SB Nation Los Angeles: All Posts by Steve Perrin

All-NBA: Paul 1st Team, Griffin 2nd Team

2013-05-23T20:03:40Z

For the second consecutive season, the Los Angeles Clippers placed two players on the All-NBA teams, with Chris Paul being named to the first team and Blake Griffin being named to the second team. The honors are well deserved and not in the least surprising. For Paul it is his sixth All-NBA selection and the fourth time he's been named to the first team, including three years in a row. For Griffin it is his second straight second team selection.

The Clippers were one of five teams to take up two of the fifteen All-NBA slots -- in fact, all five first team selections were joined by a teammate somewhere on the list.

LeBron James, the only unanimous selection was joined by his Miami Heat teammate Dwyane Wade, who made the third team. Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City made the first and second team respectively as did Tim Duncan and Tony Parker of the Spurs. The list of teams with multiple selections concludes with the Lakers, who placed Kobe Bryant on the first team and Dwight Howard on the third team.

Also chosen to All-NBA were Marc Gasol of the Memphis Grizzlies and Carmelo Anthony of the Knicks on the second team, and David Lee of the Warriors, Paul George of the Pacers and James Harden of the Thunder on the third team.

Paul was the leading vote-getter among guards, both in terms of first place votes and total points (five points are award for a first team vote, three for second and one for third, with the votes being cast by 119 sportswriters and broadcasters). Paul was third overall in voting, behind only James and Durant.

Griffin was the only second team selection not to receive a single first team vote, but that's hardly surprising. He happens to play the same position as James, Durant and Anthony, who finished one-two-three in MVP voting this season. There simply weren't any more first place votes available at the forward spot. (In fact, James received the maximum 119 first place votes, Durant got 102 and Anthony 24, which exceeds the number of available votes for forwards, meaning that 17 voters actually fudged their ballots enough to vote for one of those players at either guard or center.)

Griffin's point total suffered from the absence of first place votes, and in fact he had only the 12th highest point total among players, but made the second team at forward by being fourth among forwards. He was however the 'best' power forward in the NBA this season by this measure; James, Durant and Anthony all played plenty of four on the year, but they are all primarily perimeter players, making Griffin the highest vote getter among interior forwards.

It helped Griffin that Kevin Love was injured most of the season of course, and Love as well as players like Lee, LaMarcus Aldridge and Zach Randolph can all stake a claim as the game's best power forward. But the All-NBA voters this season bestowed the honor on Griffin. Still, Griffin will need to continue to develop if he wishes to truly establish himself in that spot.

Viewed in the context of the All-NBA voting, it's not difficult to see why the Clippers first round playoff exit was such a disappointment. Among the five teams featuring two All-NBA players, the Heat and the Spurs are currently competing in their respective Conference Finals and appear at this point to be headed towards a showdown in the NBA Finals. The Thunder and the Lakers had two All-NBA selections, but competed in the playoffs without one of them, as injuries sidelined Bryant and Westbrook. A sprained ankle for Griffin likewise played a role in the Clippers playoff exit, but it's nonetheless a let down for a team with such star power to fail to win a playoff series.

But the good news is that stars win in the NBA, and the Clippers will almost certainly enter next season with their stars aligned for five more seasons. Griffin's contract extension begins next season and although Paul is a free agent, he is widely expected to sign a new deal with the Clippers. Talent gives you a chance to win in the NBA -- the Clippers should have that chance for many years to come.

2012-2013 Clippers Exit Interviews: Lamar Odom

2013-05-23T18:21:41Z

Name: Lamar Odom

2012-2013 Key Stats: 4.0 ppg, 5.9 rpg, 1.7 apg

Age: 33

Years in NBA: 14

Years With Clippers: 1

2012-2013 Salary: $8,200,000

Contract Status: Unrestricted Free Agent

In A Nutshell:

Perhaps the most significant transaction in the reshaping of this year's Clippers from the prior squad was the late June trade that brought former Clipper Lamar Odom back to Los Angeles. In that trade the Clippers lost last season's sixth man Mo Williams. Williams had been a significant contributor on the best Clippers team in franchise history, but exchanging backcourt depth for front court depth seemed to make sense for the Clippers, justifying the trade.

It was risky from the start. Odom had just completed by far the worst season of his career after being traded from the Lakers to Dallas. Odom was upset by the trade and never got into the proper mental state with the Mavericks. The situation deteriorated to the point where he was eventually dismissed from the team. That worst ever season had come on the heels of arguably the best season of his career in which he won the 2011 Sixth Man Award with the Lakers. Sixth-Man-Award-Lamar would clearly be a huge help to the Clippers; apathetic-Dallas-Lamar would be useless. At the time of the trade, no one knew which one the Clippers would get.

