How the Los Angeles Clippers Have Stayed Afloat
Photo Credit: Jack Dempsey, Associated Press
If I had to pick the NBA team in the most unenviable position headed into the 2024-25 season, it would have been the Los Angeles Clippers in a heartbeat. Sure, they get to play in their own arena for the first time in decades — and a state-of-the-art one at that. But the Intuit Dome was supposed to host the Clippers’ star duo of Paul George and Kawhi Leonard in their continued pursuit of a championship, something that would never come. George’s departure in free agency marked the end of an era for Los Angeles; Leonard’s indefinite absence rehabbing a knee injury has meant he can’t play a role in this new one just yet.
Without their former tentpoles, the Clips faced more than one roster dilemma headed into the year. James Harden entered the season with a massive amount of offensive responsibility for a 36-year-old guard, while head coach Tyronn Lue was tasked with maximizing a roster stocked with versatile defenders but frighteningly short on offensive talent. Taking a step back to try and secure a top draft pick was always off the table, too — the Clippers’ 2025 first round pick is controlled by the Oklahoma City Thunder, the last vestige of the giga-trade that landed George and Leonard in the first place (not to mention a likely desire internally to fill seats in their new home). The Clippers had no choice but to try and compete in a hyper-competitive Western Conference built on a stifling defense and enough from their aging Hall of Fame engine on the other end to get by.
As far as situations go around the league, you can certainly find better ones to be in. And yet here we are, over a quarter of the way through the season, and the Clippers stand at 14-10, currently good for the seventh seed but just a game and a half out of third place in the West. A top-five defense has been enough to overcome their offensive deficiencies (ranked 24th out of 30 leaguewide, per Cleaning the Glass), and Harden has played like an All-Star as he’s tried to maximize every scoring opportunity for the team. Lue is truly getting the most out of this group, and multiple players are enjoying career seasons. Instead of sinking to the bottom of the standings, the Clippers have made like their namesake and stayed above water. Here’s a breakdown of just how Los Angeles has become one of the most pleasant surprises in the NBA.
The System Still Works
James Harden’s introductory press conference with the Clippers last year made headlines — well, more specifically, one quote did. After declaring himself not a system player but a system in itself, the Internet went wild with takes and reactions as it is wont to do; as so often happens, nuance and context largely flew out the window. This time, people seemed to forget a simple truth of Harden’s career:
The man wasn’t lying.
Prime Harden redefined the limits of offensive responsibility and efficiency with his style of play. The poster child of heliocentric NBA offense, the pressure he put on defenses as both a scorer and playmaker and how effectively his teams could be constructed around it might never be seen again. The threat of his stepback three combined with a burly frame and elite first step made him a nightmare to guard in isolation, and his supercomputer basketball brain allowed him to dissect any coverage defenses used to try and slow him down.
At 36 years old, his body simply can’t handle that heavy of a burden at such efficiency anymore. That isn’t more evident anywhere than his shot chart. He’s getting to the rim at the lowest rate of his career as a Clipper, but he still made a solid 64% of his shots there last season. That’s down to 52% this year, his worst mark since he was a rookie. His three-point percentage sits at 34%, a middling mark for most players but another near career-low for one of the most prolific shooters in history. His effective field goal percentage (46.6%, per CTG), fittingly, is the worst of his career by a considerable margin.
None of this has stopped him from actually handling that burden, though. Amazingly, he still isolates more than any other player in the league, and his assist percentage (what percentage of his team’s made shots he assists on while on the floor) ranks third among players with at least 200 minutes played this season, according to NBA.com/stats. And while his halcyon days at the free throw line are behind him, he’s still seventh leaguewide in attempts per game. Even though he isn’t the monster he once was every night, the things that made him one are still there. He’s still liable for a vintage Harden performance every once in a while too, as evidenced by his 43-point outburst against the Wizards on November 27th followed by a 39-point near-triple-double against the Nuggets four days later. (The Clippers won both games).
As his body has changed, Harden has adapted his game accordingly. A major piece of what made him so unstoppable with the ball in the past was his ability to break down defenders and burrow his way to the basket. That athletic burst has waned with age and multiple hamstring injuries, hence his fall-off in volume and efficiency at the rim. To adjust, Harden’s diversified his shot portfolio for when he either can’t blow by his man or there’s a rim protector lurking behind, adding the midrange pull-up to his attack:
Harden’s taking more shots from the midrange than he has in nine years — if I watched him attempt any of these as a Rocket during his peak seasons, I’d have thought I was having a stroke. This shot enables him to remain a threat both in isolation and out of ball screens, even if he isn’t quite the DEFCON 1-level terror he once was. As long as that remains true, Harden will be able to dictate the game on his terms.
