The Los Angeles Clippers disappointed in last year’s playoffs. After defeating the reigning champion Spurs in an exciting first-round series, they were up against the Houston Rockets. It looked like the Clippers were on their way to the Western Conference Finals when they led the series 3-1. The Rockets showed incredible resilience, winning game 5, and then coming back from down 19 points to win game 6. The Clippers blew game 7 as well, as Houston had all the momentum at that point.
There are a lot of “what if’s” asked in the NBA, and Los Angeles Clippers power forward Glen Davis weighed in on the question “what if the Clippers had beaten the Rockets and advanced to the conference finals?” Big Baby Davis thinks that the Clippers could have taken the champions.
From James Herbert of CBS Sports:
“We would’ve beat Golden State, we would’ve beat Golden State,” Davis said. “And I think the reason why is because Blake Griffin — who’s going to guard Blake Griffin? You got these little 4s, range-shooting 4s; Blake’s 6-9, he’s a true power forward. And then also he can play around the perimeter. It’s hard to stop that when you’re playing smallball.”
I mean, it’s true that Blake Griffin is tough to guard, and that he’s got a size advantage on Draymond Green, but Draymond Green was(in my opinion) the best defensive player in the league last year. He makes up for his lack of height with tough, gritty defense. Let’s pretend that the Clippers didn’t blow their series against the Rockets, and made it to the Conference Finals. Let’s imagine that Draymond Green forgot how to play defense(this is obviously implausible, but we’re going to go along with Glen Davis’ theory for a bit) and Blake Griffin wrecked havoc all over the Warriors. I still don’t think that the Clippers would have won the series. Perhaps they could have made it a reasonably close series, but the Warriors were historically great last season, on both ends of the floor. Their offense, led by Steph Curry, is dynamic. Klay Thompson also scores at an all-star level, plus they have a great passing big man in Andrew Bogut, a solid young scorer in Harrison Barnes, and of course Draymond Green. This Golden State team was just too good. There wasn’t a team out there capable of taking them down, especially not a Clippers team that couldn’t finish off an injury-riddled Rockets team.
Another reason that the Clippers would have lost to the Warriors is the difference in bench depth. The Clippers looked tired against Houston, and the Rockets capitalized on that exhaustion. The Clippers rely heavily on their starters. They have a fantastic sixth man in Jamal Crawford, but outside of Crawford their bench isn’t too deep. The Warriors, on the other hand, have the best bench in the league, featuring a jack-of-all-trades in Finals MVP Andre Iguodala, a long, well-rounded point guard in Shaun Livingston, a big man who is just 2 years removed from being an all-star in David Lee, and a fantastic Mid-range shooter in Mo Buckets $$$peights Speights.
Sorry Big Baby, the Warriors would have blown you guys out of the water.
