LA Clippers must start improving their transition defense
By Tom West
The LA Clippers are going to struggle without Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, but the rest of a team has to turn around their transition defense at the very least.
The LA Clippers stormed out to their initial 14-2 record this season with engaged, smothering defense. They led the NBA in defensive efficiency for some time and still rank 10th thanks to that start, but they’ve slipped recently. Their current six-game losing streak (2-7 in their last nine) has come about for several reasons, and a declining defense is one of the most glaring problems when looking beyond how Chris Paul‘s and Blake Griffin‘s absence decimates the offense.
Wavering effort has been the biggest culprit. Of course, the bench is a weakness, too, and the Clippers’ primary second unit was never going to remain as one of the league’s top three lineups in net rating forever (as it was over the first couple of weeks of the season). That’s far more evident without Paul and Griffin orchestrating their play. And with Marreese Speights and Jamal Crawford playing such major roles now, there are going to be defensive breakdowns.
However, early on in the season, the Clippers were playing with such a high level of cohesion and intensity that the whole roster was chipping in to turn the team into a defensive juggernaut. We’ve seen that sense of urgency slip throughout the last few weeks, though, and as is often the case, that alone is a vital reason for shortcomings on defense.
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More so than any other area of team defense, this can lead to teams getting killed in transition if no one runs back down court. And when you combine that with messy offense to provide opponents with extra opportunities (something the Clippers have done by ranking 23rd in turnovers per game at 14.9 since December 18th), the results will never be pretty.
Rowan Kavner of Clippers.com asked Doc Rivers where he thinks the Clippers need to improve the most after their 121-120 win against the Portland Trail Blazers on December 12th, and he firmly replied with transition defense:
"“Transition D is number one, always. I think that’s where we slipped the most, and then our on-ball and our weak-side defense. We had a stretch where we were getting steals and getting our hands on the ball. Our deflections have been way down, so, those are the areas we’re going to focus on.”"
In all the time that’s passed since that day, nothing has changed for the better.
During the Clippers’ current six-game losing streak, the transition defense has been even worse. The Clippers have ranked in the bottom five in the NBA in both fastbreak points allowed and second chance points allowed in this span. It’s partly a result of missing Griffin’s size and defensive rebounding to end help end possessions and cut out those transition opportunities for opponents, but the energy from the rest of the Clippers needs to be there to ensure that players are getting cut off in the open court to avoid easy baskets.
The latest dip in resilience and intensity came on New Years Eve against the Oklahoma City Thunder, this time resulting in a 114-88 loss for the Clippers. Yet again without Paul and Griffin, the reserves struggled to move the ball and create offense, but also allowed Russell Westbrook to rack up a triple-double in 18 minutes by half time, while losing the fastbreak scoring battle by a pathetic 33-0 margin.
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Think that sounds bad? You’d be right. However, to make you roll your eyes even further back, the Clippers have been outscored a painful 114-31 (!!) in transition in their six-game losing streak.
For the season, the Clippers now rank a useless 26th in transition defense with 14.4 fastbreak points allowed per game.
If the offense continues to stagnate without Paul and Griffin to cough up more turnovers and the effort isn’t there to lock in at the other end of the floor, this weakness won’t be corrected that easily. If the mindset is there, it could almost come at the flick of a switch. Whether or not that happens, though, is yet to be seen. And right now we haven’t seen much to provide promise in this regard.
The turnover increase and offensive possessions that stall to Jamal Crawford hero ball aren’t exactly surprising while Paul and Griffin are out, but it’s the lacking drive in other areas of the game that is rightfully frustrating LA Clippers fans at this point. Locking down to at least run hard on defense should (ideally) be their natural instinct at such troublesome times.
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There’s not much more to say except that a new approach needs to come with the New Year for this team, as cliché as that may sound. It’s true, though. And maybe that, combined with some possible rejuvenation after an injury ridden seven-games-in-10-days stretch, could help fix the transition issues that’s becoming more and more costly.