Welcome into a live edition of Clippers Talk. I'm Adam Osland. It's good to be with you guys. Just opening up the chat here live on YouTube at clippers Talk is where.
You can find me.
The good thing now about having this YouTube channel is I've always had the podcast for Clippers Talk and doing it for about seven years. But now if something breaks, if something spicy is out there, interesting, something I just want to get off my chest. Even if it's late at night and I can't sleep after a Clippers game, I may just go live. I may just rip off
a podcast quickly and get it out there. And the reason I'm doing this one today, well, it is centered around this article that just dropped.
Picked up some traction. Clippers reporter for.
Espin om Young Massouk did a great piece regarding coach lou and his summer and how things went working with Team USA. As I'm trying to also navigate things here and make sure I have this up on the Twitter side so everybody knows where to find it. As we just went live a second ago. If you can hear me get in the chat, I'm looking for a little bit of confirmation here to make sure everything is a go. Just give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down here if you're a voyeur and watching this right now.
And I know it is a new habit to get into now with these YouTube lives in here, but this is clipper Stock. I'm out of Molesland, and I gotta discuss the excitement going on right now because this article that Om Young Masouk did for what I typically would call it evil four letter although I love Oh, he's one of my favorites. All Right, we got confirmation here. Thank you, thank you you me, he says, Hi Adam, we can hear you.
We're good to go.
So I'll get into the meat and potatoes of this article now. The quote that stuck out to me the highlight of this, and there's a lot of them. I'm going to underscore some of the bigger points here in the article, but I want you to read the entire thing because OHM does some such great work. I certainly just don't want to read the entire thing for you and do some AI I don't know narration here that you could do on your phone. Uh.
I want to give you this quote from coach lou.
Last week. He said this, I guess to OHM quote when you lose a guy of Paul George's stature, instantly people think, oh, they can't win or they're not going to be competitive. But that just challenges me even more. Okay, people are counting us out, or people don't think we're going to be good. That right there just gives me an extra.
Dose of motivation.
I can wait to prove everybody wrong. Ooh, that just got me fired up, right.
To run through a wall.
And I think about coach lew and who he has been throughout his career, who he was as a player and who he's been as a head coach. He has had to deal with doubters and detractors. He was a role player that got into an NBA Finals specifically to guard Allen Iverson and get stepped over. We know the play back in two thousand and one for the Lakers. This is somebody that wasn't thought of as being even close to a star.
He was a contributor.
He always had to prove it. It continues as a head coach. He took over for David Blatt mid season in twenty sixteen for the Cleveland Cavaliers and got them to win a championship after everyone doubted them being down three games to one to Golden State, the seventy three win Golden State Warriors team.
This is who he is. He's built like this. Guys.
I'm telling you, if there's somebody that would take it personally that Paul George left his team, it's coach Lou. The Michael Jordan and I took that personally meme who he played next to with the Wizards, that's Coach Lou. Do not think for a second it's lost on him
that Paul George decided to leave him and his coaching staff. Also, that's just the players, that's just the organization, Kawhi, everybody, Steve Balmer, they took care of Paul George and he decides to go to what he thinks is greener pastures with Joel Embiid. But he's leaving someone who coached him the last four seasons. He's leaving someone that had at times to adjust his game plan to how Paul George was feeling that night on whether or not he was going to.
Be a certain him, be a superstar.
Or kind of fade into the background a little bit and just blend in and be a role player. Coach Lou was the one that had to set him straight multiple times. Paul George says, he's not just the one A or one B to Kawhi. He was second fiddle, he was the second player, he was the number two. Coach Lou I had to correct that. No, no, no, you're a bad boy. You're a bad man, your bad mother effort.
Believe that is what he told him.
After last season, where Paul George also said he was going to try to be the blue guy and do the little things. After they had lost four games in a row with them trying to make it work in the backcourt with James Harden and Russell Westbrook, Coach lou did all he could.
You want to be more on ball, cool.
