Clippers 93 vs. Clippers 06

by Steve Perrin on Oct 31, 2006 11:07 AM PST in News

This all started as a reply to a comment from Timmy T on yesterday's post. As I got going, I realized it really deserved a post of it's own, but you should also check out Timmy T's comments to better understand from whence this cometh. Here's an excerpt: "i'd like to say it's a sea change. it's not a sea change. it's the result of, i don't know, what do you call it? oh yeah. success."

The Clippers made the playoffs in consecutive seasons in 91-92 and 92-93.... they came close to beating Utah and Houston respectively in the playoffs those years (not Phoenix-close, but close). In the 93 off-season, they let 3rd leading scorer Ken Norman, 28, leave via free agency. The next year, with Manning and Harper in the final year of their deals, they won 27 games, traded Manning for 34 year old Dominique Wilkins (whom they didn't re-sign anyway), and by the summer of 94, only Loy Vaught and Gary Grant (two non-starters) were left from the playoff teams. Before Harper left, he famously compared his time in a Clipper uniform to prison. He was just doing his time until he could get out. This is from a guy who was part of the MOST SUCCESSFUL TEAMS IN CLIPPERS HISTORY (to that point).

So something is very, very different about what's happening now, and it's not just success, because those 90's teams had a chance to be successful. Maybe they weren't as obviously loaded as this team, but they had talent. And sure, the fact that vagabond Larry left after 93 played a part, but it's also likely that money would have convinced him to stay.

In fact the similarities between the two situations are interesting.

3rd leading scorer in 92-93 - Ken Norman. A veteran and a leader, he became a free agent at the end of the season, and the Clippers allowed him to walk (encouraged it, really).

3rd leading scorer in 05-06 - Sam Cassell. A veteran and a leader, he became a free agent at the end of the season, and the Clippers re-signed him for 2 years, $13M.

At the beginning of the 93-94 season, key players Danny Manning and Ron Harper were entering final year of their contracts. The Clippers didn't even discuss the possiblity of contract extensions, allowed the issue to fester, and as the season spiraled down the drain, Manning was shipped to Atlanta and Harper packed his bags.

At the beginning of the 06-07 season, key player Chris Kaman was entering the final year of his contract, and key player Shaun Livingston was anxiously watching the developments with Kaman to see how they relected on his own upcoming negotiation. The Clippers proactively made Kaman an offer, and after a brief and amicable negotiation, the parties agreed to a 5 year,$53M extension.

And let's not ignore the coaching parallels. The wheels started coming off of the 93 team when Larry Brown left. Now, that's Larry, and maybe there was nothing to be done about that. But Mike Dunleavy is arguably more important to the current team's success than Brown was; when Brown took over the Clippers in the middle of the 91-92 season, they were 22-25, a .468 winning percentage, under Mike Shuler - when Dunleavy took over the Clippers, they had been 27-55 the prior season, .329. As we all know, Dunleavy is in the final year of his contract. We haven't repeated history thus far - let's not repeat it on the coaching front.

Of course only time will tell if these are the right moves. Maybe Cassell mopes at the reality of backing up Livingston and becomes a distraction in the locker room instead of a leader (there has been a precedent for this). Maybe Kaman regresses, never figures out how to take care of the basketball, and the $12M the Clippers owe him in 2010 becomes a huge problem.

But we don't need to be able to foretell the future to know that something has changed; we just need to look at the past. The organization is different, and it's more than just a taste of success, which they have had before. I don't know what it is. But it's different.

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On the flip side

Over the past 5 years, how many players that the Clippers let walk would you really want to have locked up, if you had the benefit of hindsight?

Only Bobby Simmons and Lamar Odom have really had any degree of success, and I'm not convinced that either player would be much of an upgrade to the squad we have now.

Q-Rich? He's a 3-point gunner who's a liability on defense, making his way in and out of the rotation in New York.

Olowakandi? No thank you.

Darius Miles? Yikes.

I have to give Elgin credit for knowing when NOT to pay a player (admittedly, to a fault).

