Resurrecting the Clippers' past

L.A. had a spectacular offense before Kawhi Leonard's injury. Can they get it back?

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

The Shipwreck, J.M.W. Turner, 1805

The L.A. Clippers, my preseason title pick and a team always considered a top contender purely on the basis of having Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and depth, are back to .500 at 23-23 after losing to the Philadelphia 76ers at home on Tuesday night. The Clips lost for a few different reasons: Joel Embiid was unstoppable for the first three quarters, Tyrese Maxey was blazing hot at the start of the fourth quarter. But the biggest reason is that L.A.’s fell into familiar disaster in the fourth: the Clippers shot 7/20 from the floor in the period with four turnovers. The Sixers’ defense is really good and ran the Clippers off the three-point line effectively. But the Clippers had no solution to attack weaknesses and leverage their highly-skilled duo.

This has been a constant problem for the team, which ranks just 27th in offensive efficiency. That’s worse than the Pistons and Magic and just a sliver better than the Spurs. This is a title contender? No, it’s not. Not until it gets a sustainable offensive identity that can put points on the board.

You’d expect the flow to be off given the erratic line-up availability that coach Tyronn Lue has been dealt. But the issue is that every iteration of the offense has stunk. The Clippers are a pretty good three-point shooting team, but really low on two-point efficiency, middling in drawing fouls, middling in offensive rebounding, middling in turnover rate. They don’t particular excel in transition, in the paint, in the halfcourt.

Even the best version of this team, with Leonard and PG both on the court, results in a pretty mid-tier offense. The top 5-man lineup featuring Leonard and George this season has an offensive rating around 112, which would be right around 20th in the NBA. All lineups featuring both Kawhi and PG have an offensive rating around 114. That would be about 12th in the league. And those are best-case scenarios for the offense based on what we’ve seen this season.

You can argue that the Clippers offense has performed better with those two stars in the past. In 2020-21, for example, the Clippers finished No. 3 in offense. If not for Leonard’s injury in the playoffs, there was a decent chance L.A. would have competed for the title that season. (You may recall that behind PG they took the West champ Suns to six games in the conference finals.) But can you take what made the Clippers a success on offense back in that 2020-21 season and apply to the current version of the team? A lot of the parts are the same, with one huge exception: Leonard, who is (perhaps unsurprisingly given the injury he suffered) not as productive as he was early in his Clippers tenure.

Paul George is essentially just as productive on a per-minute basis than in his Clippers peak. PG’s problem is only availability (he’s played 31 of 46 games). Leonard just isn’t the same offensive player right now: he shoots and scores less, and does so less efficiently drawing fewer fouls and logging fewer assists. He has moments of nostalgic brilliance, but this is his least productive offensive season since 2014-15, which is before he made an All-Star team. The defense seems to mostly be there despite a career low in per-minute steals. Leonard had a throwback isolation forced turnover on James Harden in the fourth quarter on Tuesday. The hands didn’t shrink and the instincts didn’t diminish! The guy can still lock up most opponents and disrupt lots of action. But right now, he’s not the offensive powerhouse the structure of this Clippers roster needs him to be. And that’s when he is available, and that’s only been for 22 of the Clippers’ 46 games.

So the three big changes from a No. 3 offense in 2020-21 that has the 2022-23 Clippers at No. 27 in offense:

• Key offensive stars Paul George and especially Kawhi Leonard are available less frequently.

• Kawhi Leonard is less productive in all offensive facets coming off of a major surgery.

• The water level of NBA league offense has increased significantly.

The NBA is about 1 point per 100 possessions more efficient this season compared to 2020-21 across the board. The Clippers have gone backwards while the league average has bopped upward. That compounds the issues.

Here’s the deal, though: assuming the Clippers make it into the playoffs, and assuming PG and Leonard are cleared to play every night with no back-to-backs on the table, and assuming there aren’t minutes restrictions in place, then a lot of the noise goes away. Look at how the Clippers have gone out in the playoffs each season since Kawhi and PG arrived.

• 2019-20: Beat Luka and the Mavs in Round 1, lose in seven to the Nuggets in the second round of the bubble, choking a 3-1 series lead with a truly horrendous Game 7 performance from both stars

• 2020-21: Kawhi gets injured, the Clippers beat the Mavs and Jazz but lose in six to the Suns in the WCF

• 2021-22: No Kawhi all season, lose two play-in-games

That Nuggets series in the bubble surely haunts the Clippers — beating the Nuggets would have set up an L.A. vs. L.A. conference finals and we might be talking about whether the Clippers’ title was fraudulent right now. And in 2021, while the Suns were great and Giannis was unstoppable in the Finals, there’s no reason to think the Clippers would have folded had Kawhi been healthy.

So why not this season? Why can’t Kawhi round into form and why can’t the Clippers’ star duo exert their power in the playoffs? There’s the hope of days past and controlled environment that keeps this particular dream alive.