LA Clippers: 5 Things the New Coach Can Do Differently

4) Develop the young guys

This wasn’t an LA Clippers 2019-2020 problem. This has been an issue throughout Doc’s career. His aversion to play young guys actual minutes is well known, and also isn’t something we can afford going forward.

We have some young talent on this team. Between Terance Mann, Mfiondu Kabengele, Amir Coffey and (if he returns) Johnathan Motley, there’s reason to believe that some of our youngest players could crack the rotation at times.

But that’s not going to happen without a concentrated effort to develop them and let them see minutes on the court. And it’s especially important given our limited assets going forward. With our first round picks being few and far between, what we have for promising young talent is probably the most we’re going to get.

None of our rookies cracked the top 40 of total minutes played among rookies in the NBA last year. Given that we had 28 regular season games decided by 15 points or more, you have to think that our guys should have at least gotten some garbage time run.

But that was never the Doc Rivers M.O. It needs, however, to be the M.O. of our next coach. Getting our rookies minutes in the G-League is fine for keeping them conditioned and getting some run, but G-League minutes don’t compare to NBA minutes.

If we’re going to push our window into the mid-30s of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, we’ll need development of our young guys, and the next coach needs to make that one of their priorities.