weird trying to take apart somebody else’s best-case scenarios.

Kind of raises that larger “optimism question.” Last year, for instance, after FElton’s injury, there really wasn’t much to hold onto, but in the early season a little bit can go a long way. I see that as being similar to the current GSW attitude. BDavis is gone, but they were hoping to replace him with Ellis. Obviously, they would have been better off having both of them, but they did pick up Maggette and Turiaf, and added Marcus Williams too. Last year the Clips knew that Liv wasn’t going to be around, but Maggette was back in the starting lineup at the end of the 06-07 season, so that could improve things. After FElton went down, hopes were based on Maggette stepping up as an elite 23+ ppg scorer, Kaman becoming better than he’d ever been, and someone filling the gaping hole at PF, Patterson scoring 15 ppg or PDavis getting 10 rebs a game and hitting shots—I think everybody, except perhaps Dunleavy, knew that Tim Thomas wasn’t going to rebound, defend, and win a bunch of games with 40+% 3pt shooting.. Cassell and Mobley needed to stay healthy and effective. “Supreme optimism” doesn’t really capture the tiny probability of this best-case scenario playing out.

But some good things did happen. Kaman stepped up. After Patterson fell away and Davis was hurt, more minutes opened up for Thornton, and he made the most of them, showing he could start and score and be a valuable wing in the NBA.

It’s interesting to note, in this context, that Maggette played well and had a nice season, and he met reasonable expectations, but he didn’t really go to the “next level,” and carry the team with massive production or play like an all-star. He was good. But he had a bit of a slow start and he was in Kaman’s shadow in the first part of the season, when the team was playing its best. He didn’t put together a collection of great games where he was especially effective (30+ pts, or 10+ rebs). I thought he would rebound better. This performance, when he got all of the desired minutes and opportunities, would temper our optimism if he was in a Clipper uniform this season. He does have the benefit of being on a new team with a new coach to help him this season, but other than that his potential upside seems a bit diminished.

So that’s a long-winded way of saying that the GSW hopes seem to be quite thin, and somewhat similar to last year’s preseason Clipper hopes.

I hope that the current Clipper hopes, with so many new players, are more reasonable and real. It seems that way, and “insane optimism” shouldn’t be necessary this year.

Its just hard for either of us to be too optimistic for each others teams. We both see flaws in the others team because we dont quite know it as well. Our one flaw is that we’re missing Monta, thats a problem that will go away a month and a half into the season. Which is fine because as I stated previously, we play roughly 50% of our games against the East, and our only hard competition from the West is the Hornets on opening night. We get to play Minn Mem and Den twice, we may play Sac twice too.

You guys have a very tough opening to the season, but you have a full healthy roster. But your weak point is still present, the bench. Although in fairness, I judge players in a different way because of the style of play I’m used to. There is no way anyone on your bench, except Hart would do well for our system.(I’m not trying to beat you guys and your optimism down, I just am a bored fan who is having a debate about our teams before the season starts, because we are going to be fighting for the same playoff spot most likely. Curious to hear your own outlook on yourselves as well as us).

Also Baron will probably average 21 ppg like he did last year, and even with 2 other 20 p scorers we didnt make the playoffs. So I see Baron at 21 and Kaman near 20, maybe Thornton. Where as we have a 20 p scorer in Jack, probably a 25 p scorer in Maggs, and a definite 20+ performer coming back. Also I feel Harrington will score more than Camby or Thornton or Mobley. So unless you guys are one of the top tier defensive teams in the league, I dont see you scoring enough to be in the 8th spot. I feel everyone starting on the Dubz, except Williams can average 15+ a game.

Like I said I’m not trying to completely dump on you guys, I’m just giving you my own reasons for Believing in the Warriors more than the Clipps, and I’m at least trying to make it look like its more than just me being a homer by giving my own predictions/reasoning(despite their worthlessness)

But what can I say “We Believe”