I dont have insider and I suspect a lot of people dont as well.

Break down the Los Angeles Clippers and one word keeps springing back to mind: exhilarating. On the right day, the Lob City Experience equals anything in sports. With two ridiculous athletes in the frontcourt paired with arguably the best passer in basketball, no team can be more spectacular.

Unfortunately, most basketball plays aren’t lobs. Watch the Clippers for a while and a more enduring word comes to mind: incomplete.

The list of L.A.‘s weaknesses is fairly extensive, and we’re only 11 games into the season. Minus Chris Paul, their offense seemed in shambles in Tuesday night’s 108-79 thrashing in Utah (side note: Don’t worry, Jazz fans, we noticed), and this team has to win with offense because it doesn’t play a ton of defense.

The result? The Clippers’ 7-4 mark gives them too much credit; they stand there largely because seven of their 11 games have been at home. If you compare them with the Houston Rockets, who have just as good a record at home and on the road and virtually the same point differential, the Clips’ uneven start is more apparent. Alas, the kind early schedule will turn on them in a major way at the end of the month. Although the Clips’ next five games are in L.A. — including a “road” game versus the Lakers — they play 15 times in 24 days after that, with 10 of those games away.

Although the dunks provide great theater, there’s the little matter of defense. The Clips are tied for 24th in defensive efficiency — a mark that seems likely to get worse and not better when one considers they’ve played only four road games. And one can’t help but think “My, Dwight Howard would fit in nicely here.”

More on that in a second, but first let’s deconstruct the current roster. L.A. was hoping to be a contender this season once it added Paul; at the very least, it hoped to be competing for a spot in the conference finals opposite presumptive favorites the Oklahoma City Thunder.

At the moment, getting into the playoffs appears to be challenge enough. The Clippers are 15th in the daily power rankings, in a conference in which an amazing 11 teams sport a rating better than the 100.0 average.

Again, incompleteness is the reason. Look at the roster and you’ll notice six productive players — three of whom play the same position. Once Eric Bledsoe gets healthy, those numbers become seven and four.

You’ll also see a glaring lack of depth. The Clippers have two superstars (Paul and Blake Griffin), four moderately productive players (Caron Butler, Chauncey Billups, Mo Williams and DeAndre Jordan), and a whole lot of nothing backing it up. Randy Foye, Ryan Gomes and Reggie Evans all have single-digit PERs; Brian Cook has managed the difficult feat of having a subzero mark.

In particular, the frontcourt depth is scary bad, and letting consistently productive Craig Smith slink off to Portland for the minimum was a tremendous oversight. At some point, the Clippers need to parlay their backcourt depth into a decent third big man. No, one-trick pony Evans doesn’t qualify.

But other issues loom, too. The Clippers’ defense is bad for several reasons, but a big one is the complete lack of quality wing defenders. Asking Billups or Butler to guard the Kobe Bryants and Kevin Durants of the league is folly; Foye often is asked to be the team’s stopper. Billups and Foye also put up rebounding numbers that are wholly inadequate for a wing player, two underrated reasons the Clips have struggled on the glass as a team.

And up front, Griffin and Jordan have had an awful lot of trouble converting their exceptional athleticism into even average defense. Jordan blocks a lot of shots and Griffin is an exceptional rebounder, but both players need to make considerable improvements in effort and concentration.

Which leads us back to the ringleader, Vinny Del Negro. The fact that the Chicago Bulls improved dramatically immediately after replacing him can be seen as both good news and bad news for Clippers fans, given that he’s in the last year of his contract.

But if somebody is going to make this jumble into something more than the sum of its McNugget-esque parts, Vinny doesn’t seem to be the guy. When Paul isn’t on the court to run pick-and-roll on every trip, the offense is a disorganized mess; even when CP3 plays, it’s baffling why Griffin is doing so much pick-and-pop and so little rolling to the rim.

Offense aside, every night produces its own strategic head-scratcher. On Tuesday, for instance, the Clippers went a two-minute stretch of the second quarter with a quintet of Courtney Fortson, Travis Leslie, Trey Thompkins, Gomes and Evans. Yes, it’s a back-to-back-to-back and guys were missing, but having at least one player on the court capable of making a basket seems relatively important. This looked like a failure to have a plan coming in.

Finally, there’s the defense — the area where the Bulls improved so dramatically post-Vinny, and the area where the Clippers don’t seem to be making much progress. L.A. is below average in each of Dean Oliver’s “four factors,” with a No. 27 rank in opponent free throw rate underscoring their mistake-prone-ness.

Which takes us back to the one man who could change that — Dwight Howard. Put CP in charge of the offense and Howard in charge of the defense, and you or I could coach this team to the playoffs.

Our former colleague Chris Sheridan reported that the Clippers might join the New Jersey Nets, the Dallas Mavericks and the Lakers on “The List” — the teams Howard (or his agent) would approve being traded to and signing an extension.

Which is great news for the Clippers, but they still need to take things from Point A to Point B. Having used their best assets to get Paul, it won’t be easy. The Clips won’t have enough cap space after the season to sign Howard outright, even if they exercise their amnesty rights on Williams’ contract and somehow magically make Gomes disappear.

Instead, their most logical avenues involve trading either Griffin or Jordan for Howard. To which Clippers fans unanimously answer back: “Jordan.” Orlando might play ball with such an offer; getting a young center would be alluring for the Magic, of course, especially if attached to a quality backcourt prospect (Bledsoe) and a couple of future firsts (the Clips can offer their picks in 2013, 2015 and 2017).

Alas, two problems intervene. First, a sign-and-trade after the season seems much more workable than doing something by the March 15 trade deadline; after the season, the Clippers can “amnesty” Williams and do an unbalanced trade that gives Orlando some cap relief. (Orlando needs it — if it plans to extend or re-sign Ryan Anderson, it’ll be a tax team again).

The second, more serious problem, is that Andrew Bynum is better than Jordan. There is essentially no offer the Clippers can make that can trump the Lakers’ saying the word “Bynum.” That is the minimum standard for any Howard trade bid because the Magic know that, at any time, they can do a deal with the Lakers for Bynum.

As a result, solutions won’t be as easy to come by as Clippers’ fans might hope. They have the building blocks of a great team with Paul and Griffin, and 20 teams would change “problems” with them in a heartbeat.

But although the house has a good foundation, there are walls in odd places and the layout stinks. L.A. has time to fix what ails it between now and March 15, but it’s not just a quick paint job and some tidying up; there’s remodeling work to be done here. With a bottom-heavy roster, a general lack of depth and a suspect helmsman, the inescapable conclusion is that the Clips are too incomplete to contend.

Exhilarating, yes. But ultimately incomplete.

I agree with some points, disagree with some points. Isn’t he undervaluing Reggie Evans a bit? He seems to be the only one in the media who doesn’t see what a useful find Reggie has been and how he’s singlehandedly solved our rebounding issues. We are no longer rebounding poorly at 45+ the last 4 games. And I think our defense has improved too with the addition of Reggie, as we’re now 23rd (according to b-ref.com) in defensive rating with 105. That’s not good, but considering we were 30th not that long ago, that’s pretty decent.

Still, Hollinger’s right that we’re incomplete. We know this, though.

I’m not sure where he came up with his expectations. “at the very least, [LAC] hoped to be competing for a spot in the conference finals opposite presumptive favorites the Oklahoma City Thunder.” That’s the very least? Really? Anyone around here feel like that was “the very least” going into the season?

Hollinger sets the bar higher than anyone else, and then criticizes the Clippers for not getting there. Clever.