Defenses still have to pick their poison when guarding him. Switch actions to stay home and you risk being torched one-on-one. Do that too many times in a row, and one of the most prolific mismatch hunters in NBA history will find your weakest link and exploit it. Put two defenders on the ball out of screens and it’s an automatic read to Ivica Zubac, who gets to simply play advantage basketball with a 4-on-3:
Speaking of Zubac, playing next to one of the best pick-and-roll guards of all time has helped the center have his most productive season as a pro, putting up career highs in points, rebounds and assists. From Clint Capela to Joel Embiid, we’ve seen Harden elevate his pick-and-roll partners time and time again; it shouldn’t be particularly surprising that the same is happening for Zubac (who is having a stellar season in several ways, another of which we will get to later).
It must be stated that for as good as Harden has been this season, the Clippers’ offense as a whole hasn’t been, even when he’s on the floor. I’d posit that their struggles have more to do with the overall talent level on the team than as an indictment on Harden himself. There are no other high-level playmakers on the roster at all, and Norman Powell is the only other rotation player capable of efficiently scoring for himself. A lot is being asked of Harden to lift this team up, and while he’s delivering to the best of his abilities, and I wonder if that offensive load is dampening his scoring efficiency at this stage of his career. The setup isn’t nearly ideal, which is why I find the success they’ve had all the more impressive.
The 2020s have been spent ushering in the next era of NBA superstars while appreciating the final chapters of those who defined the decade prior. Much is constantly made about the level of play that LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant — the three most important players of the 2010s — have sustained well past their physical primes, but there’s a fourth former MVP who belongs in those conversations much more often than it feels like he is.
Since leaving Houston, Harden’s led the league in assists once and helped three different franchises to the postseason as a starter (by the way, he’s still made the playoffs every single year he’s been in the league). Remaining such an impactful player this late into one’s career deserves a lot of praise; refusing to sit out games because of one’s importance to the team deserves even more. So James Harden gets his flowers here — the Clippers would be dead in the water without him.
Stepping Up and Showing Out
I already mentioned Zubac as a Clipper in the midst of the best year of his professional career, but as alluded to at the top, he’s not the only one. There are two players in particular I’d like to highlight in this regard: Norman Powell and Kris Dunn. Both have emerged as utterly essential components to Los Angeles’ success, and I find it very cool that they’ve done it in completely different ways on opposite sides of the court.
Describing Powell as simply the only non-Harden player on the roster sells him short in a major way. Powell’s averaging a hair under 24 points per game while shooting over 50% from three-point range on nearly eight attempts per game. Fifty percent! His scorching hot efficiency from behind the arc has been absolutely critical for a Clippers team that needs points wherever they can get them. His transition threes have been a particularly effective weapon:
According to NBA.com/stats, Powell is shooting an utterly absurd 69.7% on threes taken with between 22 and 18 seconds left on the shot clock on just under two attempts per game. The Clippers play in transition a fair amount to make up for their shortcomings in the halfcourt, so these buckets are particularly important. It should come as no surprise that Powell’s on/off numbers are the best on the team in transition, but the same is true in the halfcourt — even better than Harden’s.
Overall, the Clippers’ offense is a team-high 9.0 points better with Powell on the floor than when he sits, per CTG. He has become a player teams need to account for whenever he’s on the court, and having someone other than Harden that can bend a defense is an absolute boon for LA’s offense. Though he isn’t a natural playmaker, Powell is capable of making simple reads to capitalize on his pressure and keep LA’s offense moving smoothly. And while his shot is almost guaranteed to cool down, it likely won’t change how defenses treat him all that much.
Powell’s career has been a winding one: he won a championship coming off the bench for the Toronto Raptors in 2019, became a more prolific scorer as a starter on middling-to-bad Raptor and Portland Trail Blazer teams, then settled into a role off the bench for the Clippers for the last few seasons. His pedigree has been clear for some time — one need only look to his 42-point performance against Phoenix in the 2023 playoffs for proof — but he’s been fully unleashed this year. His “addition by subtraction” comments at the start of the season seem a lot less like shade towards George than someone calling his own shot. So far, Powell looks like a prophet.
But as we’ve discussed, the Clippers’ offense is nowhere near their calling card. Powell’s impact only sticks if the team can get enough stops for his timely buckets to be enough to survive, and that’s presented an issue at times for this team. The Clippers entered the season with a starting lineup of Harden, Powell, Terance Mann, Derrick Jones Jr. and Zubac; that lineup has been outscored by 9.3 points per 100 possessions on the season, per CTG. With two neutral-at-best defenders in Harden and Powell and two solid but flawed perimeter options in Mann and Jones Jr., they struggled mightily to get stops.
