From a comfort standpoint, the LA Clippers prefer to play in the half-court. This saves their aging veterans from having to sprint the floor in transition and brings out the best of the rotation with all the experience it holds. However, to have a successful season, a team must at least be above-average in pace, and unfortunately for the Clippers, that is their weak spot.
The season opener was the best example: the Clippers have a 36-year-old floor general in James Harden and another in Chris Paul, who is 40, yet the Utah Jazz picked the entire LA rotation apart on transition baskets alone.
There are plenty of teams in the league that play quick and are trained by their coaching staffs to maximize fast breaks. This will lead LA into bad losses and possibly even a lower seed.
The LA Clippers’ solution to their slower pace will be on a temporary hold
Of the LA Clippers’ key players, John Collins is one of the few that has shown willingness to get out in transition on both sides of the ball. The common denominator with him is age, which contradicts the rest of the roster, who are older by a handful of years.
Unfortunately, for now, there is no fixing this issue. The Clippers will have to wait until the trade deadline to really find proven players in the age gap they need. The positive for LA here is that plenty of the younger teams in the league are in the opposite situation, looking for veterans like Bogdan Bogdanovic and Chris Paul, who could both be on the trade block by February.
Furthermore, the toughest matchups Lue will have are against teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder, Indiana Pacers, and Denver Nuggets. These teams have their head coaches yelling from the sidelines to run with one-hundred percent up the floor during a fast break.
Thus, big men like Nikola Jokic crash the glass and instantly use their accuracy to locate where certain guys like Aaron Gordon and Christian Braun are, so he can launch a dime and get an easy bucket or two shots at the charity strike.
That said, the Clippers will miss the necessary level they must meet each night. Lue will be forced to work through it, yet the bright side is that some of the young reserves, like Cam Christie, could land an opportunity as a result.