When Odom should up to training camp out of shape most observers feared the worst. But he's never been an off-season workout fiend along the lines of Blake Griffin -- Odom has always played himself into shape, and slowly but surely that's what he did with the Clippers. He was saying all the right things, and working hard when he was on the court, and while he was clearly not at his best, he was just as clearly significantly better, especially mentally, than the guy who shuffled through a season in Dallas.

In the end, the Clippers got a player somewhere between the two extremes that Odom had recently demonstrated. He played a more limited role than he ever had -- a career low 19.7 minutes per game -- but that still qualified him as the first big off the bench and a mainstay of one of the better second units in the NBA. Odom was good for the Clippers this season -- but also very limited.

Strengths:

Strengths and weaknesses are rarely as black and white as they were this season for Odom. His strengths were rebounding and defense; his weakness was offense, plain and simple.

He was the team's best per minute rebounder, no mean feat on a roster featuring Griffin and DeAndre Jordan; in fact, on a per minute basis this was the second best performance of his 14 year career. Bear in mind also that 10.7 rebounds per 36 isn't just good for the Clippers or good for Lamar Odom -- it's a really high level of rebounding, period. Among qualified players, Lamar was the 19th best per minute rebounder in the NBA this season. Not bad.

In addition to his rebounding, his all-around defense was tremendous all season. His length is a great asset on defense, he gets a large number of deflections and challenges every shot. He also happens to be in the right spot on almost every play. His rotations are terrific and his basketball instincts on defense are uncanny. I lost count of the times this season that Odom made multiple defensive plays on a single possession -- rotating to help on someone else's man, then recovering to his own man in time to challenge a shot.

Weaknesses:

Unfortunately, while Odom was providing solid rebounding and defense, he had completely forgotten how to score -- or maybe he'd simply lost interest. A career 13 point per game scorer who has twice averaged over 17 points for a full season, Odom averaged a career low 4 points per game for the Clippers while making less than 40 percent of his field goals. His lack of offensive punch was pretty astounding actually. In 82 games and over 1600 minutes, he took a TOTAL of 42 free throws -- the fewest free throws per minute of any interior player in the league. If he'd taken more free throws, one might have noticed his terrible foul shooting a bit more. Around 70 percent for his career, he made fewer than half of his freebies this season. How does that happen?

How bad was it? A big reason that Odom was viewed as an upgrade over the likes of Reggie Evans and Kenyon Martin this season was because he could supposedly provide more front count offense off the bench. Unfortunately it turned out not to be an upgrade, despite the fact that he was stepping in for a couple of guys who were offensive nonentities. As it happens, Martin scored more per minute as a Clipper than Odom did, and both Martin and Evans shot a better percentage from the field. Evans, a frighteningly bad free throw shooter, even hit a higher percentage from the line, while getting there more than three times as often.

Lamar still has a good feel for the game and remains one of the better 6'10 passers in the league. He averaged a solid 3.2 assists per 36 on the season. But his playmaking, while still welcome compared to the likes of Evans, was severely hindered by his lack of confidence on offense. Time and again he would pass up a shot and opt for a difficult pass -- he just didn't want to shoot.

At several points throughout the season it seemed as if perhaps his offensive game was coming around. He was so bad to start the season -- 23 percent from the field in November -- that he had nowhere to go but up. He managed to shoot 42 percent the rest of the way -- not good, but at least not terrible -- but remained so reluctant to shoot that he was still hurting the offense.

Future with the Clippers:

Odom made $8.2M for the Clippers this year -- making him wildly overpaid for the productivity he provided, even if he was useful on defense and on the boards. He's an unrestricted free agent this summer and it's safe to say that he's not going to make anything close to $8M per season going forward. Not at 34. Not for one of the most reluctant shooters in the league.

The question is, what is he willing to play for? There is likely not another player in the league more tied to a city -- given who he's married to and given his experience in Dallas last season, it's almost impossible to imagine Odom ever again playing for a team outside his adopted home of Los Angeles. Furthermore, after things ended so badly with the Lakers, it's pretty tough to imagine him going back to the purple and gold.

That gives the Clippers a lot of leverage. Anyone would want a veteran who can rebound and defend at the right price, and it's entirely possible that the Clippers will be bidding against themselves for his services going forward. The Clippers do have his Bird rights, but that almost entirely beside the point. It's nice that they won't have to use any of the mid level exception to re-sign Lamar-- but they will be bumping up against the luxury tax after re-signing Chris Paul, so any other contract they sign above the NBA minimum has to be carefully considered. Will Odom play another two or three seasons for something in the neighborhood of the NBA minimum? If so, then he could be back and he'd be a valuable asset at the right price. And who knows? Maybe he'll even remember how to shoot.

