3 things we learned about the LA Clippers in Round 1
After beating Dallas, here are three things we learned about the LA Clippers.
Round one of the Western Conference playoffs was not as easy as LA Clippers’ fans hoped it would be. A young Dallas Mavericks team, led by Luka Doncic, took them to six games and had everyone on edge throughout the series. The Clips did prevail, however, and moved on to the second round.
Their opponent? The Denver Nuggets.
With game one coming on Thursday night, let’s take a look back at the first round and look at three lessons the Clippers learned that they can use in this second round series.
1. Ivica Zubac needs to play more
Montrezl Harrell is awesome and has a really, really good shot at winning the Sixth Man of the Year Award this season. That being said, he doesn’t fare well against larger big men. Ivica Zubac does.
Dallas constantly matched Trezz’s minutes with Boban Marjanovic in the first round and things just did not go well for the Clippers. Granted, part of this was Trezz also playing alongside defensive negatives Lou Williams and Reggie Jackson but the point still stands. With Denver sending out Nikola Jokic, Doc Rivers needs to match Zu’s minutes to his.
Zubac is not a flashy name and probably is only known now by casual fans after the first round but he is a defensive monster. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at some quick numbers.
In the first round, players shot worse from every position on the floor when Zubac was the primary defender. Most notably, the Mavericks shot 16.8% worse on shots within 6 feet of the basket when Zu was defending.
But get this: It wasn’t just during the playoffs that Zu was a great rim protector. It has been all season long.
Among players that played more than 41 games this season, Zubac ranks second in defensive field goal differential at six feet or less. The only guy above him is Giannis Antetokounmpo. Zu’s opponents only made 47.5% of their shots compared to 62.5% when he wasn’t defending them.
With Nikola Jokic as the opposing center and Jamal Murray getting it done from everywhere, more Zu makes sense. Trezz will still get plenty of minutes to shine but ultimately we may need Zu to close these games out again.