3 things the LA Clippers Can Do to Get Past the Rest of the West

3) Limit defensive liabilities

This will be good for the performance of the LA Clippers and also good for all of the fans’ hairlines, as it might stop us from yanking our hair out come playoff time.

In the playoffs, the most played three man combination involving Reggie Jackson was Reggie, Lou and Montrezl Harrell. Three serious defensive negatives. And they were -18 in 77 playoff minutes.

The most played four man combination involving Reggie was Reggie, Lou, Trezz, JaMychal Green. That was -10 in 46 minutes. JaMychal is a solid defender, but he’s not the type of defender to make up for the other three.

The Clippers had a bunch of guys who could score but not defend on the bench, and they made the puzzling decision to play them all together pretty often. It’s not a bad thing in and of itself to have those no-defense scoring types. We’ve seen a guy like Lou win us so many games throughout the past few years.

But you have got to be able to hide that defensive negative on somebody. If you’re playing three or four of them at a time, you’re not hiding somebody on a weak scorer; you’re picking the one offensive talent that doesn’t get a free pass to the rim.

If the LA Clippers want to survive the gauntlet that is the West next season, they’re going to have to do better at not throwing out total defensive disaster lineups. And if they can avoid that, they’ll have a good shot at making a deeper playoff run than they made last season.

Any thoughts? Something else you’d add that the Clips need to do? Let us know on Twitter or Facebook!