Hey guys,

I’ve been watching Clipper games for over 15 years. I live for it; any day with no game is my least favorite day of the week. Because of a strong desire to experience something other than CA for awhile I’m moving to Austin, TX next week to pursue a career in looking for work.

I just felt like doing a bit of a reflection on the future of the club before I’m not able to watch games and I’m left to merely observe the collective genius that is, ClipsNation.

As I'm sure is the same with all of you, a large part of the enjoyment of being a true-blue clipper fan is being part of ClipsNation.com and having somewhere to go to have in-depth conversation, debate, and repartee about our favorite ball club. I’m pretty happy that this experience goes with me wherever I go, even if I can’t afford league pass to watch the games. (I’ll be the guy asking for live feeds at the beginning of game threads now) So, the point being… Hell yeah Steve and the rest of the gang, ya’ll rock! Clipps4life!

Also shout out to the CitizenZhiv types of this blog that always provide meaningful journalistic quality input into the blog. You know who you are and you all make it interesting. I for one wish I could be a more consistently good poster like you guys. Mad Props, it doesn't go unnoticed... +1,000,000 to you all! Thanks for saving me from the hacks at ESPN.

Now, on to the reflecting stuff.

As many a time before in our wonderful Clipper fairyfail, I mean fairytale, we came into this season expecting glowing success, you all recall why we felt that way. Needless to type, it didn’t happen. No need to hash it out in a recap of a kneecap that became salary cap. So let’s look forward as we’ve become experts at doing.  Hell, I’d go as far as to say we’re a bunch of self-proclaimed Miss Cleo’s of Clipper future with GMMDSr’s bald head as our magic crystal ball… did I take that too far?

Anyways…

All I felt before the recent trades was… “Oh well, hopefully we can clear enough cap-space to sign Lebron James, or one of the knock-off versions of him, and then maybe grab Rasual & Rhino (a sitcom I’m pitching) and make a good run next season.”

Then the trade deadline 3 for 3 change happened. Concurrently, I was thinking about the free agency scenario and watching the boys, new and relatively old, win the past three games.

I’ve never had the opportunity to watch the Clippers as a team who has a franchise player that drops 25 or 30 pts a game and who is the go to guy at the end of a shot clock, quarter, and game. We’ve just never had that in my tenure as fan.  And as ridiculous as it may sound, I think I’d prefer to keep it that way… let me explain.

Okay, Lebron says yes, you roll out the red carpet. Build around him, win titles. No doubt a new future for the team that would involve lots of attention, bright lights and a heavy win column.

 Or do you??

When I look at the three superstars; Kobe, Wade, James, I see a couple things worth noting. None of them have single-handedly taken a mediocre supporting cast to a championship. Feel free to argue me on this. But Lebron doesn’t have one at all, Kobe needed Shaq, Gasol and other high caliber help in many playoff situations and Wade needed what might have been the last resurrection of Shaq. On a side note, if Shaq ends up being the missing link for all three of them to win championships, that’s pretty fascinating. Anyways, I’m not sure, other than Lebron, we want to drop a max contract on anyone other than him. Even if we did get him, I just feel like we’d only be five or six deep with a max contract signing. And as injury plagued as we’ve always been, I’m not sure I like that.

It has been the teams like the Spurs who are well worthy of the Dynasty title. I believe because they made a well-rounded team and focused on the less popular specifics like defense, deep benches and good team play is why they were able to stay in the hunt for a decade and not a couple years. Yeah, Duncun is a hall of famer, but he’s not the superstar. He strongly relied on his quality supporting cast.

Here’s the realistic scenario I’d like to play out. I use realistic lightly because I don’t know the details of salary space we have for my scenario, but I’ll do my best to keep it within reason. Also, the other caveat is that the new team is only three games old. But I’m going off the assumption that given their recent success they are only going to improve once they’ve played together for more time. So here we go…

I say build on what we have.

