The Ringer NBA Show - Clippers Vibe Check and Observations With Law Murray | Weekends With Wos

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

Wos sits down with L.A. Clippers beat writer Law Murray from The Athletic to discuss the current state of the Clippers and where they stand in the early season. Host: Wosny Lambre Guest: Law Murray Producer: Jade Whaley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The time has come to get ready for the 2022 World Cup. And what better way to prepare than by revisiting the World Cup's most amazing goals? I'm Brian Phillips. I'm making a podcast about the history of the men's World Cup, told through the stories of 22 iconic goals. The show's called 22 Goals. It's out now on the Ringer Podcast Network, and we're having so much fun. I'm back, ladies and gentlemen, to the latest edition of weekends.

I'm your host, Big Wasa, aka Wazni Lambray, and I'm joined, man. Super excited to have this brother on the show today. He's the beat writer for the athletic of the Los Angeles Clippers. He's a homie in mind. Lord Murray was going on, brother. East Coast represent, Was. Yeah, we got a rep, man. Philly.

My young bowl from Philly. Obviously, y'all know I'm a New York City guy. Super excited to have you on the show today because we haven't really touched on the Clippers much, either here or group chat because of all the, you know, the sort of confusion around the lineups to start the season. So it's felt like the thoughts are incomplete about this team. But, you know, I wanted to talk to you, Law, mainly because, man, I talked to a decent amount of media people before the season. And personally, I was shocked by how many people felt the Clippers were going to win the championship this year. Yeah, the athletic, as you know, we have a lot of people on staff,

really talented group of beat writers, national writers, editors, et cetera. And when they saw how many people were in on the Clippers, not just getting out the West, but possibly winning the championship, it's like, well, listen, you got to write about how, you know, everyone's on the Clippers. And I was like, oh, this is going to be awkward, you know, because I'm not one of those people. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, like, I've definitely never been accused of being in the bag for the L.A. Clippers. So that was an interesting piece because normally, not that I take a wind horse approach to never doing any predictions or anything like that.

But, you know, I generally like to do predictions related to how teams are going to perform. process-wise, instead of just talking about who's going to win the championship or who I think is going to be those two teams in the finals or stuff like that, especially the team I'm covering. Like, I got to deal with it on a daily basis. I do want to get into the process, though, because I think the theory, from what I can best, you know, gather from talking to the people that I talk to was one, you know, the last time we saw Kauai Leonard in the postseason, he was dominant. He was as good as anybody I've ever seen playing the playoffs dominant against the Mabs.

That's a fact. Paul George is who he is. Incredible number two. I don't know you can ask for a better number two than what, like, you know, on certain teams, if the construction is right, he's a damn good number one. You know, I think Paul George is just an incredible player. And there's been moments this season where he's looked like easily a top 10 NBA player, probably a top five wing. And so, you know, Paul George is who he is. And then, you know, I know you heard this a trillion times.

The clippers are the deepest team in the NBA law. Functionally, what does that mean deepest in the NBA before they got on the floor for the first 15 games of the season? It's not just that they're deep. It's they're deep with respects to a certain amount of positions, right? So they're wing heavy. It's not like they have a lot of centers, clearly. You know, everyone's like, what are you going to do? It's funny, wise, like, we always talk about how the center position is decreasing in value on a yearly basis.

Yeah, but it's still very important. It's still very important. And then, you know, you get to the Clippers and be like, what are they going to do without a backup center? As if my man, Vince of Zubots isn't Tye Loo's first adjustment when he got to come back from down 20. You know what I'm saying? So the Clippers were like, we're not going to seriously consider another center. until further notice, which we all know further notice is the buyout market, but that's, that's for later, right?

That's for when spring gets here. And then the point guard position, they get John Wall to a team that last year didn't have a backup point guard, basically. Like, Ty wanted to start Eric Bledsoe with Reggie together, and predictably that did not work out. Eric eventually got his own unit and started to play better when he wasn't asked to watch Reggie did travel to basketball. And then they trade Eric for Norm and Roco. Again, a great trade, a trade that made them a lot more, let's just say, wing heavy.

And then Norm gets hurt in a week. Terence Mann basically had to play backup point guard most of last year. So you get John Wall and you're like, well, you just short up a position that was actually in need of some reinforcements. You got a rookie Jason Press and he's back. So you're not worrying about point guard anymore. everybody else is a wing was everybody else is wing or wing adjacent you know they were a small ford at some point of their life and that's where the depth was it was not just the the amount of players but the amount of guys who could play respectable NBA rotation minutes and the clippers

have 12 of those guys and they don't include jason preston or brandon boston junior who are two really intriguing young guys who have been hanging out in the G league all month. Okay, so here's the thing about the clippers and their quote-unquote death because, look, I'm not Johnny come lately. I didn't believe in the theory of this team. One, just because to be honest, what the nuggets did to them in the bubble will forever stick with me because I think it was about more than talent. it was about a sort of connectedness and continuity that the team never established.

