The Clippers miss Blake Griffin
Yes, the Clippers won a game against one of the NBA’s top teams. Yes, they scored a whopping 65 points in the second half.
Still, the Clippers struggled mightily in the first half and miss their superstar power forward.
The Clippers moved to 23-7 without Griffin and stylistically the Clippers are better off with more spacing, but if the Clippers want to make some noise in the postseason, they’ll need Griffin.
Without Griffin, the Clippers rely so heavily on pick-and-rolls with Chris Paul and DeAndre Jordan to create offense. While that play is one of the best money plays in the league, things can get bad when it isn’t working. In the first half, it was being contained well by Oklahoma City and even when it did work for open shots, players like Green and Johnson couldn’t make them end with points.
Griffin is a safety net of an offense for the Clippers and the pick-and-pop combination of Paul and Griffin is every bit as successful as the Paul and Jordan pick-and-roll. Griffin’s strength makes him a good go-to option to get a basket or draw a foul. While the Clippers’ offense has been very good without Griffin, they’ve become more streaky.
In the playoffs, those bad quarters or halves will cost you a game or two and Griffin is the way to limit the damage when the role players aren’t knocking down shots.
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