Eleven games in, Lue made a shift. Mann was moved to the bench in favor of Dunn, a former top-five pick who spent the last few seasons revitalizing his career as a defensive stopper with the Utah Jazz. The difference couldn’t be more night and day — LA’s new starting lineup is outscoring the opponent by a staggering 17 points per 100, and its defensive rating would be equivalent to the best team in the league over a full season (the old lineup would have ranked 29th).
It’s no exaggeration to call Dunn one of the most disruptive defenders in the league. His steal rate is second best in the league among combo guards as defined by CTG (behind only Elfrid Payton, who’s played in seven games and is currently not on a roster), and he ranks fourth across the league with 4.2 deflections per 36 minutes, according to NBA.com’s hustle stats. It doesn’t matter where Dunn is on the floor — he’s going to put his impact on a possession if he can. He’s notably impactful away from the ball while executing Lue’s heavy help schemes:
He’s a menace on the ball, too:
That second clip is just exceptional stuff, and I truly mean that — perfect execution to funnel Curry into Zubac while staying attached for the relocation, then some great anticipation to shut it all down. You won’t see many better defensive possessions on Curry.
Dunn’s disruption helps the Clippers on offense too. One of the reasons that live ball turnovers are so valuable is that they often lead to fastbreak opportunities; while Powell has the biggest impact on the Clippers’ transition efficiency, it’s Dunn whose presence impacts their frequency the most, per CTG. That’s why their new starting lineup has an offensive rating (119.2) equivalent to a top-five team despite Dunn’s individual limitations. (Teams don’t guard him from three away from the ball, and aside from a little floater in the middle of the floor he has little in terms of go-to moves as a scorer).
The impact Dunn has on LA really cannot be overstated: the team’s defensive rating is 13 points per 100 better with Dunn on the floor, the fifth best mark in the entire league. He is the head of the Clippers’ snake on that end, generating much-needed turnovers and placing the necessary pressure on offenses for the rest of the team to fall in line behind. He, and they, have been so good that they've even been able to tread water without Powell. In the seven games Powell has missed this year, the Clips are 4-3 thanks to a stifling defense — Dunn was a +41 in total despite shooting just 25% from the floor and 17% from three.
Kris Dunn’s story is, in my mind, unequivocally one of the best in the NBA this season. After falling short of the expectations placed upon him as the fifth overall pick in 2016, Dunn spent years on teams with nothing to play for. Quietly, he spent the years turning himself into one of the best perimeter defenders in the league, but this is the first time he’s been able to show it off with a competitive team. He belongs firmly in All-Defense conversations; if he keeps at this pace, his case for one of the ten spots is pretty undeniable.
The Clippers’ formula for success necessitates two things: a ferocious defense to limit the other team from scoring, and just enough buckets to score more than them. Dunn and Powell represent both sides of that ethos, and they’re performing at career-best rates after being given more opportunity than ever. Much like Harden, that opportunity is as much a function of how the Clippers are constructed as anything else — Powell’s scoring and Dunn’s point-of-attack disruption are as necessary as they are beneficial. And though that makes the portability of their impact onto other teams a viable question thanks to their deficiencies on the side of the floor they don’t excel on, it also makes what they’ve done so far that much cooler.
Yes, Coaching Really Matters
If you’ve noticed, there’s one through line between all three players we’ve talked about so far: the maximization of their skills within the context of their roster. As much as anything else, the story of this Clippers season has been how much they’ve overperformed relative to their talent. And if I’m going to give the players well-deserved credit for executing, then I would be remiss if I didn’t also credit Ty Lue for putting them in positions to succeed. Long considered one of the best coaches in the NBA, Lue is putting together arguably one of the best coaching seasons of his career considering the situation the team found itself in to start the year.
A lot of the impact of good coaching is intangible and hard to decipher through film, but there are some telltale signs that Lue has his team completely bought in. A simple one is their 7-1 record against sub-.500 teams, low-hanging fruit in the regular season that can sometimes require some extra motivation. There are more schematic ways to assess buy-in, too.
Their top-five defense is built around a scheme that emphasizes heavy doses of help and timely rotations to close gaps before they appear, with the ultimate goal of allowing as few shots at the rim as possible. Lue is also keen on throwing out several different coverages throughout games to keep offenses on their toes. That sort of scheme works with the defensive personnel the Clippers have, but it also requires constant activity and communication. If players aren’t on the same page and totally committed, mistakes are inevitable — and unsurvivable.
(This is another place where Zubac has really stood out. His ability to toggle a variety of defensive coverages, from different drops to switches, while remaining active around the rim is essential to LA’s success. He’s been arguably the best non-star center in the entire league — for my money, it’s between him and Isaiah Hartenstein.)