And when they got punched in the mouth, there was no organizing principle about how they would address that. Right. So I don't, like, and a team that's like your best player missed all of last year. He's missing time this year. Guys are in and out of lineups. You're working in all of these new people. I'm like, how are they going to address them? that fundamental issue that every team faces in the postseason where it's not about do you

have the guys that can, you know, do the correct box out or, you know, make sure the Memphis Grizzlies don't gash you on the offensive boards or, you know, you make the correct rotation when the warriors are doing their ball movement stuff and you help off for the right guys. Like, it's not that you don't have guys that are incapable of. doing the things I just mentioned, these little things that happen, possession by possession and the posties, is like, are they in the practice of doing it together? Is there trust? Like, these things have not been built. So, like, outside of talent, I'm just like, I don't know that the clip has got that. That's a one. And two, your best player has an injury that's not

an ACL. It's not a PCL. It's not some, oh, you got the surgery, it's corrected, it's fixed, this mended, you got the time off, you did the rehab, you're coming back. This is just a thing that seems like it's going to linger for the rest of this guy's life. And so how is this guy supposed to just dominate for four rounds in a row against the best players in the world today? You know what I mean? And so that's just a long way of saying all of that stuff is kind of playing out this season. You know, Kauai's out of the lineup. A lot of times we've seen some continuity issues where this team tied.

I'm somebody who's, you know, basically made this guy into the red arabac of modern basketball. Genius level coach, Ty Lou, X-N-O's genius, Tyloo. Offense is what this guy does. And I look this up right before I talk to you, Lord. They're the 29th ranked offense. In the NBA, how did we get here 15 games in? Well, let me start with the offense because 29th is a compliment compared to some other things you can look at. You know what I mean? I got a piece up Thursday morning at the athletic kind of looking at how this team only the Hawks pass the ball fewer times for a game.

But the Atlanta Hawks also turn the ball over a fewer percentage of a time compared to every other team in the league, which is the appropriate ratio. If you're not going to pass the ball, you shouldn't be turning it over, right? The Clippers, unfortunately, are a bottom five turnover team. Like, it's hard to do. That's a hard thing to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is a dribble the ball off your shoe team, you know? Yeah.

And so that's not ideal. And this is already a team that, not that they're small, but they don't, they don't really crash. They're not super athletic for, like, they're big at pretty much every position that they're, that they line guys up at. But they're not super athletic. So outside of zoo, no one's a threat. on the offensive glass. When zoos out the game, no one, no one crashes the glass. They're too spaced out to do it.

They're spaced out even though they are a bottom 10 or close to bottom 10 three-point shooting team right now, which that roster were even last year when they were also bad on offense. They were a top five, I think top three, maybe three-point shooting team. Same as the year before, Tye's first year. In 1920, I believe they might have set a record for a three-point percentage in NBA history. history is how incredible they were at shooting the basketball and just offense generally. Yeah, that was 2021. That was Ty's first season as head coach. And that's the home, that's supposed to be the home. This is a drive, kick, swing offense when it's operating the way it's

supposed to. It's supposed to be paint touches, make the right read, and then cash out. It's supposed to be at that simple. And it's a combination of just too many, one, shot possessions and too many no shot possessions. That's really it. The offense isn't that complicated as far as why it's not working. Now, can it work with Kauai gets back? I think so because Kauai is not just a good shooter for himself and an improved decision maker, but Kauai just does a good job of not turning the ball over. And that's such a big thing. Paul George's biggest flaw as a basketball player is his ball handling and decision making. I mean, man's had 10 turnovers Tuesday night in Dallas. And some of that you can chalk up to fatigue. He played the entire second half of the

second night of a road back to back. I know that's tough. I can't even imagine what his usage percentage is compared to everybody else. I'm not looking at it. I'm having a conversation with Waz. You know what I'm saying? I ain't, I'm worried about the numbers right now. We can just talk about it. Man's had 10 turnovers. And his His last three cost them in the game, basically. So that's been the biggest issue. Now, going back to that bubble team, I think the biggest difference between that team and the one now, I know that when it's your freshman year, you're going to make some mistakes. You're not going to act yourself.