So I have to think that the organization has an immense amount of faith in Kaman to have closed this deal with him.

by Todd Lerner @ Clips Nation on Oct 31, 2006 11:49 AM PST reply actions

It's a great point...

Of course it's a bit of a back-handed compliment to Elgin as well - after all, the guys over the years he 'wisely' chose not to re-sign are the guys he drafted. If Mo Taylor, QRichardson, Darius, Kandi, Keyon Dooling, etc. etc. are not worth having around, then they were wasted draft picks in the long run.

To me, it's what makes the Kaman signing all the more intriguing. To this point, the Clippers have only pulled the trigger on no-brainers (Brand and Maggette were no-brainers, in my opinion). This Kaman deal is different. The second richest contract in Clipper history, for a big doofus-y center, in 2006, as the age of big doofus-y centers seems to be going the way of the BetaMax? It's certainly not a move I associate with the Clippers.

by Steve Perrin on Oct 31, 2006 12:07 PM PST up reply actions

Absolutely

Its a backhanded compliment to the third degree. Much like calling Elgin a "veteran of the draft lottery process".

At the same time, when you've made a mistake in any business, especially in a business with stakes this high, you have to give credit to a man who can swallow his pride, "kill his own babies" and cut his losses rather than compounding them.

Too many teams seem too eager to show their loyalty to iffy players and end up regretting it. See also, Minnesota and Philly. Given a choice, I'd much rather have a crappy team with a low payroll than a crappy team with no cap room.

To undermine my own argument however, I'm not sure I'd be making any excuses for Elgin if we were still a lottery team. Go figure.

by Todd Lerner @ Clips Nation on Oct 31, 2006 2:10 PM PST up reply actions

So the question is...

is Kaman a baby that should have been killed, or is he worth the 'end of cap room for the foreseeable future'? There's a part of me that says the Clippers would be in better shape all around to let Kaman go, sign MBFGC to play center next year, and have the flexibility to continue to sign solid role players to mid-level type deals. What happens when QRoss is a free-agent and the rest of the league has realized he's a young Bruce Bowen? Can we re-sign him and stay under the luxury tax?

Of course being a Clipper fan over the years has meant having cap room, but never signing anyone anyway. So being a 'crappy team with a low payroll' actually meant NOTHING to fans, since the low payroll was lining DTS' pockets, not luring free agents. I guess it kept tickets prices down.

by Steve Perrin on Oct 31, 2006 2:32 PM PST up reply actions

No Real Comparison

I don't have any memory aids for the LB Clips in front of me, but the current team seems to be so much better and deeper that it's not really right to compare them, even if your point is that the MD Clips have done a much better job of offseason business with the Cassell and Kaman deals.

Brown was a very good coach who came in to turnaround a pretty good team. Manning, Harper, Norman and others were all good players, but ultimately they were all role players. With LB they worked their way into the playoffs, and they gave Utah and Malone and Stockton a little bit of a scare perhaps, but it was obvious that they needed to follow up on their success, Manning needed to turn into a star, and they needed to add another great player in order to be truly competitive. We can all see clearly now that there's a gulf between the teams fighting for the last couple of playoff spots, and the serious contenders, and it has always been that way. The LB Clips never got close at all to getting across that gulf, but we're hoping that the MD Clips have made the leap this year.

A better comparison to the LB Clips is the Odom-Q-Darius Clips. The difference there, I think, was purely coaching. A better coach than Gentry, a coach as good as Larry Brown, would have gotten that team into the playoffs, and their experience would have been very similar to what happened to Manning-Harper-Norman etc.

There are two other big issues I would point out. The first has been MD's focus on defense since his arrival, his effort to find a certain type of player who plays a certain way. MD has been around the league long enough to know that this is a simple solid formula for success, and that it takes time to implement, but once in place it will not only win a lot of games and get you to the playoffs, it is also the only real way to have extended playoff success.