I'll give you more on ball reps. Oh, now you want to be off ball. Don't like being picked up ninety four feet by Drew Holliday. They would bend and adjust the game plan for Paul George plenty, and he left, and that's fine. Seventy two million dollars more. I understand that part of it. The B team comment. We've talked about that at nauseum wasn't great. Bad luck sealed his fate with now likely being booed when he returns into a on November six. If you guys want to get
in the chat here, please do. This is Clippers Talk. It's Clippers Talk Live. Just the second one I've done since putting up the YouTube channel about three weeks ago. We've been doing a ton of episodes. Is I'd just like to work and talk about this team. I am most interested in Clippers' basketball more so than anything else really in my life right now out even during the off season, I'm like this, I can't stop thinking about the Clippers.
This is what I care about.
So even when something as innocuous there is, I guess secondary as an article like this that doesn't seem to have anything too inflammatory.
Or too juicy. Maybe for some, but to me, this is big time. This is important.
This gives a lot of insight into coach Liu and who he is and how this season could go for the Clippers. And again, Olm Young Masouf did it for espen he is the Clippers beat reporter for ESPN. Here's a few more as we kind of go through this, and I just wanted to start with that quote from coach lu saying I can't wait to prove everybody wrong, because I believe that is what fuels him. There is a fire burning in his belly. Former players are often
like this. You know, eventually they can't stay on the floor. They still want to compete, they get into coaching.
Coach Lou he is somebody that is very.
Passionate about the game, and you can see it on the sidelines.
He gets after it.
What happened in Golden State right before the All Star break where he was kicked out of that game shouldn't have been mentioned the referee post game. There is an interesting video out there about that he has an edge to him and it goes back to being doubted as a player.
I think.
Coach Lou is somebody that has had to deal with this for so long that I think it is his main motivation of just knowing they're trying to count us out again. They're trying to count me out again, and he stacks another chip on his shoulder.
Shari or shar.
Silly A CEO, Hope I got that right? Probably didn't, says hoping we get to see DJJ Derrek Jones Junior lockdown PG again in the finals this year.
What mind seeing that? Would mind seeing that? A meet up.
Against Philadelphia in the finals. Here's a few more excerpts here from this wonderful.
Article by Ohm.
A lot of it is centered around coach Lou and Jeff Van Gundy also being on the Team USA staff. Not just getting ready because coach Leu was the defensive coordinator during the Olympics for Team USA to get them prepared each and every night, as they did going on to win goal down seventeen to Serbia. Coach Lou was out there making the adjustments and they eventually clamped him down in the second half. Some of that was just
really hot shooting from Serbia. It wasn't even so, you know, a lot of attention and going towards Jokic letting guys get open. As Bogie had himself a game, i think with five to three pointers at least, but it was hot shooting that he really just couldn't slow down. There was good perimeter defense and it didn't matter for Serbia. But coach Lou and Jeff Van Gundy, Yeah, they were talking behind the scenes about the Clippers, specifically over four
dinners in France. They were viewed quote play sets, pick and roll coverages, transition, defensive schemes and Van Gundy was crunching in the numbers and researching how to improve the team's rebounding been a bugaboo for the Clippers for some time. Team rebounding. We know of Eats Zubats is good in that area, but he's not playing thirty plus minutes per game, which we do expect him to be at this season. Hopefully needs to be as a decision for coach lou
and also beat the subots. Has to stay out of foul trouble, but they had to do it by committee. With Kawhi Leonard playing power forward. Still looks to be this season as well, they just don't have the decide to compete on the boards with the best teams in
that area. Excited to see that from Van Gundy, kind of honing in on some of those deficiencies and some of the details that the Clippers just have to pay attention to next season when it comes to rebounding and getting better defensively overall, because I forget, if they finished seventeenth or sixteenth defensively this season, that number is inflated. As much as you would say, oh, you know, that's still bad, it was worse defensively for the Clippers, and
I'll get you the exact defensive rating for them. They end up finishing seventeenth. Let me tell you this. I've been pointing out this number for some time because it's so damning and alarming and shocking and surprising. And we'll leave your mouth agape when you hear this. If you go, oh, based off of just the last seventy one games in the regular season, the Clippers were twenty first defensively last year, twenty first, twenty one Deon Sanders number.