SBNation Playoff open thread -- Western Conference Finals Game 2

2013-05-21T23:24:38Z

It's Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals in San Antonio. The Spurs beat the Grizzlies handily in Game 1, completely neutralizing Zach Randolph, but don't forget that Memphis lost big to the Clippers in Game 1 and then lost Game 1 to the Thunder as well.

We're hosting the SBNation network-wide open thread here at Clips Nation tonight, so be nice. No sour grapes about Marc Gasol whining or Z-Bo pounding on people -- not that anyone here would do that anyway.

The game starts at 9 Eastern, 6 Pacific on ESPN.

Del Negro out -- who will be in?

2013-05-21T22:52:42Z

The Clippers coaching situation has been uncertain since the team picked up Vinny Del Negro's option last summer. They decided not to offer him a new contract, and now the search for a new coach begins.

It's always out there at some level, but the last few days have brought a new crop of "Vinny Del Negro on the hot seat" stories. Marc Stein of ESPN.com had him on the warm throne in his Weekend Dime, then Sekou Smith put him on the toasty chair in his Hangtime blog at NBA.com. Zach Lowe writing in Grantland about unimaginative offense in the NBA didn't mention Del Negro by name, but took several swipes at the Clippers lack of invention in their offensive sets, a clear indictment of the coach.

Let's look at what some of these fine NBA writers had to say. Things like this...

Vinny Del Negro insisted before a recent loss in Dallas that he has "a great future no matter what." The signals are nonetheless getting stronger and stronger that said future won't be at Staples Center, with Del Negro working on the flimsy final year of his original Clippers contract and L.A. looking nothing like the team -- whether that's due to health woes, locker-room fissures or coaching issues -- that won 17 straight games in December.

Could a deep playoff run save him? Even that might not be enough entering the most critical summer in the Clippers' history, with Chris Paul becoming a free agent July 1 and Clips management having always planned to let Paul have a big say (assuming he wants one) before any coach gets another long-term deal from them.

Marc Stein

and this...

Del Negro has just as many detractors as he does supporters these days. Three different league executives have suggested that he's done a much better job than he gets credit for, when you consider how raw the Clippers' frontcourt remains with youngsters Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan still coming into their own.

Del Negro's critics quickly point out that an All-Star and one of the top 10 centers in the league is a pretty good place to start your frontcourt rotation. Plus, they say, Griffin and Jordan's rawness has as much with Del Negro (and his staff's) inability to polish them up as it does anything else.

The Clippers have dealt with health issues and rumored locker room drama all season, but they also kicked off the NBA's season of win streaks with a 17-gamer early in the season that cranked expectations (on the team and Del Negro) to unattainable proportions. The only thing that might solidify Del Negro's status is a run to the Western Conference finals ... and that might work.

Sekou Smith

and this...

Predictable offenses with otherworldly talent can still get a team far; the Clippers can win a lot of games with 45 Chris Paul-Blake Griffin pick-and-rolls and 45 Griffin post-ups....

Coaches with stale offenses - think Utah, Brooklyn, the Clippers - are hurting their teams, even if those teams have enough talent to produce some solid overall scoring numbers.

Zach Lowe

So is any of this criticism fair? Probably not.

I'm not going to try to justify that Vinny Del Negro is a great X's and O's guy. He's not, and he'd admit as much. But it seems to me that there's a basic disconnect occurring when people are complaining about the fourth most efficient offense in the NBA. The Clippers score 110.6 points per 100 possessions according to basketball-reference, the fourth best efficiency in the NBA. The teams ahead of them are the Thunder, the Heat and the Knicks. One wonders where Lowe might expect the Clippers offensive efficiency to be, were Del Negro not "hurting" the team so much. Offensive "geniuses" like Gregg Popovich of the Spurs and George Karl of the Nuggets, coaching talented teams that are offensive juggernauts, don't achieve the same offensive efficiency as Del Negro's Clippers.