* Keep our starting five intact except the PF position. Resign Butler and obviously put Blake Griffin at the starting four.

* Resign Steve Blake and Travis Outlaw to back up the one and the three respectively.

* See how the rest of the season progresses for Craig Smith and Drew Gooden. Choose the best fit for back-up PF. My guess is Drew Gooden is the best fit because he can play the four and five, flexibility being extremely important. Craig can’t offer that, he’s a lock at back-up four. I think he has to go.

* Keep Deandre as the back up at center and develop him as much as possible. If he struggles, play Gooden and limit Deandre’s minutes.

* Sign a quality veteran shooting guard to back up Gordon, I need some help here guys. I like free agent Raja Bell. Is Ray Allen ready to be a 6th man yet? Is he too expensive? I don’t know, let’s stick with Raja to keep it realistic.

* Keep Bobby Brown to be flexible to back up the pg/sg positions behind Baron, Eric, Steve, and Raja

* Pick up a nice player in the draft to develop at the SF or PF and provide the same third tier support like Bobby Brown does.

* Bring in one or two more players to round out the third tier roster and cover whatever the draft pick didn’t cover. If the draft pick covers the SF position bring back Novak, if the draft pick covers the PF, bring back Mardy Collins.

So here's how it looks -

                  PG – Baron Davis (Steve Blake)

                  SG – Eric Gordon (Raja Bell)

                  SF – Rasual Butler (Travis Outlaw)

                  PF – Blake Griffin (Drew Gooden/C)

                  C – Chris Kaman (Deandre Jordan)

                  Third Tier – Bobby Brown being flexible at the pg/sg

                                           Draft pick at the SF or PF

                                           Novak and/or Collins to round out

 What I like about this scenario is that the head coach has a near flawless roster in relation to depth and overall/even talent. You also put your trust in some really great players by giving them nice contracts, and you make it clear they’re all important pieces of the puzzle as opposed to “Bow to your leader, Lebron”.  This also gives the coach at least a few powers I can think of that he might not have if salary was dumped in one big contract.

1. He can replace players in the starting lineup who are not performing without worrying about sacrificing talent to make his point.
2. He knows these players, team chemistry, confidence, players who know each other... all that stuff.
3. He can throw all kinds of line-ups to confuse opposing teams. We’ll never struggle with weak second units, overplaying stars and such.
4. I believe a big strength about the players we have now is that the backups have different strengths then the starters yet still compliment each other. Baron is completely different than Steve, Butler and Outlaw play differently; Griffin will be different than Gooden, Kaman and Deandre obviously have different talents. Imagine the headache of a scouting report for opposing teams.
5. I could argue that the second unit is only a sliver weaker then the starting five. Strength in numbers.

I know that what I’ve said is the perfect scenario, and that’s not in Clipper vocabulary. But I think there’s logic to my reasoning. I feel a little nervous about throwing this out there to you guys who are a lot more educated about this stuff, but I trust you'll go easy on me.

Any thoughts?

just added to ESPN. Could we use our trade exception and then cut Telfair?

Marc Stein: The Miami Heat have indeed expressed interest in San Antonio's Roger Mason, but the Miami deal that interested the Spurs most is no longer possible.

The Spurs were hoping to tempt Miami into absorbing Mason's $3.8 million expiring contract into a $4.3 million trade exception that would have enabled the teams to complete a deal without San Antonio needing to take back another player. A future second-round pick from the Heat would have completed the transaction.

But the Heat, dealing with their own luxury-tax issues like San Antonio and reluctant to add to their payroll, ultimately declined.

And the trade exception in question -- created through the departure of Marcus Banks in Miami's Shawn Marion trade with Toronto on Feb. 15, 2009 -- expired Monday at midnight.

The Spurs and Mason's agent, Mark Bartelstein, have mutually agreed to pursue trades before Thursday's 3 p.m. trading deadline, but it'll take a new trade construction to get Mason to Miami now if the Heat want to try again.