I don't know how that could happen.
When you come into training camp saying you want to be a top five defense. That is extremely disappointing. You take out the first two weeks, two and a half weeks of the season and you're twenty first to bottom ten defense of the rest of the way. That can't happen. Old Dirty Dasher wants to know. Can we get some clues on Friday's guest? Okay, I have to come forward with this and clear this up.
I jinxed it.
I guess we're moving Friday's Special super secret guest.
Back to next week. He will be on.
I gave a hint there, but I can't go any further with it because I don't want to jinx it again. I shouldn't have talked about it at all. I shouldn't even brought this up. Why I'm old dirty dasher. Come on, why would you make me answer that? No? Programming, No, we still have coming up later tonight, Chuck Macklin will Updyke will be on.
We'll do some clips and dip here on Clippers Talk.
I will talk origin stories of how they became a fan of the Clippers. Myself included. It's not just because I work for them now, there's a deeper story to that. And then tomorrow Justin Wilson will be on the show. But this is a live here on Clippers Talk because of this article. Evil four Letter put it out.
Olm had it.
Coach Lou extra motivated if he wasn't already. This is somebody that just thrives when you doubt him. This is somebody that got a winning season out of the Clippers in the twenty one to twenty two season without Kawhi Leonard the entire year and with Paul George only playing thirty one games. It's not like Coach Lou hasn't already been through something like he's going to face next season. With Kawhi being limited, we expect there's multiple back to
backs right the start of the season. I don't know how they're going to treat him. I don't know how they're gonna do it. After four straight years with him not being able to finish the season healthy because of his right knee. I would imagine he's not playing back to backs, and his coach Lou alluded to at the end of last season, after losing that game six to Dallas,
he jokingly said, we're going back to load management. May have been tongue in cheek, maybe the reality of the situation too, And so you go back to that twenty one to twenty two season where they still had a winning record twelve straight years, having a winning record longest street currently in the NBA in that respect, he had to do it with thirty one games from Paul George and zero from Kawhi out the entire year coming off the ACL tear. He's seen worse situations. I think this
team is better. I think this team has more talent. And of course, if you swap out Paul George only playing thirty one games for whatever you get from Kawhi Leonard this year, we're expecting more than thirty one. I'm hoping it's sixty plus. They're not in a bad spot, not as bad as it looks. Elgony said this, We still have hardened in Kawhi didn't have Harden that year, and we got younger, more athletic in a defensive minded squad.
Had the squad the quote.
From Van Gundy about getting better at rebounding exactly what we need. How do you improve in all these other areas? You lose Paul George, you lose a lot offensively, a guy who averaged twenty three per game last season with a high level of efficiency, one of the most if not the most efficient season of his career. How do
you replace that guy? Get more possessions through offensive rebounds and keeping the opposition off the glass on the other end, and then also soh clamping down and getting back to a clamp city mindset after what happened last season and really the season before too, where they were sixteenth overall defensively, Guys, they haven't been good defensively since that twenty one to twenty two season without Kawhi, with Paul George playing thirty one games where they were eighth defensively.
How do they do that? That season? The hole was greater than.
Some of his parts, and they really zoned it and keyed in and had a defensive mindset from the outset and knew they had to be good on that end because the offense wasn't gonna be as good without as much firepower, without the star power, without the star power of Paul George. They should be in that same spot. They have to be a top ten defense. They have
to be a top eight defense. I'm gonna say, if they want a chance of staying out of the plan, gain the sixth spot, maybe the five spot, if you're really optimistic, they have to be at least a top eight defense. And yes, they do have the guys to do it, the personnel, the roster construction. I said it right after they brought in djj oh we're losing Paul George.
