Los Angeles Clippers Complete 2016-17 Season Preview

The Los Angeles Clippers will tip off the 2016-17 season where the last one ended: at the Moda Center against the Portland Trail Blazers.

Game 6 in Rip City punctuated yet another disappointing Clippers demise. With Chris Paul and Blake Griffin lost to injury during Game 4, the team looked to Jamal Crawford and Austin Rivers to carry the scoring load. The former came through with 32 points, the latter with 21 and a busted eye, but neither could keep the Clippers from succumbing to a series-clinching, three-point defeat.

“I had people hitting me up, like ‘it took for you to get your eye blackened for people to like you,'” Rivers said at Clippers media day.

L.A., as a team, has had its fair share of detractors in recent years, but none more destructive than itself. Folding up shop after watching its top two players go down is one thing. Doing so while holding a 3-1 series lead (as the Clippers did against the Houston Rockets in 2015) or with the prospect of going up 3-2 (as they did opposite the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2014) is quite another.

“We’re one of the few teams that just have to worry about us and what we do,” Paul said at training camp. “If we come to play every night this year, we have a great shot of winning.”

There may not be many more opportunities for these Clippers to blow their shot.

Come July 2017, J.J. Redick will be a free agent, while Griffin and Paul can both opt out of their contracts to take advantage of a soaring salary cap. Without those three, L.A. would lose just about any chance of making any noise in the playoffs—if it still had the legs to even get there.

“I know it’s going to be a discussion,” head coach Doc Rivers said. “I’m not going to answer it all week, all year, but I get it. It’s part of the discussion, but our focus will be the season.”

There’s plenty for Rivers and his staff to focus on in the here and now. The core of the club remains intact, with Crawford, the younger Rivers, Wesley Johnson and Luc Mbah a Moute all re-upping. The additions of Raymond Felton, Marreese Speights, Alan Anderson and Brandon Bass, while fringe in both appearance and finance, could coalesce into the Clippers’ best bench since Vinny Del Negro got the boot in 2013.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Western Conference is begging for someone—anyone—to challenge the Golden State Warriors.

The San Antonio Spurs are tiptoeing into the post-Tim Duncan era. The Thunder and Rockets have much to prove after losing Kevin Durant and Dwight Howard, respectively. The Utah Jazz have been on the playoff precipice seemingly since Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer last played in Salt Lake City, and the Memphis Grizzlies have a host of injury-prone players to coddle.

That leaves the Clippers as, perhaps, the most likely dragon slayer by default…which doesn’t say much for the conference after watching Golden State throttle L.A. by 45 points in the preseason.

As Coach Rivers explained before the Clippers’ second exhibition game: “They’re a free team. There’s only a few of those in the league. They’ve kind of all gotten what they should do. They’ve all accepted and they all do it, whether they’re doing it well or not that night.

“You saw that in the Cleveland series when things were going bad for them, they didn’t really change. That’s the true test of when you feel like your team is really free now.”

The Clippers have had that in fits and starts under Rivers’ reign, but never consistently or for long enough to get over that second-round hump. Could this be the year L.A. finds that freedom?

The quest to do so begins Oct. 27 in another house of horrors (Portland) for the Clippers.

“For us, that first game is sort of the start of this journey and the start of this process,” said Redick.

    

Biggest Offseason Move

Does it count as a “move” if the Clippers spent the vast majority of their offseason money on holdovers?

After bowing out of the Durant sweepstakes, Rivers swiftly turned his attention to keeping the band together. He shelled out $42 million over three years to keep Crawford and another $35 million over three years to his son. Rather than pursue other mid-level options on the wing, including former Clipper Matt Barnes, Rivers opted to retain Johnson (three years, $18 million) and Mbah a Moute (two years, $4.5 million) while bringing aboard Anderson at the veteran’s minimum.

If retentions don’t qualify, the nod for biggest move would be split between Felton and Speights, each of whom caught a shoestring from the end of the Clippers’ budget.

In Felton, L.A. finally has a true backup to Paul. Like his fellow Carolinas native, Felton is short but stout, a bowling ball who can get to the bucket. He also figures to see time in three-guard lineups, as he did starting next to Paul and Austin Rivers against the Toronto Raptors in the preseason.

“We hadn’t used that at all in any practice,” Coach Rivers revealed after the game. “I thought what they all liked was all three guys can …

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