Clippers Slack Chat: Positive early season impressions, fashion and more

Ideal Starting Lineups

Logan Rapp: Continuing on that — Now with a few games under the belt, what is your ideal Clippers starting lineup with Kawhi and PG?

Ryan Snellings: With the last few games, we have to move away from Patrick Patterson, right?

Whether it’s benching him and moving Kawhi to the 4 or just starting Green and benching Shamet for PG, I say Patterson is out.

Logan Rapp: I have a few thoughts on PatPat, Ryan, we’ll get to that later, but long story short: Yeah, Patterson is holding the fort for Paul George and will go to the bench after.

Ethan Smith: Of course. That was just him having a good couple of games.

Randi Geffner: I think Shamet still starts, PatPat to the bench.

Logan Rapp: My starting lineup, having seen what we’ve seen, is Beverley, Leonard, George, Harkless, and Zubac.

Nathan Jacobo: It just depends on matchups really.

The only reason Patterson has been starting at the 4 lately is because JaMychal Green prefers to come off the bench with Lou and Trezz to build off that chemistry last season.

But I think the ideal starting lineup would be: Bev, PG, Kawhi, Hark, Zu.

I believe Maurice Harkless can model his game after Jerami Grant like last season with OKC (spaced the floor out for PG and Westbrook) and shoot corner threes and use his athleticism for backdoor cuts and lobs.

Ryan Snellings: To me, that’s not enough floor spacing, Logan. I want Green instead of Harkless simply for that reason.

Garrett Chorpenning: I’m with Ryan here. Hark can hold his own as a shooter, but JaMychal needs to be there for spacing purposes.

Logan Rapp: My argument, Ryan, is that early lockdown. I can see Green instead of Harkless for shooting, sure. But I do think the lineup with Harkless is going to see a lot of minutes regardless.

And with this team and with the way Doc is operating the “sliding” lineups, it’s a distinction without a significant difference.

And Randi could be right, Shamet could stay in the starting lineup, going a little smaller and getting some early shooting. I’m not worried about the shooting slump as it stands right now.

Ryan Snellings: I’m fine with Randi’s lineup too, but again, it has that spacing I want. I just worry about Kawhi banging with fours.

Randi Geffner: It’s not “Randi’s lineup” I just think Doc has confidence in Shamet and will keep him in the starting 5 until there’s some reason not to do so.

Ryan Snellings: No Randi. It’s yours. Doc will credit you when he announces it.

Logan Rapp: Speaking of that shooting slump, is anyone actually worried about it right now? A lot of open looks are just not going in, but the Clippers are just pulling it out, because, well, Kawhi. A regression is pretty much happening, right?

Randi Geffner: Well I do call timeouts from my seat so I might as well pick the starters too.

Logan Rapp: Randi does it all, folks.

Kenneth Hawkes: Harkless should start always in my opinion.

Nathan Jacobo: Not worried at all about the shooting slumps out of the gate. The guys are making it up defensively and with an effort like how we saw them crashing the glass against Utah.

I do however want to point out that if the three-ball is not falling, the guys should look to drive it to the hoop more and draw fouls.

Randi Geffner: I’m a multi tasker Logan.

Logan Rapp: Yeah, Nate, like I was saying before — Pat Bev has in the last couple of games had some super open looks for a layup or a floater, but then kicks it out. I like the unselfish play, but he’s just gotta put those up.