This Clippers team with that leadership, PG and Kauai, they're in their senior year. So whereas that first year, you know, when they were with Doc, there was an already. establish the quorum in the locker room, right? You had Patrick Beverly there, Lou Will, Montchance Harrow. I would say that team was more talented than this team, to be honest with you, but clearly they weren't more cohesive. And the leadership, especially after that months-long hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic and then going down to the bubble, team wasn't with it, right? This year, even before Kauai's knee stiffened up, Everyone talked about how it was important to stay together.

Everyone talked about how often they got together over the offseason pretty much as soon as the season was over. I think the understanding that things would be hard was important for this team. So guess what? Things got hard pretty, pretty early. Literally, things got hard week two. Yeah. And I think the perspective like Nicholas Baton, he said to me when they lost, to the suns that first Sunday of the season.

That's the last night Kauai played. Nico basically was like, we're not going to be great. We're not going to do anything crazy until Christmas. And that was an eye opener. I was like, Nico, you come again with that? And he's like, yeah, I mean, it's going to be a couple months. Again, before Kauai had his injury,

before they lost two straight games in Oklahoma City where garbage time was required to complete the game, you know? So the psyche of the team, I think, is in as good a play. places it can be for an eight and seven start with championship expectations and Kauai not playing, that's not to say it's everything. They could still make a big trade. They could still go through some crazy stuff on the road. It's still early.

Things can get worse. Wise, you know this. LA Clippers, man. Clips going to clip. Listen, their record is eight and seven. You know, I don't know that we could reasonably expect that this group. since Kauai Leonard should be more than a 500 team. I think there have been times in the past

where they might have played over their heads without Kauai in the lineup. But I think they're playing at their pace. And again, the 29th ranked offense only besting the Lakers who have historically bad shooting, right? Right. They're one of the worst shooting teams compiled ever

to only be outpacing them only in the NBA. I think, you know, they've got to be better than that. I see Reggie Jackson, who I want to talk about. And Terrence Mann, too, because they were part of that conference finals run in huge ways, specifically making shots, making threes. Reggie Jackson was making contested pull-up threes, that damn playoffs. I was like, wait, this guy's a shooter now? Let me go check his.

He's shooting 29%. That's not a thing that you want as an offense. And Terrence, man, who nobody ever thought he was lights out. And I think Utah people was like, I told you we weren't playing bad defense. When we left that dude open in the playoffs, he's shooting 22% from three to start this season. And I think those guys, he's not a 22% shooter. I don't think Reggie's 29%. But I think those guys got to be much better in order for a lot of this stuff to work.

Yeah, you can go right down the line, man. I mean, John Wall is at 25%. Sheesh. That's like for a guy who's worked on, spend a year working on his shot, you know, that's obviously discouraging. Not just that. He's at 59% from the free throw line. So for one of the few guys who gets to the line at a high rate, it's obviously been an adventure for him there. And he knows that he keeps bringing up how he's shooting free throws like check.

So it's one of those things where it's just got to be, it's a mental thing when it's something like free throws, when it's something like three-pointers, they started slow last year and they evened up. So with someone like Terrence, Terrence is such a low-volume shooter anyway. It's like he needs to just shoot the damn ball, you know, and Terrence, he works hard on his game. He works on his shot. He's not what anyone would consider a natural shooter, but given the encouragement and the, I would say the assurance that you're going to play, just shoot the ball, I think that he'll eventually ratchet up. Reggie is streaky. Reggie is just going to, he has to shoot. Nobody's going to tell him. I mean, nobody, he doesn't need anybody to tell him to keep shooting.

Yeah, he's going to keep shooting. Like, especially when Kauai gets back, he's essentially a shooting guard. He's a nominal starting point guard, but Reggie's role is to eventually knock down some of these shots. And I do think the more time he gets with guys like Kauai, he'll be better. Like, Reggie's at 94. percent from the freedom line, for example. It's not like his shots broke. He's just, he's had more bad games than good games so far. He's had some good games. And then you got Norm. Again, Norm was supposed to be the kind of player who you would thought, wing depth, all of that. Yeah, like he was supposed to be the over-the-top guy. He struggled with his shot. Twelve points a game, that is just not a Norm Powell. That's not what you expect, especially with Kauai out of the lineup. Like this guy,

You know, he's a borderline 20 points per game at decent efficiency type of score. That's who he's been even since the Toronto days. And he just hasn't been able to get it going himself either. Right. So when you look, that's a large bulk of minutes, given the guys who are basically sub 30% from three. But you're also thinking, okay, look, you're probably not going to shoot that poorly over the course of an entire season.

