Los Angeles Clippers’ Danilo Gallinari’s recent success
By Paul Tooke
Whether you love or hate the Los Angeles Clippers‘ decision to trade Blake Griffin, you can’t deny the fact that it has led to better performances from Danilo Gallinari.
Coach Doc Rivers slid Gallinari into Griffin’s power forward position after the trade, and it has worked wonders for the Clippers’ first three Griffin-less games (despite the team suffering a loss to the Portland Trailblazers). The next two games were victories and not just any sort of victories. They were victories in which Danilo Gallinari actually played well. In the few games that he actually played before the Griffin trade (11), Gallinari averaged around 13 points in right under 30 minutes. However, something about his position change has led to greater success on the court for the Italian forward.
He’s 6’10”, making his change to the bigger forward position plenty appropriate. Tobias Harris has appropriately taken over Gallinari’s former position as starting small forward upon arriving at LA. In his three most recent games, Gallinari has averaged 22.3 points on 58.6% shooting from the field and 55% shooting from three-point range in just 29.6 minutes per game.
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These are obviously better numbers than the previous, awkward 13 points per game before the Griffin trade. So what is making our Italian stallion play better? Is it really just the position change? Is this all just a fluke and we will eventually have to deal with Gallinari getting a weak 13 points per game again soon?
While there is no direct proof that having Blake Griffin on the squad was making Gallinari play bad, it can be argued that the subtraction of such a big ego and shot-taking forward on the team has led to Gallinari stepping up as a scoring option. With fewer shot-takers on the team, more efficient shots and fluent ball-movement will occur. Gallinari can stretch the floor as well as match up better with slower forwards such as himself.
Gallinari’s new position as starting power forward for the LA Clippers is helping both his personal stats and the team’s overall goal of winning games. So long as the scoring load is being picked up by the rest of the roster, and games are being won, fans surely won’t miss Blake Griffin as much as they normally would.