The LA Clippers have had a very solid start to the season at 5-2. That doesn’t stop us from having some questions about the team anyway.
It’s hard to be too upset right now as a fan of the LA Clippers. The good guys sit at the top of the Western Conference with an easy stretch of the schedule coming up. That said, I’ve still got a few questions about the team, starting with…
What is Lou’s fit in this offense?
It’s early in the season, but one of my biggest questions so far is how Lou Williams fits into the system Ty Lue has implemented. It’s not even just that he’s been struggling in several games – I have full confidence that he can get himself out of a scoring slump, and he’s also scored well in two games.
But so far the offense just.. doesn’t seem to go through Lou as much when he’s on the floor. Looking at his stats per 36 minutes, to try to normalize for minutes played, Lou’s 3 point attempts dropped from 6.1 last year to 3.7, his 2 point attempts from 12 to 10.6, his free throw attempts from 6.5 to 2.7 and his assists from 7 to 5.2.
My initial reaction to this was that it might have something to do with our pace. After all, the Clips are playing at a fairly glacial pace so far this season, so maybe normalizing for minutes played isn’t the way to go. But all the same trends are there when you look at per 100 possessions, rather than per 36 minutes.
Put simply, Lou just isn’t finishing plays nearly as often as he did last season. And when he does shoot, he’s currently pulling the lowest True Shooting % he’s had since 2008-09 with Philadelphia, despite shooting 40% from three.
Whether or not it’s best for the team, Lou’s strength lies in being a volume scorer. If Coach Lue’s system, which is working very well so far and has the Clippers in 1st place in the West early, moves away from Lue, then it sort of forces the question: what exactly is Lou’s fit in the Clippers’ offense?