The Daily Clipper - Monday (1/23/12)

of Bf post.

It’s hard to work the equation between luck and “textbook.” Right place at the right time falls under luck, I suppose, but a sequence of smart decisions qualifies as textbook, of following a program that is objective and even scientific. Getting the rights to a franchise player seems to be the given in this argument, the rarity of pure luck that nets you Blake Griffin, Tim Duncan, Lebron James, Kevin Durant or Derrick Rose rather than Olowokandi and #2 Okafor/Liv instead of Dwight Howard.

So let’s not jump to #2 the CP3 trade. The first move came before the Clippers got the pick, the draft in which they took Gordon and DJ. The Gordon pick was textbook, a savvy and fortunate pick that provided a key asset for the later CP3 trade.

And drafting a 7 foot project with a 2nd round pick is definitely textbook. The Clippers could have picked Paul Milsap in the 2nd round, but chose Paul Davis instead. The Clips have obviously made more than their share of bad picks over time. The textbook only says that at that moment, with teams passing on DJ, you take him. OKC’s pick of Ibaka isn’t so different.

Textbook says get rid of BD and his contract and try to get some value in return. You have to give up something, and a lottery pick with a tiny chance of being top 3 doesn’t seem like much. When it turns into Kyrie Irving, you just have to live with the deal. Which you can, because BD’s salary provides FA money, and Mo Williams seems like a credible starting PG for a team with Griffin, Gordon, Kaman, DJ, Aminu and Bledsoe. He’s not a perfect or elite PG, but he seems like he should be enough to get the Clippers into the playoffs at the very least.

Not even sure that FA SF Caron Butler took less money. I think he got more money from the Clippers, but he could have chosen instead to play for a contender and perennial playoff team like San Antonio. But the point is that the Clips followed the script/textbook, made a proper evaluation that Butler would be a good fit, and did the deal. Butler could have made a different choice, but he liked the rising stardom of the Clips and thought his role and the money made sense.

Amnesty and Billups is timing and luck, no doubt. But the textbook would seem to say that you have to make your own luck. And the Clippers did that because they knew that they needed more than Gordon, Williams, Bledsoe and Foye, and that they had to protect themselves as they pursued the Chris Paul trade. They knew that they had done a good job selling Caron Butler on the team and the future. So the grab of Billups is good management, good effort, a good sense that the team needed to pursue every possible scenario. It was clever and smart and confident, and the textbook doesn’t say that you shouldn’t be clever and smart and confident.

All that is what gets you to the CP3 trade. Hanging on and not dumping Kaman (like they dumped Camby) and drafting the assets (Gordon and Aminu) and not trading the Minn pick, and having those assets available to make the deal for CP3, is how you do it. The textbook says gather and develop your assets and then pick your spot.

And that’s where the Clippers are. Lining up the dominos is tricky, and you can’t make a mistake. But when you get that first big piece of luck it seems like you can see things better and things get easier, and you start running downhill.

First off, I think that we are a couple players, a good coach, and some experience together shy of being a championship contender. While I do believe the team is quite solid as is, our bench needs some extra kick in it. Yes, Mo Williams is an AMAZING 6th man and Reggie Evans is a crazy rebounder, we are still a few players short of really shooting at the championships. I think our defense needs improvement, but that will be established after practice. As for our coach; I don’t think he is the worst coach, but he surely isn’t a coach that will lead the Clippers, or any team for that matter, to a ring.
As for Brian Cook, he is terrible and we would rather have a bag of cookies than him.