With just one off-season move, the Clippers secured the continuity of Chris Paul and this move wasn't even related with players transactions. It was a coaching change. Vinny Del Negro is gone and Doc Rivers is the new Clippers' head coach.
Even though I was never a fan of Del Negro, the truth is that he was able to manage the deepest roster in the league quite well during the regular season, with nobody complaining about the lack of playing time. The problem was that the Clippers didn't improve during the season and a declining defense during the second half of the season doomed them. On a playoff series against the one-dimensional offensive team of the Grizzlies, who couldn't shoot from the perimeter to save their lives, the Clippers still allowed an incredible 117.9 offensive rating to Memphis in the last four games of the series, while losing all these games and the series as consequence.
Doc Rivers will immediately have a good start in LA, as he will have something that Vinny never had: a "good press". Doc is regarded by some folks as the best NBA coach in the league, but I believe he is overrated and he is far from being a Top 3 coach in the league in my opinion. During the Big Three era in Boston, the Celtics were always a good defensive team, but don't forget that was Tom Thibodeau who implemented the defensive scheme as Rivers's assistant:
2012-13 #6 w/ 101.1 DefRtg
2011-12 #2 w/ 95.5 DefRtg
2010-11 #2 w/ 97.8 DefRtg
2009-10 #5 w/ 101.1 DefRtg
2008-09 #2 w/ 99.4 DefRtg
2007-08 #1 w/ 96.2 DefRtg
Even without Kevin Garnett or Rajon Rondo, even with Kevin Garnett playing as Center, no matter what happened, the Celtics were always a good defensive team on this era. The problem was on the other side of the basketball. The Celtics showed no evolution of their offense especially throughout the last few seasons and the main culprit of that has to be their coach Doc Rivers. Just look at what Gregg Popovich did on San Antonio meanwhile by changing the Spurs' offensive schemes, while their main core of players was getting older. These were the Celtics' average offensive ratings by season during the Big Three era:
2012-13 #20 w/ 101.1 OffRtg
2011-12 #24 w/ 98.9 OffRtg
2010-11 #17 w/ 104.0 OffRtg
2009-10 #14 w/ 105.1 OffRtg
2008-09 #6 w/ 108.1 OffRtg
2007-08 #11 w/ 107.6 OffRtg
During the last three seasons, the Celtics were always outside the Top 15 of the league on offensive ratings. This is something that can't be ignored when we evaluate Rivers's coaching job in Boston. His rants are fantastic and his late plays design on crunch time are great as well. However, Doc is far from being the best coach in the league.
As long as Chris Paul keeps himself healthy, the Clippers will be one of the most efficient offensive teams in the league. However, there were some offensive holes in the team last season that the Clippers have wisely decided to fix during this off-season. The LA team was a streaky shooting team by being #15 in the league with 35.8% 3pts. To give them more consistency on this area, the Clippers signed J.J. Redick and Jared Dudley. Redick is coming from a bad experience at Milwaukee during the second half of the past season, where the Bucks simply didn't know how to use his strengths. It's just difficult for any guard to have the ball when playing alongside Brandon Jennings and Monta Ellis... On the other hand, Jared Dudley compensates his lack of athleticism with a good basketball IQ and a good shooting stroke that he developed while playing alongside Steve Nash. To help them on the perimeter shooting, Jamal Crawford (who can't defend at all) is still in LA, just like Matt Barnes, who is always quite useful on any team.
Eric Bledsoe is gone to Phoenix and the super dynamic second unit that the Clippers showed last season is basically gone without Bledsoe, but the truth is that he deserved a team that could give him more minutes, something that he would never get in the Clippers while being Paul's backup. To replace him, the Clippers signed Darren Collison, who is coming from a terrible season in Dallas. Collison was so poor last season that he got benched in favor of the 38-years old Mike James, who had just unretired. But we have to remember that Collison's best days were on his rookie season when he was Paul's backup in New Orleans and then a starter for the Hornets when Paul went down with an injury. Let's see if he rediscovers some of his magic while playing alongside Paul once again.
But once again, the frontcourt will be the Clippers' X factor for the new season. Blake Griffin had a great improvement on free throw shooting last season with 66.0% FT, much better than the 52.1% FT from 2011-12. But the same thing can't be said about DeAndre Jordan who shot an absolutely ridiculous 38.6% FT last season! This problem prevented him from playing in the final minutes of several games. Thanks to this, Jordan is getting paid about 11 million per season to play about 25 minutes per game! Doc Rivers will have to find a solution for this. If he's able to do that, then the Clippers will have to be considered as a legitimate threat on the West.
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