The Clippers’ only rim protector is Mo Bamba, who’s averaging 13 minutes per game across just ten appearances. That’s why they defend the way that they do; if they can force the other team to take the kinds of shots they’re better at contesting, they’re going to find more success. Their defensive shot chart tells the whole story: opponents are shooting 68.5% at the basket against them, the sixth worst mark in the league, but they also allow the sixth fewest shots at the rim, per CTG. Conversely, they give up more above the break threes than anyone other than the Atlanta Hawks but defend them at the sixth-best rate in the league, too. (Another important piece: they give up the ninth-fewest corner threes, a clue that their scheme is effective — corner threes are often a result of defensive breakdowns.)
With rangy, active defenders throughout the rotation from Dunn and Jones Jr. to Mann and Nicolas Batum, this scheme has been very effective at taking away the reads that offenses are used to making. In other words, they’re able to dictate the game on their terms defensively. Lue and his staff have done a great job both in creating their schemes and relaying them to the players.
But I also want to talk about how Lue is maximizing the Clippers offensively. Ever since his days coaching the Cleveland Cavaliers to a championship in 2016, Lue’s reputation has been defined by his willingness to make adjustments on the fly throughout the course of a game, something that comes up seemingly every postseason. That sort of thing is more visible during a playoff series, but it can be appreciated in subtler ways over the course of the regular season.
I wanted to highlight an instance of this I noticed during their win over the Nuggets on December 1st. Early on, it was clear that Harden and Los Angeles could get consistently good looks by picking on Denver’s defensive scheme out of the pick-and-roll, which has Nikola Jokic play closer to the level of the screen and the defender guarding the weakside corner (often Michael Porter Jr.) rotating to defend the rim:
Much like the Clippers’ own, this scheme requires constant communication and activity to work, which the Nuggets were lacking to open the game. By stringing out the first rotation, LA generated wide open looks for the player in the weakside corner, either in the form of wide open 3s or shots at the rim from backdoor cuts. But like any team, the Nuggets adjusted, mixing in different coverages and ironing out their rotations. If there’s one thing you could have banked on coming out of halftime, it’s that Denver would be locked in to that weakside corner.
And that’s exactly what Ty Lue did.
During the third quarter, Lue had Powell, coming off of back-to-back threes, run pick-and-roll with Zubac. Denver showed two bodies to prevent more pull-ups but made sure to recover to the weakside corner — and leaving Harden wide open on the wing:
Just to make sure we’re on the same page: the Clippers first abused a gap in Denver’s defensive coverage for as much mileage as they could, and then abused the way Denver responded to that first abuse. Aside from being very mean, that’s just great basketball. It also maximizes the talent of LA’s best offensive players, using them synergistically. As if that wasn’t enough, they opened the fourth quarter with Harden running pick-and-roll with Batum instead of Zubac, a canny passer who adds an element Zubac doesn’t — the pick-and-pop:
All of this is meant to subvert the expectations of the opposing defense (bonus points to Mann for cutting baseline the possession after hitting a three — another common small adjustment the Clippers make). This stuff isn’t unique to Lue or the Clippers, but it has a critical impact for this team; when the margin for error offensively is so small, any advantage they can gain and maintain could ultimately decide a game. The way Lue tries to create those advantages is a mark of a great coach. The award will never go to him this season, but I’d have him on my Coach of the Year ballot at minimum. These Clippers remind me of the 2021-22 team, which won 42 games despite getting 31 games out of George and zero from Leonard. Like this one, they played greater than the sum of their parts. Perhaps that quality should be part of Lue’s reputation too.
For all that’s gone well this season, the Clippers have done it with a superstar-sized hole in their offense. With Leonard’s return rumored to be coming sooner rather than later, there’s reason to be more excited about this team. Their defensive infrastructure is already rock solid, and Kawhi could uplift their halfcourt attack in a sorely needed way. But the last half-decade has shown Leonard’s health to be far from a sure thing, so the possibility that this is the version of the Clippers that we’ll get for much of the season can’t be ruled out.
If that’s the case, then LA faces an uphill battle ahead. Keeping up in the Western Conference projects to be incredibly difficult, and an injury to the wrong player could spell doom. (Mann is already out for multiple weeks with a fractured finger). The playoffs are far from guaranteed; it isn’t hard to come up with eight more talented teams in the conference.
But as I said at the top, this is a team that has nothing to gain by losing. As long as that’s the case (and it will remain so), the Clippers are going to try and win every game that they can, Leonard or not. The success they’ve had so far this season has been hard earned, running up against an exceptionally thin margin for error in a bloodbath of a conference. That’s the sort of success that doesn’t come from one person, and it’s also the sort of success that’s arguably the most fun to watch. History will likely forget the 2024-25 Clippers, but I won’t — at least not this start to their season. However the rest of the year goes, they’ve certainly earned my respect. And if you ever feel like watching a team that really works to win, then the Los Angeles Clippers should be at the top of your League Pass rankings.