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elephant in the room, which is Kauai Leonard's knee. What in the hell is going on? It's not as if the clippers have always been, let's call it the most forthright about Kauai and the injury situation. It's always this caginess around this guy's bodily maintenance. what do you know, as somebody who's with the team, damn there every day, what do you know that you feel confident that you could say about Kauai's injury? Well, look, this is taping on Thursday, and he's upgraded to questionable and supposed to possibly play. And the thing is, when they were in Oklahoma City week two, he wanted to play, he reported stiffness.

And the team thought, you know what, we're going to send you home. and we're going to get this right. And it reminds me of Marcus Morris, who, when Marcus started last season, he did not participate in training camp. The Clippers did not explicitly tell us that he didn't go through training camp practices until basically the start of the season. It was like, well, Marcus is starting. You know, we took it easy on them, right? Because you remember, they made the conference finals. It was only, what, two, three months in between.

like the start of the next season after that. Yes, yes, yes. Marcus' knees didn't handle that well. So Marcus, he plays these two games to start the year. He's moving terribly, shooting terribly, and foul trouble can't defend nobody. So they sat him down and they didn't bring him back until 31 days later. I've immediately thought of that when Kauai was part and they said, you know what, he's going with stiffness. So you were not alarmed by this approach that they took.

Nah, because I've seen it. Because I've seen, I've been covering the Clippers, man. You know what I'm saying? And so with Kauai, it's like, okay, he tore his ACL. It's a partial tear, but he tore it. So that means that you're going to have basically the same surgery to repair it. You need to reconstruct the ligament. And he was fortunate to have all of last year to focus on the rehab.

The Clippers didn't make the playoffs. So there was no, you know, there was no pressure to come back for playoff games. while they were in the playoffs. Like Kauai said himself that the Clippers would have needed to like make the finals for him to come back. And so that gives you an idea of the time. Kauai doesn't play basketball in the offseason. Like he doesn't play five on five or anything like that.

He does his skill work. He works on his body. I think everyone saw this offseason what his body looked like. He was fucking chacked, man. And probably too jacked was. That's what I've seen that pushback that he probably might have gotten too big and putting too much pressure on his knees and joints and stuff like that. I've heard that criticism for sure. Right. And, you know, the intention that Kauai had to build out like that is to protect the knee

ironically, to protect from contact resulting in injury. And so now you got the other side of it where he had some stiffness. The team parked them so that they could strengthen his knee while dealing with this stiffness. It's taken 25 days. We're probably going to see him Thursday night against the Pistons. If not Thursday night, then it'll be very interesting

to see him come back Saturday against Greg Pavovich's spurs. So there's that. But it's all about managing the fact that this dude hasn't played NBA basketball since June of 2021. And there's just a process

of coming back physically, especially when you are the star of the team, especially when you're not coming back to be Kendrick Perkins, you know? Yeah, yeah, you're coming back to... No disrespect to perk, but... You're coming back to facilitate offense. You're coming back to be the engine of what happens on this team's offense. And let's face it, you play a premium position.

You're going to be guarding some of the best wings in the NBA as well. So, like, there's no kind of taking it easy here for Kauai when he comes back. And, okay, I do want to... ask you, though, it feels like they should address the center position. You mentioned that up top. However, I think Ty Lou, actually, I know Ty Lou's vision of this team when they're at their best. They're a five-out team. They're spreading people out against Kauai and Paul George isolations, which is, to be quite honest, that's deadly. That is deadly offense for sure. God knows what they'll be able to do on defense,

but that is incredible offense. And I think Talu fancies himself as an offensive-minded coach, but do they make a move? What kind of move do they make to your mind to show up that front court? Honestly, it would be surprising if the clippers really took out their winged-depth to add a center, especially if a center who is relatively paint-bound, just because, like, I don't think they really are concerned about that part of it. And honestly, they've played fine enough with Zubots off the floor.

Like, they're actually a little bit better with Zoo off the floor. And they learn that if they really needed a center, like if Zoo's in extreme foul trouble, Zos run in the most durable players in the league. But like, let's say something happens, they're going to just roll Moses Brown out there just to get through a night or whatever. If they are in a real dangerous situation, I think they would probably utilize their last roster spot to sign any one of those bigs that are available. But, you know, 10-day contracts, they don't start until January.