San Antonio is more than $10 million over the luxury-tax threshold, so the deal proposed Monday to Miami would have cut their tax bill by nearly 40 percent. Miami is roughly $2.8 million over the tax threshold.

First of all, don't feel sorry for me Steve. I'm glad to be a part of the Clipsnation family. 

The Clippers come into Indiana finding out that the Pacers best weapon, Danny Granger, is out with a knee injury. This "should" make for an easy contest, but how many times have we heard that to find out otherwise... too many.

The first half the Clippers got out playing fast ball with Baron Davis getting a quick six points before he sat out early in the first quarter with foul trouble. It quickly became evident that the "play at the level of your lesser opponent" execution of the Clippers was in full effect tonight. Lethargy, laziness, it was all there. The Pacers were playing horrible basketball shooting 30% in the first half, only to be matched by a 33% performance by the Clippers.

We see that Telfair running the first unit wasn't able to get it going for anyone. Kaman, Thornton, and Butler were completely ineffective tonight, going a combined 5 for 37. Ouch. Kaman was apparently already thinking about hunting turkey with heavy artillery. His performance was awful, and he never thought once to feed the ball, just kept chucking up bricks. 

We see a strong performance from Baron Davis and Marcus Camby. 25 points from Davis and 3/4 on 3-pointers. Although he only picked up two assists, that low number is courtesy of poor shooting from the recipients of his passes. These two assists were back to back, right at the basket passes to Thornton and Kaman near the end of the half. These, in addition to back to back three's from Baron give the Clippers a nine point lead going into the half. However, that 9 point lead is 43 points on 51 shots. Yikes...

The third quarter is the definition of bad basketball for both teams. It's eery how similar it was to the 10-year-old girls who play at half-time at Staples Center. Except it lasted 12 minutes and ended with a three point buzzer shot by Camby to put the Clippers up 59 - 55 going into the fourth. Yes, that score is not a typo.

The fourth quarter provided us with even more lackluster play. The Clippers looked completely confused out there. They didn't understand why they were missing baskets and why the Pacers were making them. Baron got in a minor scuffle with some Pacer which resulted in getting booed by Pacer fans every time he had the ball. For some reason he had 3 or 4 really excellent shots during the boo's. I'm not going to even begin to try and break down how that worked out in Baron's head. 

The one upside for Clipper Nation this evening was seeing the Spalding in Eric Gordon's hands. He entered the game at the 4:30 mark of the first quarter. About two minutes in he made a beautiful attack to the basket that warmed my heart and instantly spelled relief. He would go on to show his rust from missing seven games, but that's okay, we know he'll be back in typical Gordon form very soon.

It seems that pretty wins and even pretty losses are becoming unattainable for the Clippers. With the exception of maybe one or two games, they all seem to be ugly wins and ugly losses. Effort is going to be a big word as they progress further into the season. Can they find it? Who knows, but they sure as hell need to... and fast. It's sad to see that even the Lakers are coming into to games that they're clearly picked to win and performing this season. They use it as an opportunity to execute they're offense and defense effectively without too much effort and it seems to help them against better opponents. Like a good practice. The Clippers have had several occasions to play good, smart basketball against teams that can't match up. They have yet to use these opportunities, and it's shows in their record. They had a million chances tonight to pull away from the Pacers and never look back. And it wasn't that they couldn't, it was that they didn't care to. Dunleavy and his squad have no excuses. 

Tonight we saw them give up on offensive execution, rebounds, moving the ball and so on. You can't win games when you shrug off effort over some mindset that you can beat lesser teams with a half-assed effort. No good team in this league plays with that mindset.

As for the Pacers, all I saw were people in Pacers jerseys making baskets here and there. I didn't know who they were, didn't seem like anyone did. But these strangers with out Granger did what they needed to beat our team. 

Goodnight Clipper Nation. Here's hoping Detroit has 10 year old girls in their starting lineup.