Fun Fact From Clippers-Warriors

by Steve Perrin on Mar 29, 2010 2:46 PM PDT in News

Of the eight players who appeared for the Warriors in last night's ~~debacle~~ game, only two of them were first round draft picks, with a third coming in the second round, meaning that five of them were undrafted out of college. Three of them began this season in the D-League. Their leading scorer last night, Reggie Williams, is so obscure that neither ESPN.com nor basketball-reference.com have his college listed. By the way, he went to VMI, where he led the nation in scoring twice. (That would have been good information to know going into the game, I guess.)

Of the 240 total minutes available in the game, more than 147 minutes were played by undrafted players - that's over 61% of the available minutes. In other words, the Clippers lost, at home, by 18, to a team made up primarily of undrafted players. This is not a stat that is easy to look up, but I feel fairly confident in saying that this has to be quite a unique, if ignominious, accomplishment.

If you take Corey Maggette and Ronny Turiaf out of the game, you literally have a team that could have appeared in the Las Vegas summer league this summer - and no one would have much noticed them. Oh, by the way, Maggette and Turiaf were both on the bench for the first five minutes of the second quarter, during which time the Warriors summer leaguers outscored the Clippers by 12.

The Clippers' ability to lose to bad teams playing without significant players has been uncanny this season. Facing Boston without Paul Pierce, Portland without LaMarcus Aldridge and Houston without Kevin Martin they managed to win - though in the case of those last two wins, the Blazers and Rockets were missing a lot more than just Martin and Aldridge. Those games were against teams with winning records. Facing losing teams missing key players is a different story. A cursory glance through the schedule shows the Clippers have losses against New Orleans without Chris Paul (twice), Golden State without Monta Ellis (twice), Sacramento without Tyreke Evans and New Jersey without ~~Brook Lopez~~ Devin Harris (no one caught me on this one). Impressive.

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At least we are gold medalist at sucking

no one sucks better than us… not even the Clippers of the North.

FA in 2010.

by ClipperChuck on Mar 29, 2010 3:01 PM PDT reply actions

I think New Jersey sucks worse then us

for now

LeBron or Bust !!!!

by bestclipfan on Mar 29, 2010 11:43 PM PDT up reply actions

For the season perhaps

but right now in the last 10 games the Nets are 3-7 and we are 2-8. The Nets even won 3 of their last 4. If we played them on the road tomorrow the Nets would be favored.

FA in 2010.

by ClipperChuck on Mar 29, 2010 11:46 PM PDT up reply actions

I just happen to be looking at NBA Records on wiki

I did a Find for “Clippers”

and we lead in categories such as “fewest points in OT” “fewest points in first half” “most consecutive season w/o a playoff appearance”

as well as a BUTT-LOAD of teams and individual records set against the Clippers

fun fact:
…Steve Blake ties for the records of most assists in a quarter AGAINST the clippers

by KidJustin on Mar 30, 2010 2:17 AM PDT up reply actions

Yikes

I looked over those records… we also got Erick Dampier in the record books (8 blocks in one quarter), Nate McMillan had 25 assists against us… as a rookie, the Nets scored 25 points against us… in Overtime. The Lakers held the Clips to 19 points in the first half in 1999 (possibly the first Clipper/Laker meet up in Staples). Latrell “I need to feed my family” Sprewell hit nine 3s against us without a miss and Ben Wallace shot an amazing 20 free throws against us in a single quarter. Someone needs to put together a 3 hour tape of Clipper bloopers.

FA in 2010.

by ClipperChuck on Mar 30, 2010 12:21 PM PDT up reply actions

At least we don't have the worst record of them all...

least points scored by a team in an NBA game. That belongs to the Bulls, who only mustered 49 against the Heat in April 1999.

Clippers // Chargers // Rays // Panthers // Gators // Boise State

by 82-0 on Mar 30, 2010 1:15 PM PDT up reply actions

Very surprised the team didn't beat them up down low

I guess the tank race continues

by KillaClip on Mar 29, 2010 3:08 PM PDT reply actions

They lost for the future

We gotta move up in the draft

by MannyA on Mar 29, 2010 3:16 PM PDT via mobile reply actions

The stats last night were confounding

Baron goes +10 in the first quarter, then against almost the same lineup in the 2nd, he goes -14. Similar #s for the rest of our starters.

What happened in between, of course, is that our reserves stunk it up and lost all of our momentum. Then, our starters appeared completely incapable of getting it back. This isn’t the way it always goes, but it’s often a similar story: One squad doesn’t hold up it’s end, and then it’s a sinking ship that can’t be righted in time. We don’t seem to have the personel to overcome a significant loss in momentum.

To me, what this spotlights is that we don’t have a real go-to guy, a stud-leader who can consistently right the ship when it needs to be done. Our starters last night had some pretty good synergy in the first quarter, but no one guy could be counted on to reestablish it in the 2nd.

It would appear that against shorthanded mediocre teams, the problem grows more acute. It’s easy to assume that it’s a question of effort (or that we’re just tanking), but frankly I’ve seldom had the impression that we weren’t trying (esp back in the first half of the season). I suspect it’s often more a question of leadership, then, that we don’t have anyone to take over in situations that require a spurt of domination. Against a mediocre squad, our guys seem to grow self conscious about this shortcoming. Somebody OUGHT to be able to take over, but no one can.

Anyways, I’ve been saying to myself that Griffin has it in him, that he might grow into a guy we can force it into during those pivotal moments when things look dire. Or maybe EJ will, or maybe we’ll sign somebody. But it’s nice to have Griffin on the horizon, as it saves me from a deeper sort of despair.

"i know huh........freakin clippers man.....its like a wild ride rooting for this team....gotta love em....(sometimes) lol" In GrIfFin We TrUsT

by SilverClip on Mar 29, 2010 4:05 PM PDT reply actions

don't forget the Pacers without Granger

but who cares if we win these games? Pretty much everybody but DJ, EJ, Baron, and Kaman could be gone next year, and we’ll have a new coach who will most likely have a new system, so there’s no point in “winning so our team will have momentum for next season” since there will be different players. So really, I have no problem with these ugly losses as of right now. I want Evan Turner!

by baron_davis needs a fro on Mar 29, 2010 5:34 PM PDT reply actions

It does matter a bit

it will play a role in the mind of the free agents the Clips will be trying to woo. If we finished strong it would definitely make it a lot easier to get one of the marquee guys. With each loss our hopes of getting one of them gets even smaller (unless we end up with John Wall or Evan Turner).

FA in 2010.

by ClipperChuck on Mar 29, 2010 5:50 PM PDT up reply actions