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Your struggling Clippers are currently trying to find their sea legs during this early 7-game road trip. Some have suggested that spending a week and a half on the road will be the bonding experience this team needs to find trust and cohesion. Coming off of consecutive pastings of the Floridian Magic and Heat, the Clippers can get fat on relative weaklings like the also-ran Pistons, the never-ran Hornets, and the once-ran but harmlessly frisky Jazz.
Last week, I took stock of the season thus far for some fantasy-relevant Clippers. This week, I'll look at how some Clippers fared on the road last season in the hope of finding a tip or two for the next week's worth of games.
(I could've dug down to opponent splits too, but those stats are useless. The sample sizes are minuscule and the rosters have changed in substantial ways. If you're interested in opponent-specific data, you're better off poring through the injury headlines and taking guesses at the scheme and defensive assignment facing your player.)
I used the wonderfully excellent NBA.com sortable stats page -- seriously, if I loved this thing anymore they'd make a movie about us -- to parse out the Clippers home and road splits from last season.
The first thing that caught my eye was Antawn Jamison's name, because it feels like five years since he played here. I wish it had been five years ago, because he went for 18 and 6 every night that year. Last year, he couldn't even sniff 18 minutes.
The second thing that caught my eye is how much better J.J. Redick shot at home. Obviously, Redick was limited to just 35 games by injury, 18 at home and 17 on the road, so we're not talking about gobs of data, but J.J. shot almost 6% better from 3-point range, and exactly 7% better overall from the home floor. These percentages added up to two more points per game.
I also noticed that Matt Barnes played three more minutes per game on the road and shot nearly 10% better from deep. Did Doc Rivers lean on his tough guy more in hostile environments? Does Matt Barnes hate Staples Center? Does Matt Barnes always stay in a Holiday Inn Express? Jamal Crawford was Barnes' fellow road warrior, scoring 4 more points and shooting 7% better from 3-point range in hostile territory.
Blake Griffin, unsurprisingly I think, was a more productive player at home. The eye test says he thrives on the energy of the home crowd, and the numbers bear it out: per home game he scored 4 more points, grabbed 1 more rebound, and shot 5% better from the field.
Disclaimer: Even though this is a sponsored post with affiliate links, all of the opinions in this post are my own. And as an FYI, FanDuel gave me some cash to play its daily fantasy games.
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