Now, I've said many times and it remains true, that having Chris Paul on your team hides a lot of coaching flaws. Critics of Del Negro can reasonably argue that he's done little more than get out of Paul's way and let him lead the offense -- but at least he's done that, right? There's little or no empirical evidence that Del Negro is holding the team back. Even on the defensive end, with a group of players not previously known for their defensive chops, the Clippers are eighth in the league in defensive efficiency -- a vast improvement over last year's team. In the process of improving from 18th rated defense in the league to the eighth rated defense, without a major personnel upgrade in terms of outstanding individual defenders, Del Negro finds himself on the sweltering chaise? I mean, I get it, he doesn't exactly inspire a ton of confidence, but let's not pretend this is about anything other than gut feelings, because it's pretty damn tough to make a case that the Clippers are underperforming.

My favorite line from this batch of critiques has got to be this one from Sekou Smith: "The Clippers have dealt with health issues and rumored locker room drama all season." They have? Injuries sure, and that should be a reason to cut VDN some slack. "Rumored locker room drama"? "All season"? I think it's relatively safe to say that I follow the Clippers more closely than most people, and by my count there has been one story -- one -- with rumors of locker room drama. That story appeared last week from the desk of noted provocateur T.J. Simers and was summarily dismissed by anyone with even a passing familiarity with his work. How does one overblown story from week 23 of a 24 week season qualify as "rumored locker room drama all season"? Answer: it doesn't. In fact, the "rumor" is that the Clippers locker room is extraordinarily close.

Which leads me to this story from Hardwood Paroxysm. Dylan Murphy explains on Vinny Del Negro sucks, because, well, he just does. He sucks, and everyone knows it, and everyone has always known it. The simple fact is, very few people really get coaching, and the conventional wisdom has always been that Del Negro is a bad coach. Short of winning a championship, there's little that Del Negro can do to combat that perception, since he will by definition have come up short if the Clippers don't win it all. Heck, if having an offense ranked behind only OKC and Miami and New York can still justify criticism that he's "hurting" the offense, then the deck would seem to be stacked against VDN.

I've long come back to one thing about Del Negro: his teams play hard for him, especially at the end of the season. Motivating and relating to players is at least as important as X's and O's, which at the end of the day don't vary that much from team to team. Consider this: Popovich is justifiably viewed as the best coach in the league at present, running the most sophisticated schemes. Yet Boris Diaw can sign a contract with the Spurs on March 23rd, 2012 and play 16 effective minutes that night. Basketball is basketball, and all 30 teams are running variations on the same things. Diaw didn't have to study for weeks and learn a fundamentally different way to play -- he's a basketball player and Pop put him on the floor after one shootaround.

Del Negro is in his fifth season as a head coach, and his teams have closed strong in his first four, even when they had many reasons not to. This season's Clippers lost three straight at a bad time, at the start of the final ten games. But if Del Negro can get them to close strong over the final seven, he will have shown once again that he can get a locker room to listen to him even as the NBA calendar drags on into it's fifth month.

Does all this mean that I think Del Negro should coach the Clippers next season? Obviously, the final five regular season games and the playoffs will yet have an impact on the decision. Being swept in the first round would indicate one answer, winning a championship would require another. Odds are that the reality will lie in a place much more nuanced -- say for instance a second round exit at the hands of the Thunder in seven games. What then?

Much will depend on Chris Paul, as indeed it should. Players win basketball games, and if Paul has an opinion about next season's coach, particularly one that impacts his free agency, then by all means it should be taken into consideration. The Clippers could probably do better than Vinny Del Negro. But here's the thing that I'm not sure people are fully grasping -- they could also do worse.

Clippers part ways with Del Negro

2013-05-21T20:06:13Z

It seemed to drag on a bit longer than it should have, but today the Los Angeles Clippers informed Vinny Del Negro that they would not renew his expiring contract, parting ways with the coach after three years. Del Negro departs as one of only two head coaches in franchise history to compile a winning record with the team.

To some extent, Del Negro was a victim of heightened expectations. The Clippers advanced to the second round of the NBA Playoffs last season, and as such their first round exit this season was a major disappointment. That disappointment was only heightened by the fact that the team had just experienced the most successful regular season in franchise history, a season that included a 17 game winning streak and the best record in the league two months into the season. Ultimately, Del Negro got more blame for failing to maintain that high level of play than credit for establishing the level in the first place.

And yet this is the correct course of action, assuming the Clippers make an informed and serious choice for his successor. Assuming that free agent Chris Paul signs a maximum deal with the club this summer (the only reasonable assumption to make and the premise under which the front office must operate) the Clippers are entering a five year window with Paul and Blake Griffin in place as major cornerstones. Any team with two superstars in their prime has a chance to compete for a title, if other factors fall into place. One of those factors is coaching, and Del Negro was not the coach to get them there.

Who will the next coach be? Will the Clippers actually upgrade from Del Negro, or will they miss this opportunity by making a poor choice? The field of marquee candidates got a little thinner today when former Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy announced that he would not return to the sidelines for at least one more season.

