LA Clippers: 3 Keys for Victory Against the Sacramento Kings
LA Clippers Key to Victory #2: Who wins the pace battle?
The LA Clippers are playing slow so far this year.
Actually, that doesn’t really get the point across.
The LA Clippers are playing slooooooooooooooooooow so far this year. Coming off of a 2019-2020 season where they ran 102.16 possessions per game, good for 8th in the league, Ty Lue took over and said he wanted to run even more pace and space.
Well. So far the Clippers have done the exact opposite. They’ve dropped down to 97.38 possessions per game, plummeting to 28th in the league. They’re playing like the court is covered in molasses, and they’re relying on a very efficient half-court offense to win them games.
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By contrast, the Kings are getting out and running. They’re 8th in the league in pace, putting up 102.2 possessions per game. They’ve got personnel in guys like De’Aaron Fox who can push the ball up the court, leading them to having the fourth most field goal attempts in transition at 16.8 per game (for comparison the Clips are 28th at 9.8).
It’s a faceoff against a team who wants to run and gun and outpace the opponent versus a team who wants to slow it down and play a methodical playtype. The question is, who wins that fight?
My bet is on the Clippers. So far this season, the Clips have played 6 teams in the top half in pace, and they’ve succeeded, for the most part, in slowing the games down and ensuring that the game is played at the Clippers’ speed. It hasn’t always worked, but more often than not it has.
If LA can force the Kings to play a slower game that focuses in the half-court, they’ll negate that speed advantage Sacramento has, and I would expect it would lead to a win for the good guys.