LA Clippers: 3 Cons of a Christmas Start to the Season

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MIAMI, FLORIDA – JANUARY 24: Assistant coach Tyronn Lue of the LA Clippers reacts against the Miami Heat during the second half at American Airlines Arena on January 24, 2020 in Miami, Florida. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images) /

2) The season becomes a trial by fire

When he was hired by the LA Clippers, Ty Lue pledged that he wanted to run a faster pace and mentioned that the stars were going to have to adjust to his system.

Ideally, you’d like for some of that adjustment to happen in training camps and in games that don’t matter. But if we’re currently 8 weeks away from the first game of the season, that’s not going to happen.

Instead, the team is going to have to figure things out as the regular season progresses. That’ll be an unfortunate amount of deja vu for fans of the team. The prevailing sentiment when the Clippers struggled in the last regular season was “they’ll put it together. They’ll figure things out.” Now it looks like the team might have to figure things out again, but with fewer games to do it.

Of course, things will be different. There’s a new head coach, new assistant coaches, and probably some changes in the roster. We can only hope that’s enough to help this team get things together more quickly than last year.

Another issue Lue pointed out in his press conference was that he believed the well-publicized chemistry issues were mostly a matter of the team not spending much time playing together. Well, a shortened NBA season with (I would assume) a reduced or non-existent preseason will give the team less time to mesh.

It’s nothing insurmountable. With proper coaching and buy-in from the players, they can come together and figure out the chemistry issues and the new system, and play like the world-beaters we know they can be. The scary thing is just that we were saying the same thing early in last season.

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