Among the coaching candidates that have been linked to the Clippers are former Nets and Hornets head coach Byron Scott, current Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins (his contract is up after this season) and Warriors assistant ~~Brendan~~ Michael Malone. Rest assured that the interests and wishes of Paul will be a major consideration in this process. Scott coached Paul in New Orleans, and Malone was an assistant there. Paul is close with both of them.

There are no obvious home runs on the coaching market right now, at least not any that are definitely available and interested. Phil Jackson is not walking through Donald Sterling's door. Jerry Sloan, once of the winningest NBA coaches of all time, recently interviewed for the vacant Milwaukee Bucks job, but eliminated himself as a candidate because he didn't feel it was the right fit for him. Might he feel differently about the Clippers? Sloan had a little success in Utah with a great point guard/power forward tandem -- but he's also a bit of a throw back in today's NBA and might not mesh well with a younger generation of players.

There are many questions yet to be answered, but all we really know for now is that Del Negro will not be back, and that the search is on for his replacement.

Vinny Del Negro and the Clippers coaching situation: An Overview

2013-05-20T23:49:35Z

I've been trying to ignore the coaching situation for the Los Angeles Clippers since the team was eliminated from the playoffs a couple of weeks ago. Why? Well, it's a very long off-season from the beginning of May until training camp opens, and it can get crazy jumping on every rumored development in something that figures to be as slow-moving as a Clippers-coaching decision. But it's time to weigh in a bit.

Overview

Vinny Del Negro's contract as the Clippers head coach expires this month after three seasons with the team. He was originally hired in 2010, aka the year 1 BCP3 (before Chris Paul) and signed a two year deal with an option for a third season. Del Negro was 32-50 in his first season, 40-26 in year two and 56-26 this year, setting franchise records for winning percentage in each of the last two seasons. His overall winning percentage as a Clippers head coach of 128-112 (.533) is the second best of all time, behind Larry Brown's 64-53 (.547), but of course Brown compiled his record in less than a year and a half and then quit on his own. If the Clippers were to fire him, it would be the first time in franchise history that they had fired a coach with a winning record. Del Negro currently stands as the third winningest coach in franchise history, after Mike Dunleavy's 215 wins and Jack Ramsay's 158.

But despite his success, there is a persistent perception that Del Negro is overmatched as an NBA head coach. He was fired after two seasons straight playoff appearances in Chicago in his first coaching gig, and the conventional wisdom is that both his offensive and defensive schemes are too simplistic -- that he's not an X's and O's guy. Del Negro himself has never really disputed that, but he does seem to be a decent motivator in the locker room, which counts for something.

After a four straight playoff losses to the Memphis Grizzlies, bringing a premature end to the Clippers post-season in the wake of their best ever regular season, it was widely accepted that Del Negro was done as head coach. However, more than two weeks after the first round failure, no decision has been made -- and in fact, nothing concrete has been done to move towards a decision as far as anyone knows. While Brooklyn and and Milwaukee and other teams acted quickly to fire their head coaches and start interviewing candidates, the Clippers have done ... nothing.

Will the Clippers fire Vinny Del Negro?

We've worked hard in Clips Nation combat the perception that something will always go wrong with this team because "It's the Clippers." But this is one case where those three little words still have relevance. "It's the Clippers", so who knows what they're going to do?

This has never been a particularly decisive franchise. Mike Dunleavy won just 42 games in two full seasons and was two thirds of the way through a third losing year before he was fired 2010. They then waited until well after the draft, after every other team had filled their coaching vacancies, to name Del Negro the head coach. In another franchise, this approach might be described as 'thorough' or 'methodical' -- with the Clippers, it's more often seem as 'incompetence' and 'inertia'.

Del Negro and general manager Gary Sacks spoke to the media on Monday, May 6, just two days after the playoff exit, and at that time the plan was for Del Negro to sit down and talk with owner Donald T. Sterling. The meeting was first rumored to be the week of May 6, then it was pushed to the week of May 13, and then to the weekend -- and as of now, there's still no news as to whether or not the meeting has happened.

Why the super slo mo on this process? No one can say for sure, but money probably has something to do with it. Sterling is loathe to spend much, and particularly dislikes giving long term contracts to coaches -- he's been sued by each of the last two coaches who had long term deals for not honoring the contracts after they were fired. While the conventional wisdom says fire Del Negro and hire a proven winner like Stan Van Gundy, Sterling is going to have to be convinced to pay the kind of money that it will take to lure Van Gundy to L.A. Firing Del Negro takes him one step closer to potentially committing long term money to a high-priced replacement, so like a teenager with homework to do, he's procrastinating.

