Los Angeles Clippers preview by ClipperSteve
1. What can the Clippers learn from the 2006-07 season to help them improve their 2007-08 campaign?
Hmmm, let's see. How about, how to shoot an uncontested layup without exploding your knee? That would improve things some. Here's one: if you have trouble scoring points - don't bench your best offensive player for two thirds of the season. Oh, and this special Chris Kaman rule: Dunk the DAMN BALL!
Seriously, 2006-2007 was a wake up call, but the Clippers just kept hitting the snooze button. If Mike Dunleavy Sr (MDsr) or anyone else on the Clippers had been able to figure out what was wrong last season, they would have fixed it in December. Or January. Or February. By the time the team started playing with a sense of purpose, Shaun Livingston was down to his last ligament, and Sam Cassell's body was just plain broken.
From training camp until the trading deadline, Corey Maggette, the team's leading scorer from a few seasons back, was coming off the bench and playing limited minutes, much to his displeasure. The situation was a major distraction, and the impact on the team was two-fold. Not only did an offensively limited team miss having their best per minute scorer in the game; the ongoing feud between Maggette and MDsr only added to the woes in the locker room of an underachieving team. Rumored to be on the trading block all season (and often linked to MDsr's own son, the Indiana Pacers' Mike Dunleavy, Jr.), everyone was shocked when the trade deadline came and went and he was still a Clipper. Stranger still, just after the deadline he was suddenly re-inserted into the starting lineup, and responded with the best all-around play of his career. Where did the reconciliation come from? No one knows, but it needs to continue if the Clippers are to have any hope in 07-08.
But if the team learned anything, it's that you can't take success for granted. Returning essentially everyone from a team that came within a game (a few seconds, really) of reaching the Western Conference Finals in 2006, the Clippers went into last season carrying something completely unfamiliar to them: the weight of expectations. The Maggette situation and a season-long series of nagging injuries for the 37 year old Cassell certainly didn't help, and Livingston's injury made the final playoff push that much more difficult, but it was lackluster play throughout the first four months that doomed the season. Were the expectations dragging them down? Did they simply assume they'd be a top four team in the West because that's what everyone had predicted for them? Either way, maybe they figured out that you still have to go out and play the games. Maybe.
