Clutch Performance:
Here’s something that may (or may not) surprise you. The Clippers were not a good crunch time team at all this year.
Per NBA Stats, the Clips’ offense stayed pretty consistent when the game entered clutch time, with the fifth-best offensive rating in the league in such situations.
However, defensively the Clippers fell off a cliff. They went from 5th in the league in normal time to 26th in the league in clutch time.
That’s right, the Clippers owned the fifth-worst clutch defense in the league, worse than such stalwarts at the Detroit Pistons, Portland TrailBlazers and Atlanta Hawks.
That’s a pretty inexplicable drop. One would think that, come clutch time, the best units would be out there, but that just didn’t translate into a solid defense. You’d have to imagine that Doc’s insistence on playing Montrezl Harrell over Zubac in the fourth is indicative of a focus on clutch offense instead of clutch defense.
The silver lining here is that the Clips didn’t find themselves in clutch situations very often. Generally, the lead (or deficit) was comfortable enough that the outcome wasn’t in much doubt. The Clippers ranked 23rd in the league in clutch minutes played.