All of which is means it's no longer a given that Del Negro will definitely be fired. For one thing, the playoff embarrassment is less fresh and less painful. If he wasn't fired Sunday morning after a bizarre Game 6 which was, in Bill Simmons fairly accurate words, "his bad coaching magnum opus" then each day he survives the bad memories fade a bit more. For another, Del Negro got the job with the Clippers in the first place by selling himself as a coach to Sterling. For all his shortcomings on the sideline, Del Negro knows how to handle Sterling. Finally, if VDN is willing to work for relatively inexpensive, short term deals he'll have an advantage over some of his potential replacements.

Should the Clippers fire Vinny Del Negro?

I've pointed out before that Del Negro has done some good things, that he's not as bad as his reputation, that the Clippers had the third best point differential in the league this season so he must have been doing something right. I've also pointed out that most coaches are fairly interchangeable, that every team runs more or less the same schemes, that players win and lose games, not coaches, that Del Negro is no worse than most of the other coaches in the NBA.

Having said all of that, this is a no-brainer. Of course they should fire him. For a couple of simple reasons. One, because the perception is that he should be fired. The Clippers still have to battle the perception of the franchise, and if Del Negro stays it will be interpreted as incompetence or parsimony or both. Should it matter what the media and the public think? Maybe not, but it does. The other obvious reason to fire Del Negro is because they can. If Del Negro is not much worse than other coaches, he's certainly not any better. It's hard to take the next step, from the second tier to the top tier, and that's what the Clippers have to do now. They don't have the flexibility or the picks to significantly upgrade the roster -- so they'll have to find improvement elsewhere. Coaching is one place to look.

In fact, if Sacks and club president Andy Roeser are smart, they'll explain to Sterling that finding the right coach now is probably the most cost effective way of improving. Once Chris Paul re-signs, the Clippers will be bumping right up against the luxury tax, and buying wins with better players will cost double or even treble between the various luxury taxes that could be levied on the team. But there is no luxury tax on coaches, so finding the right one, even at a steep price, is a bargain compared to going into the luxury tax to buy more and better players.

So where are we now?

Who knows what's going on at this point. Sterling was seen at the Spurs/Grizzlies playoff game in San Antonio this weekend. Sterling doesn't go to Clippers games too frequently these days, and almost never on the road. For him to show up to watch two other teams in San Antonio is unheard of. Was he scouting potential head coaching candidates? Grizzlies head coach Lionel Hollins, like Del Negro, will be a coaching free agent this summer. Grizzlies assistant David Joerger is the man credited with turning Memphis into a defensive juggernaut, and like Tom Thibodeau before may be ready to become a head coach now. Then there's Spurs assistant Mike Budenholzer, who has been on the short list of assistants who are ready to move up to the first chair for years. Could Sterling have been in town to 'scout' potential head coaches, as ESPN's Marc Stein suggested?

There's just one problem with that idea: Sterling doesn't have the basketball savvy to 'scout' potential coaches. Sitting courtside at a playoff game would be meaningless in his decision-making process. It might make sense for him to meet face to face with a potential future coach -- but the Clippers don't have permission to speak to any of these people, so that didn't happen. There's a first time for everything I guess, and maybe Sterling was indeed there to get a feel for a potential future coach -- but the idea is a little laughable on its surface.

Regardless, the Clippers need to get out of their traditional foot dragging mode and make some decisions. Van Gundy has already interviewed with the Hawks and is being courted by other teams as well. Several teams are getting a leg up on the Clippers simply by being active in the candidate search already. It's advantageous that the Clippers job is considered one of the cherry positions this off season -- Chris Paul and Blake Griffin can make any coach look good, so unless you'd rather have a deep-pocketed Russian Billionaire as your owner, there's no better opportunity. But the Clippers are used to waiting until the available coaches have been picked over a bit and then doing some bargain-hunting; but they need to change their approach and go after the top candidates before they've taken other jobs.

2012-2013 Clippers Exit Interviews: Ryan Hollins

2013-05-15T19:55:23Z

Name: Ryan Hollins

2012-2013 Key Stats: 3.4 ppg, 2.3 rpg, 11.1 mpg

Age: 28

Years in the NBA: 7

Years with the Clippers: 1

2012-2013 Salary: Minimum

Contract Status: Unrestricted free agent; the Clippers do not hold his Bird Rights

In a Nutshell

I was completely unenthusiastic about the Ryan Hollins signing when it happened last summer but it must be said that Hollins performed admirably as a Clipper. He shot a career high .614 from the field and outperformed his career averages in rebounding and shot blocking as well.