I don't think they're going to hope that they don't need to, you know, cash that chip in until much later. Again, the buyout market is always possibility. If a really good player is available, that makes sense for this team at the trade deadline because they just played a certain way in January where it's like they need to make a move and Lawrence Frank always makes a move. There hasn't been a single January or February

that that man has not made a trade, a significant one to like a veteran trade. Then I think they'll go around with it. I've seen the Miles Turner thing bounce around this week. And the thing with Miles is, how are you going to play Miles and Zoo? No, that's not a thing that can happen. I don't, I, I just, I just, I just don't, I just don't think that the clippers value this, the center position enough to be like, okay, we're going to pull two centers when we got to make big runs in the playoffs. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not going to be surprised by anything this damn team does, but it's just one of those things where they want to see this workout. And part of it working out is Kauai being able to string some damn weeks together.

Yeah, I mean, in the meantime of. making this happen. I just remain skeptical that you can build championship habits over the course of a season when your best guy is playing intermittently. And in the playoffs, that's not going to cut it. Like, you're just literally going to have to carry these guys for four rounds if you're going to win a championship. And it's just, I don't know, man. The more this guy is not a part of what they're doing, it seems hard to envision that happening. But, you know, we've been pretty dower on this show so far about the clippers. Take the picture for people out there for how this might work. Spin it positively. You could see a scenario of it working in. What does that version of the

clippers look like? Well, I'll tell you what, the defense has been great. And I know anything related to how they're performing or what their objective output is colored by the fact that they've gotten the Rockets and Lakers five times already. So there's that. But the thing that I like about the Clippers is they know who they are on that end of the floor. They know that they're not going to foul you and send you to the line. They're going to make the threes difficult for you. They're having some issues with corner threes, but for the most part, they do a good job defending the three.

And they're doing an outstanding job protecting the rim. Like, if it's a zoo boss has been great there. and even when they go small, they do a pretty good job of keeping teams from having a lot of success at the rim. I mean, that's three, twos and ones. That's pretty damn good. The rebounding on the defensive end,

I mean, they don't offense rebound at all, but the rebounding on the defensive end has been much better than last year. Last year, this was one of the most god-awful rebounding teams I've ever seen on both ends of the floor. This year, they are doing a better job on the defensive glass, so they're making their stops count a little bit more. And so that's all without Kauai Leonard as well.

That is really helpful. I think they have a really outstanding defensive staff. Now, what they might want to start, I know we're supposed to be staying positive here, but I want to see when they play high scores, I do think they overreact a little bit too much to them. I think when you're playing against a guy like Lucas, like, yeah, you know he can score. They did a little bit too much overreacting to Luca and let guys get open threes. Reggie Bullock went from broke to Rich in the fourth quarter in a game that the Clippers

almost completed a 25-point comeback. That would have been crazy, but that was a reaction to, you know, they didn't want Luca to go off on them. Well, Luca didn't, Luca made one shot that whole fourth quarter. Gotcha. That previous Saturday, Kevin Durant is like they were like, we're going to double KD. Well, they double KD and wind up getting beat by Seth Curry. So overall, though, there's a bunch of guys in this team who know what they're supposed to do.

And the chemistry has been really good. Like, there hasn't been a whole lot of murmuring about what the situation is. Everyone's kind of locked in right now. They just need to play better. There you go. Sometimes this, you know, I want to get up here and get all intellectual and philosophical about the game of hoop. And maybe there's a strategy they're not deploying. Maybe there's a lineup change, you know, a rotational tweak that they're not deploying that can make things better.

Sometimes it's just play better. It's just that that's the adjustment. That's my man Seth Part now likes to say. Play better is the adjustment. And so, yeah, that's the thing. Their offense is in the pits. But this is not a team that is bereft of offensive talent. And so we expect that to get better.

They've shown some grit and some metal on defense. So, yeah, I think they'll play much better than they have, even as ugly as it's looked. But I did want to get your perspective on it because I think you are the most locked-in Clippers person in the media. That being said, man, where can people find your work and follow what you're doing, bro? I'm at the Athletic. And, as you know, we got a great staff over there. So really happy that they're supporting me. Let me do this thing.

And, yeah, we're going to just keep it rolling. Yes, sir. that's my man, Law Murray. I would like to thank Jade Whaley, big Clippers fan on the production. I hope she wasn't too disheartened by our chat today. Make sure you're checking every other Ringer NBA offering, whether it be the answer or real ones.

Of course, group chats with me and Justin Verrier as well as Rob Mahoney on Wednesdays, man. We're still delivering on the holidays, man. We don't play around. We deliver the content for the people. So we'll see you guys all throughout next week. We'll see you next time. Peace out.