Here's Dereck Jones Junior.
That was Laurence Frank in the front office tipping their hand and saying, this is how we're building this team. This is how we're going to do it. It's a defensive identity. Now, a defensive makeup defensive DNA you bring back, but Tom, you bring in Chris Dunn. They have the
guys I want to see in that starting lineup. Still Tearnce Man in there, because there were thirty games over five hundred, basically going back to January of twenty twenty three when he had that brief fourteen game stint before they brought in Russell Westbrook of being in the starting lineup, and with Terrence Mann in there.
They went ten and four from that point throughout this next year.
They were I think fifty eight and twenty eight with Terrence Man in the starting lineup. Keep him in there next to James Hard in the backcourt, djj at the three, Kawhi Leonard at the four, of Easa Zubats at the five. That's the defensive orients is starting five right there. You can insulate and make up for the deficiencies of James Harden by having Terrence Man next to him. By having those other guys, they can do it. Here's some more
positive news from that article. Mark Few, another head coach next to Eric Spolstra, next to coach lou next to Steve Kerr with TMOSA said they were obviously so dialed into into helping us talking about ty Lou and Jeff Van Gundy with Tmosa basketball. But then they'd be meeting on the side, eating or riding together somewhere. Sometimes I would sit in and listen to them. Top Clippers, Top Clippers Basketball. They're both just basketball grinders, big time. Sporlzer
said this about Coach Lou. He's like Russell crow in a Beautiful Mind, comparing him to the Academy Award winning Oscar winning performance from Russell Crowe in that movie. He's got papers, diagrams, notes all over the place. In fact, after Paul George was out, apparently Coach Lou was scribbling sets and diagrams on anything he could note, pads, napkins, and he's got three hundred plays stored in his iPhone photo album, his iPhone photo album, I'm a Android guy.
And notes.
Knowing how the Clippers will play differently now than they did with Paul George, three hundred plays already seems good, seems very encouraging. Coach Lou said this, My mind's always going. When you lose an important piece like Paul, you gotta do it by committee. He's a very huge defensive player, for us. He was handling the ball, scoring the basketball.
Making plays.
So losing him is going to be tough. They know the task at hand, they're aware it's not easy to replace a guy like that. You got to do it collectively. But he's been good at doing more with less, getting the most out of guys, overperforming and outperforming expectations when they have had teams that are limited talents wise, talent wise, or when their backs are against the wall. It's twenty
one to twenty two season. It's not like that's an isolated thing where that was the only time coach lou didn't have his stars.
Yes, it was extreme that year, but.
We're talking about overall during their Clippers' tenure two to three era, Kawhi and Paul George missed I think over three hundred games combined. Nay Gee said, if they didn't trade for Harden, they would have been better defensively. Losing Roco but and kJ is a big deal. AJ Martin who hasn't really proven anything yet, not a huge deal written for the guy. But uh Roko who wasn't playing that much. No, but to im sure, Uh, there's a
trade off. They also went to an elite offensive place like we've never seen with the Clippers winning on twenty six to five run because they traded for Hard and I think it was the right move, especially now that you get But tune back anyways, Old Dirty Dasher says, can you ask your guests about their Clippers origin story if they have one. I know some media can't or won't, but other mine. Well, Chuck Mocklan will Updyke tonight we will talk about Clippers origin stories.
How you became fans. Uh coach lu said.
