Takeaways from the LA Clippers’ 102-84 win over the Utah Jazz

Doc needs to expand the rotation

Going into the game, we knew that Patrick Beverley, Austin Rivers, and Lou Williams were going to play heavy minutes since the Clippers were without point guard Milos Teodosic. However, head coach Doc Rivers had the entire starting lineup play heavy minutes, which is a bit concerning. Griffin and Gallo are two players who have had injury issues in the past, so having the two forwards play 36 and 38 minutes respectively in the third game of the season is a bit concerning. The same can be said for Beverley, who had an issue with his knee in the preseason and played a team-high 42 minutes in the Clippers’ victory.

Thankfully, Doc River’s brought up the extended minutes issue when talking to the media after the game:

“Too many minutes,” Rivers said shaking his head, “I used them today [Beverley, Rivers, and Williams], but that’s too many, really for everyone. The first thing I saw from a coaching standpoint when I looked at the stat sheet was that I didn’t like the minutes and that’ll change. I’ve just got to expand it, that’s too many minutes. You can’t go a season with those minutes. You can go a game here and there and it doesn’t hurt you, but that was the game. Now we have to get off of that.”

Clippers rookie Sindarius Thornwell did get four minutes of playing time and scored two points, but Rivers was more pleased with the rook’s defense in those limited minutes:

“I thought Sindarius was wonderful. Like I’ve said, defensively he can play,” Rivers said, “He can play with anybody. And what we have to figure out is giving Pat and Austin rest and playing Sin and Lou, but we’ve got to make sure we have Blake or Gallo out there too, someone else out there so that they can have a facilitator. That’s something we have to figure out.”