You raise some good questions and points.

Your suspicion on coaching and plays and the effect on W-L isn’t unreasonable, and I know it’s your standard position. And you know that my own standard position is that injuries have been a more important factor. You think that Dunleavy is a horrible coach in any circumstances, while I think that he is a horrible, stubborn and overly conservative coach in straightened circumstances such as we’ve seen the last two seasons, and the season previous to those was his fault for overthinking as well. Three bad and virtually unwatchable seasons in a row should add up to an irredeemable coaching situation. Yes, that would make sense. But this is the Clippers.

Dunleavy got really lucky with the Griffin pick and it caused other dominoes to fall, starting with the Zbo trade. Now he has the best potential collection of talent in his tenure as coach, and that counts for something. In terms of sheer wins, this team should match up well with the 0506 team (45+) wins and the lame 0607 team, which still won 40+ games. I know that 34 is a healthy jump from 19, but I would argue that even with a stilted playbook and stubborn coaching, 19 is an aberration that was primarily caused by roster turnover, rookies and young players, and injuries, and 30+ was a reasonable expectation for last year’s team if it had a healthy roster.

When you look at the roster of the Clippers, with its talent and depth, you want to be able to say that it’s a .500 team that should go to the playoffs. Yes, Blake Griffin is a rookie and expectations for him should be reasonable, but the Clippers can back him up with a pretty solid array of big men, led by Kaman and Camby, but also including Smith, DJordan, Novak, and Skinner. When a pundit like Hollinger looks hard at the Clippers roster he has to see a lot of talent. So what he’s doing, and what he has done for the past 4 or 5 years or longer, is counting on something to go wrong with the Clippers. That’s fine, and it has been a smart bet, but it’s okay to call him out on his reasoning.

Put it this way: he’s never going to give the Clippers the benefit of the doubt. In fact, he’s going to do just the opposite. That’s what he does. He is looking for ways that the Clippers will fail. His angle in 0506 was that Cassell and Mobley were selfish players at the end of their careers who wouldn’t be able to coexist, and Mobley’s FA deal would be a drag on the Clips for years to come. In 0607, coming off a playoff run, he was hopeful for the Clippers like many others, and he got badly burned. In 0708, after Liv and FElton’s injuries, he was skeptical about the Clippers draft history, and turned his cynicism on Al Thornton.

Is Hollinger way off base on Thornton? Yes and no. My own view is that he’s not owning his original skepticism about Thornton, when he said he would be a bust. He’s not a bust; he’s a productive NBA player. Is he an ideal starting SF? No. But he’s one of the best players from his draft class. He has done well and been very productive during two very tough, injury-riddled seasons. The rub is about expectations, and the role that a player is supposed to fill. It doesn’t seem fair to compare Thornton to Eric Gordon. Gordon was a potential #2 pick who dropped down to the Clips, to their good fortune. Thornton was a potential #7 or 8 pick who dropped down to the Clips at 14, to their good fortune. Big difference. But both are great picks for the Clippers.

I would have liked Hollinger to admit his mistake, acknowledge what Thornton has accomplished, and then he should feel free to question whether Thornton isn’t still the weak link on the Clippers roster (this says something in itself about a team that he’s picking to win 34 games). But you can tell that he has an axe to grind because he doesn’t consider that there might be a middle ground. “The next alternative, Butler, is a fine role player but not somebody you’d expect to find playing 40 minutes a night.” As I pointed out above, there’s a logic break here. He doesn’t mention that Thornton might make a good 6th man, coming off the bench to provide scoring. And under what scenario is Thornton so bad that Butler ends up playing 40 mpg? My beef is the fact that Hollinger appears to be bending logic over backwards to try to figure out how he was both right all along, and how things will go wrong.

If he is really concerned about coaching and style of play, then he should just say so. I think he knows that Dunleavy can prosper and win games with a strong healthy roster and a team that defends and rebounds.

I like my rose colored glasses, which let me see the Clippers getting a whole lot of wins on their home court and gelling into a highly competitive team. When I have them on, and when Blake Griffin, Baron Davis, Eric Gordon and Chris Kaman are looking particularly rosy, I think I can see the Clippers winning 50 games for the first time ever.

But when I take them off and compare the Clipper roster and dynamic, even with a conservative coaching style and a rookie playing a key role, I have a hard time seeing that GSW or OKC have the depth, talent, and experience to win more games than they will. And a Houston team without Yao for an entire season doesn’t appear too far ahead, nor does an aging Phoenix team that isn’t the same as the ones in D’Antoni era. 36, 37, 38 and 9th or 10th wouldn’t have seemed like another swipe and snub. Reasonable, a bit of skepticism, not too rosy.

I know that a leap from 19 to 34 can seem like a lot, and generous. But it’s not quite as historical and thoughtful as it might be.

But who knows. We’ll see.