JamFan's Fast Break
Posted by: JamFan on Oct 13, 2009 - 01:54 AM
Clipper_Blog
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Tomorrow, a few fans will look in the morning paper and see that the Clippers beat the Warriors by a score of 124 -117 and think nothing of it. That is until you find out the story behind the win.
Defense is still what makes good teams great. In the first half our defense was somewhere is Nova Scotia. After being down 16 at the half, and looking completely out of the game, the Clippers, led by Baron Davis, came out for the 3rd quarter on a defensive mission. They outscored the Warriors 38 - 19 in the 3rd quarter to take the lead by 2 heading into the 4th.
We were one rebound away from 4 players having a double double. Baron Davis had 13 points and 11 assists. But Blake Griffin had 16 points and 9 rebs, Camby 10 and 9, and Kaman 15 and 9. Had those 3 players grabbed one more rebound, we would have certainly broken the Clippers record for double doubles in a single game.
It's obvious the Clippers are going to have a better bench than they have had.......maybe ever. They bench was effective tonight and Craig Smith, Sebastian Telfair, and Steve Novak didn't even play. Rasual Butler had 27 and Blake Griffin 15 off the bench.
The Clips had 7 players in double figures with Eric Gordon leading the way among starters with 22. Eric played some point guard tonight while Baron was kicking back.
Baron Davis has a favorite target for the "alley oop" pass, and that is DeAndre Jordan. But the most exciting pass of the night was an "alley oop" to Eric Gordon who went back door to the sky for a slam dunk.
Blake Griffin is a perpetual motion machine. He has some deficiencies at the moment, but he is a rookie in his first games. He rushes things at times and is trying to hard instead of letting the plays come to him. Reminds you of Al Thorton as a rookie. But Blake reminds me more of the Mailman, Karl Malone. He will succeed by sheer determination. Anything that he perceives as being wrong with his game, he will work on it until it's fixed, just like Karl Malone did. He hustles harder than any player I have ever seen, and it's only preseason. Just wait!
There has been much written in the last week about the potential of Stephen Curry. He doesn't surprise me. Before we landed the #1 pick in the Draft, I was lobbying for the Clippers to take Curry if they fell to the 4th or 5th pick. Why? I only saw one player in the draft who had the potential to lead the NBA in scoring. Curry! One thing that might hold him back is that he is on a team that has a lot of guys who like to shoot, so getting opportunities might not be all that easy.
Curry will have to prove someday that he is better than Anthony Morrow. How could hundreds of scouts, dozens of draft day analysis boards, and the entire NBA all miss Morrow. He came begging for a job after being undrafted. Now he looks like he might be the greatest undrafted player ever to enter the NBA. He dropped 33 on Phoenix a couple of nights ago and 32 on the Clips tonight. How are you going to keep him out of the starting lineup?
JamFan
aka Don Allen
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