More importantly, and something I would be curious to see you consider, is the point guard situation. I remember when I first started going on the ESPN board, back in the Odom era, the Clipper PG situation was a major crisis topic. An inadequate PG situation was blamed for not making the playoffs, and Miles was shipped out for Andre Miller. I'm not sure that there's any player I like less than Andre Miller, after he raised Clip hopes and played out his single year in mediocre, personality-free fashion that made Ron Harper look like a happy camper. I always liked Jaric a hundred times better, but he was hurt too often and it turns out he was actually a Q Ross-style utility defender and not a starting PG. The pain we went through with all these guys and something about MD's approach that he doesn't get enough credit for, turned the Cassell situation, which could have easily been a repeat of the Miller debacle, into what now seems, with Livingston's emergence, Clipper PG nirvana. The Clips didn't have anything close to either of these guys ever before, and now they've got both of them. And I can't believe that after MD did such a great job of taking care of Cassell last year, that they would fall off the same page this year, especially after Sam got paid. So if we're going to make any comparisons, I'd say the biggest difference is the PG situation, with apologies to Gary Grant, Jeff McGinnis and Mark Jackson-past-his-prime, amongst others.

by zhivclip on Oct 31, 2006 1:10 PM PST reply actions

I'm not going to argue...

that the LB Clippers were better than this team. They weren't. But you're selling that team a little short. Danny Manning averaged almost 23 in 92-93, was averaging more than 23 when they traded him, and made two straight all-star teams. He appeared to be all the way back from the knee surgery, and once again playing like a number 1 overall pick. There was every reason to re-sign him and continue to build a team around him. Subsequent injuries and surgeries turned him into a role player. As for Mark Jackson, far from past his prime, he was 27 when he played for the Clippers, and played in the league until he was 38. The starting lineup from 92-93 of Jackson (27), Harper (29), Norman (28), Manning (26) and Stanley Roberts (22) was young and talented, and Loy Vaught, Gary Grant and, my favorite Clipper, John 'Hot Plate' Williams were solid reserves. It was a good team. Take the case of Roberts - at 22 he averaged 11.3 points, 6.3 rebounds, almost 2 blocks and .527 shooting in less than 24 minutes per game. You could EASILY argue that he had more upside as a 22 year old in 1993 than Kaman as a 24 year old this summer. Weight problems and injuries cut short Stanley's potential, but in 1993, he looked like the closest thing to his college teammate Shaquille. There were plenty of good reasons to keep that team together, but the organization made zero effort to do so.

You're point about point guards is spot on. At the time of the Miles-Miller trade, I was ecstatic. Not having seen any of a very bad 01-02 Cavs team, I hadn't seen Miller play since college, but his numbers were HUGE. 16.5 points, league leading 10.9 assists, 4.7 rebounds... and we got him for DMiles! It seemed a coup on the order of acquiring Brand for Tyson Chandler. One of the great mysteries of the NBA for me is how the Andre Miller I've watched in LA and Denver EVER put up the numbers he did in Cleveland.

by Steve Perrin on Oct 31, 2006 2:25 PM PST up reply actions

No Real Comparison

Like I said, I didn't have any memory aids in front of me. Thanks for taking me back, because the arrival of Ron Harper marked the moment my love for the Clippers began. I can get into that another time, when I'm not late for getting my kid to his Halloween activities, and the Stanley Roberts-Chris Kaman debate is worthy of discussion.

I have to say that I always had a bad feeling about the Andre Miller trade, and never looked at it as a steal or once thought it was on the same order as the EB heist. I didn't know much about Cleveland but I knew they were bad, and I didn't know much about Miller but he always seemed to be a plodder, putting up some numbers and playing a good game but never making a big impact and garnering attention. Which isn't to say I didn't hope I was wrong and that it worked out, but something didn't feel right about messing with the Clips Odom-Q-Miles draft mojo, though who knows what it was all supposed to lead to.

Gotta get home to set the Tivo for tomorrow night's opponent!

by zhivclip on Oct 31, 2006 4:32 PM PST reply actions