LA Clippers: A look into the recent troubles

Consistency at the center spot

The LA Clippers have undeniably one of the strangest center rotations in the NBA. Consisting of both a 7’3″ but fairly immobile giant and an undersized 6’8″ power forward that plays more like a traditional big, the Clips have had to base their rotation on matchups so far.

While Marcin Gortat has been underwhelming for pretty much the entire season, he’s started the majority of games while Montrezl Harrell takes up most of the minutes and finishes out the game later on.

Boban Marjanovic has provided unparalleled efficiency and effectiveness offensively when given time, but his giant 7’3″ frame makes it near impossible for him to guard anyone outside of the paint and teams often abuse this with pick-and-roll or pick-and-fade situations.

While Harrell has played extremely well this year on both ends of the floor and has been a driving force in their relative success, he has the opposite problem of Marjanovic.

Quite frankly, the Clippers simply don’t have the size and consistency down low in terms of disrupting opposition and grabbing rebounds.

Over the last two games against the San Antonio Spurs and Toronto Raptors, LaMarcus Aldridge (27 points on 12-of-14 shooting), Serge Ibaka (25 points on 11-of-18 shooting) and Jonas Valanciunas (16 points on 7-of-12 shooting) all had high-level scoring nights and did virtually anything they wanted to down low simply because Gortat was too slow and because Harrell’s 6’8″ frame wasn’t enough to counter the strength and length of all three of these bigs.

While the team does have some size across other positions and a well-rounded rebounding effort for the most part, it’s down-low where they struggle the most in this department. Because of the length at other positions, they’re still 10th in total rebounds per game at 46.1.

However, they’re third in offensive rebounds allowed per game at 11.9 and are 21st in offensive rebounds per game at just 9.9.

Five players average four or more rebounds and two of those five average over 7.0, but they simply get beat out down-low due to being undersized or at a severe disadvantage in terms of athleticism depending on who is playing.

The Clippers are far from bad, but these are some fairly pressing issues that have been limiting success as of late.