Coach Vinny Del Negro played yo-yo with Hollins minutes much of the season. Del Negro mostly played a 10 man rotation, and Hollins began the season as the backup center, often playing more minutes than Lamar Odom as Odom worked his way into basketball condition. Hollins was soon supplanted for the fourth big spot by Ronny Turiaf at which point Ryan claimed his rightful position as chief towel-waver on the bench. Hollins accumulated 22 DNP-CDs from the beginning of December until mid-March, mixed with garbage minutes and injury backup time. Then he suddenly re-emerged ahead of Turiaf in the rotation in the final month of the season. As if all that wasn't strange enough, during the first five playoff games Del Negro played both Hollins AND Turiaf in a five big rotation, with Hollins playing most first half minutes and Turiaf taking the second half rotation, in a vain attempt to slow the Memphis bigs.

All in all, Hollins provided good energy with the second unit, defensive activity and enough offense to get by. His pick and roll defense was excellent, and was probably a big part of the reason that he was able to remain in the rotation as much as he did since having bigs who can defend the pick and roll is such an important part of today's NBA. He's still a limited player -- he lacks the strength to be a great post defender or rebounder and consequently he's a bit of a foul machine -- but he was more than serviceable for the Clippers this season.

Strengths

The term 'energy guy' is thrown around too much, but it certainly applies to Hollins. As part of a second unit that thrived early in the season on pressure defense and transition offense Hollins fit right in. Not the most graceful of athletes, Hollins nonetheless possesses surprising lateral quickness for a seven footer, and was able to show and trap very effectively pick and roll coverages. His long lean frame gives him the look of a shot blocker, and indeed early in his NBA career it seemed that he might turn into a rejection specialist, averaging 2.6 blocks per 36 minutes in his third season. Strangely, his shot-blocking fell sharply to just over one per 36 minutes over the last three seasons, but he was once again a valuable rim-protector this season, averaging 1.8 per 36, second on the team after DeAndre Jordan.

Offensively, Hollins fit in well in the "Lob City" paradigm, rolling to the basket and finishing lobs with skill and frequency. He made .614 of his field goal attempts, mostly because he limited himself to easy ones, but importantly he also made his free throws. While Blake Griffin missed one in three freebies and the other three Clipper bigs were among the seven worst free throw shooters in the entire league, Hollins shot a more than respectable 75% from the line -- I have little doubt that reliability was at least a part of the reason that Hollins resurfaced in the rotation in the final month, as Del Negro got fed up with having to worry about teams hacking his other bigs.

Hollins propensity for confrontation might be considered a strength or a weakness. He is more than willing to get into someone's face, to give a hard foul, to stand up for his teammates. That can be useful, but the technicals and flagrants that come along with it have a price as well.

Weaknesses

For his career Hollins has been an anemic rebounder for a guy his size, which is a big part of the reason that I was lukewarm at his arrival. His 7.5 boards per 36 minutes, while not great by any means, were much better than his career average (6.4) and in line with Turiaf's rebounding (7.8), but far below the per minute numbers for the Clippers other bigs.

Hollins biggest weakness in the NBA, coincidentally. is probably his weakness. Basketball-reference lists him at 7'0 230; the Clippers listed him at 240 this season. Regardless, he is probably the frailest seven footer in the league. (By comparison, the Nuggets listed JaVale McGee at 7'0 252.)

That lack of size and strength makes it difficult for him to hold his position in the low post, so while he is a good help defender on the pick and roll, on weak side shot blocks and on rotations, he is a pretty terrible on-ball post defender. The problem then compounds when he is forced to reach and foul against stronger opponents. Hollins averaged a ridiculous 7.2 fouls per 36 minutes on the season -- a number that rose to 9.7 fouls per 36 in the playoffs. The Clippers defense was much improved this season, but they were terrible at defending without fouling -- in fact, they were 29th out of 30 NBA teams in opponent free throws per field goal attempt. Of course you can't blame all of that on Hollins, but he certainly wasn't part of the solution. Hollins' frailty doesn't matter a lot in every matchup -- but against the Grizzlies in the playoffs, it was disastrous.