This speaking of James Harden, it'll be it will make quote a huge difference having him the entire training camp. It will You have to consider that there were growing pains, there was a learning curve. It took a little bit of time before they eventually hit the ground running, and their offense was a well oiled machine with him, he said quote. Having to learn how to best use him
on the fly was tough. What he's shown us is that we could run a pick and roll, scoring the basketball, making plays for each other, making it easy for everybody to play. Harden's so critical for this season with elevating guys around him. That is one of the keys to getting more out of contributors and role players like Terrence Man and Vitza Zubots have to be huge. Big Zoo, I think is the third most important player on this team,
behind Kawhi and James Harden. Now and James Harden, I think we'll be able to get the most out of him. Speaking of Kawhi Leonard, coach lou said this quote, I speak to him all the time. He'll be ready for training camp. He's feeling good, and I know he'll be ready for training camp. That might be the most important quote in this article, or at least right up there with coach Luce saying I can't wait to prove everybody wrong.
We haven't heard much outside of we had the report from Kelly Johnson, brought her on, talked about Mobamba at opening night for Into It Do. I'm saying he had gone to San Diego to work out with Kawhi Leonard, so it sounds like he's ready to go. Guys, all this talk of proving people wrong and being extra motivated, none of it matters. If Kawhi isn't healthy.
He has to be. I've had my concerns. I'm sure you've had yours.
How can you not four straight years of Kawhi Leonard either not able to start a playoff run or finish one, and it's the same right knee going back to the the meniscus and the swelling this past year. I don't think you can play them back to backs. Therefore, that sixteen games already missed right off the top.
But if he can get.
Sixty plus in, you're in business still to get out of the play and I think you have an opportunity.
You have a chance.
It's not going to be easy, losing Paul George has a lot to overcome, but I think they have the personnel and the right mindset, knowing that you have to lean to defense more, knowing that you have to be much better defensively overall. If you're a top eight defense while still being a top fourteen offense, that's that sweet spot where your net rating is still around top ten in the NBA, and therefore you have a chance to be a top six seed. More on Jeff Van Gundy.
Coach lou won him in Cleveland. Remember, he hasn't coached at the NBA level. He's been with TSA for a while in different roles, but he hasn't coached in seventeen years. Coach Lou played under him in Houston, played for his brother in Orlando with stam Ban Gundy and Jeff. Van Gundy said this about being back in coaching, quote, I'm a little nervous and on edge because i want to do my part and blend in with the other coaches and help Tye because I'm really grateful for the opportunity.
Coach Lou said this about him, He's a basketball film rat. He's calling me, asking me questions offensively, defensively, all the different things about game seventeen of last season. As Ben Gundy has been watching every single Clippers game from this past here and trying to find ways to optimize the squad,
Coach lu said he is locked into all that. Quote that's what we need of Van Gundy when it comes to figuring out life without Paul George quote, losing PG, starting over with a younger team and doing things the right way. It's going to take both of us to really get our guys on track. The addition of Jeff is going to be huge for us. Quote the pieces that we added this year. We've got to play a different style, but we're going to play winning basketball and I know we're going to have a chance to be
pretty good. It's going to be my job to make sure we get to that point.
Whatever I have to do, what do I have to do right now? Get on a call with Fred Rogan, producing Rogan or Rodney today. We're gonna have our little pregame chat here.
So I have to leave you, but I'll leave you with this. This article got me even more pumped up. It's not that I didn't think the Clippers would be extremely motivated for life without Paul George and trying to prove people wrong. But from the horse's mouth, these quotes coming from coach Lou the way they're going about it, they're saying all the right things. I think they're going to be doing all the right things, as we outlined here from this article from Ohm from ESPN.
Read the entire thing. I think he'll be very encouraged.
I think you'll be more hopeful and optimistic coming into this season and how the Clippers are going to attack this year without Paul George for the first time in five years.
It's a new era.
But I think they're doing this the right way. Still need some luck, good health from Kawhi Leonard of course, but they do have a team that's going to be very competitive.
Coming up later tonight and new Clippers Talk.
It will not be alive, but we will have Chuck Mockler and William up dot com. We'll talk origin stories, we'll talk about how we became Clippers fans all that.
How about am maslin.
This has been another edition of Clippers Talk, a live one.
Love y'all.
Thanks for joining the stream, and this will be in podcast form and I'll put it that follow out of me on Twitter in just a few moments here