LA Clippers: Five Questions Facing the 2020-2021 Clippers
LA Clippers Question 5: How does staggering minutes affect our stars and role players?
A telling result of Ty Lue implementing a new system will be the change in the rotations for LA Clippers superstars Kawhi Leonard and Paul George.
In his piece for The Athletic (subscription required), Jovan Buha mentioned that we should be expecting our stars to be staggered more, so we might see a little bit less of Kawhi and PG on the floor at the same time.
What will that look like for our guys? The immediate reaction is that it should serve to get rid of some of those extreme lows that we saw in an all-bench unit.
There’s not a hard and fast statement on how much Lue will want to stagger. It could be as simple as subbing one of Kawhi and PG a couple minutes earlier than the other. Alternatively, he could strive to have one of the two superstars on the court at nearly all times.
If the latter, this could do wonders for our bench guys, and especially our young guys. Tossing a Terance Mann out into a lineup where Kawhi is playing puts a lot less on him than just throwing him to the wolves.
Ditto for guys like Landry Shamet. If Shamet can keep spotting up instead of being asked to run the offense for long stretches, then we’re playing him much more to his strengths.
The final question here is how it works for our stars. Having less time sharing the floor will mitigate the 1-2 punch, and that’ll have positive and negative ramifications.
A guy like PG, who feels (rightfully so) that he can be a number one scoring option will get his chance to prove it. On the other hand, there won’t be another superstar around to play a two-man game with if the shots aren’t falling. Ultimately, you have to feel like, if Lue sees that his rotations aren’t working for the superstars, that’s where the buck stops.
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