Future with the Clippers

Hollins is a free agent. After playing for the Clippers on a one year minimum deal, there's little reason to suspect that he'll command much more than that this off-season. He'll get another NBA job -- he's certainly earned that -- but I don't envision a bidding war for his services. So the question will be fit and opportunity. As a fourth or hopefully fifth big as he was this season, he's a good value but I'm guessing he'll end up providing that value elsewhere. The Clippers will be looking to upgrade at that spot if possible, and the tendency in the case of an 11th man type is to move on -- the player wants to go to another team in hopes of a better opportunity, the team wants to try another player in hopes of getting lucky with a real contributor. If you're looking for a third string big, why not sign one who's in his early 20s and still has some headroom rather than a known quantity who'll be 29 before next season starts? Ryan's an LA kid who went to Muir in Pasadena and played college ball at UCLA so he'd probably love to stick around, but I'd be surprised if he were back with the Clippers.

2012-2013 Clippers Exit Interviews

2013-05-14T16:06:06Z

As we try to do every season here at Clips Nation, we're running a series of "exit interviews" of this year's Los Angeles Clippers. An overview and analysis, player by player, of all 15 Clippers who finished the 2012-2013 season on the roster.

Name: Maalik Wayns

2011-2012 Key Stats: 2.8 ppg, 1.0 apg, 7.5 mpg

Age: 22

Years in the NBA: 1

Years with the Clippers: 1

2012-2013 Salary: Minimum

Contract Status: Signed next season to an unguaranteed minimum contract.

Name: DaJuan Summers

2012-2013 Key Stats: 1.0 ppg, 1.0 apg, 3.5 mpg

Age: 25

Years in the NBA: 4

Years with the Clippers: 1

2012-2013 Salary: Minimum

Contract Status: Signed next season to an unguaranteed minimum contract.

In a Nutshell

Maalik Wayns and DaJuan Summers were late season additions to the Clippers roster, insurance policies taken out while the team suffered through some injuries. Wayns was added via a 10 day contract originally on March 8, while Eric Bledsoe was sidelined with a calf injury; by the time his second 10 day contract was up, Chauncey Billups was injured again, and given that Chris Paul had also missed a dozen games earlier in the year, the Clippers decided to keep Wayns around for the rest of the season. It proved unnecessary, and Wayns got a total of 37 garbage time minutes; he never suited up during the playoffs.

There's a similar story for Summers. Starting forward Caron Butler hurt his elbow in mid-March and was generally dinged up down the stretch, while Grant Hill at age 40 was an ongoing injury risk that the team didn't want to push too hard in practice. Summers was signed to a 10 day contract March 15 more or less so that the Clippers could have two healthy small forwards in practice -- he eventually signed for the remainder of the season. Summers got even less burn than Wayns -- he played seven minutes as a Clipper, making one shot.

Strengths

We don't much know about the strengths of these players; we just don't have enough to go on. Wayns, a rookie free agent out of Villanova, was actually in the rotation in Philadelphia at the start of the season. But the Sixers always seem to find room on their roster for some borderline NBA players from Philly (think Lavoy Allen), so I didn't think much of it. He had a 10 point game and a nine assist game as a Sixer, but they waived him in January. He seems quick and he seems confident -- he certainly wasn't afraid to shoot in the end of game minutes he got.

Summers has more overall NBA experience than Wayns, if a lot less experience this season. Originally a second round draft pick of the Pistons in 2009, the Georgetown product appeared 44 games in Detroit as a rookie. He played less his second season, signed with New Orleans his third season, and failed to make an NBA roster this year until the Clippers called him up from the D-League. He's got good size for a small forward, a good NBA body, rebounds well from the three spot and hit the three ball pretty well in the D-League this year. But let's face it, we know nothing about him based on seven minutes this season.

Weaknesses

These are fringe NBA players -- if they can help an NBA roster, it will be through hard work and hustle. These are not major talents.

Future with the Clippers

Both Wayns and Summers, as I understand it, have non-guaranteed contracts for next season. Basically, that means that the Clippers will have first right of refusal on them. They'll be in training camp, but they won't have any inherent advantage in making the team over your standard rookie free agent on a make-good contract. They'll have to earn a roster spot for next season in camp.

The Clippers like to carry 14 contracts into opening day, and this season 13 of those were players who saw significant time during the season. As of now there are seven guaranteed contracts on the roster and a re-signed Chris Paul takes an eighth spot. Depending on what happens with an Eric Bledsoe trade or Hill's potential retirement, the Clippers probably have about seven available roster spots, give or take. The front office no doubt is hoping to upgrade over the likes of Wayns and Summers between now and October. But with the luxury tax threshold looming, it's a given that the final few roster spots will go to players making the minimum and it remains to be seen if the Clippers can fill those spots with better options on a tight budget. My best guess right now would be that Wayns and Summers, like Travis Leslie last year, become the final cuts in training camp.