Welcome into a Clippers Talk Live. I'm Adam Osland. We are on a Wednesday now. Been in a bit of a whirlwind recently with this team in some of the news coming out. Also got to work for Fred Rogan later today, so that's been on my mind, just trying to get through it. Appreciate you guys for checking out the Clippers Talk YouTube. Hopefully you saw the Ralph Lawler interview.
It's just part one. But if you need a little bit of a distraction and you want to reflect a little bit on past eras of Clippers basketball, that is something you can do and just be with the goat Ralph Lahler. It's a great time. It's about forty seven minutes. I highly encourage you to check out that video. Join the show today.
Though.
Is our friend from the Athletic. It's La Murray at Lo Murray The U is where you find him on x. He just wrote the article for The Athletic called Clippers on Kawhi Leonard Watch again, team navigates star bulky knee before the season. Law how are we doing?
I feel good? I got my sleep, I got my pancakes. Uh yeah, we good?
Hey, best way to start the day, even though I mean, is that still a thing? I don't even I rarely eat breakfast nowadays. I gotta be honest with you. I'll hit up a protein bar from Greek yogurt. That's about it. But I miss it.
Yeah, I can't. I can't do that.
I mean, I'm not even a morning person and I'm gonna make sure that I break a fast dude.
So okay, okay.
So I want to get right into the meat of some of the issues because I know the fans have a lot of questions. I want to get to them. And if you guys have some, put them in the chat here. We'll ask lab Murray. There was a press conference yesterday with not just coach lou but Lawrence Frank giving an update on Kawhi Leonard kp J starting jobs.
We'll talk about all of it. I want to start with Kawhi Leonard though here as that was about fifteen minutes of the conversation and you ask some great questions with Lawrence Frank and then afterwards had the scoop on the procedure being done that I don't think a lot of people are surprised about. But you and Shamserania of The Athletic wrote that news that that a procedure was
done on Kawhi back in May. So I think the main point of confusion right now, law from the fan base from what I've seen, and I'm looking for a little bit of clarification on is so the procedure happens in May, he reports to Team USA late June early July, and the Clippers were obviously behind him playing in Team USA during the Olympics, and then he is sent home. Right now we find out that, well he's not back to one hundred percent yet from the procedure. I guess
the swelling isn't all the way down. It's almost gone quote unquote from Lawrence Frank He said that yesterday it's significantly down, but not all the way down. So there's a little bit of confusion where you know, there was a time where sounded like he was going to play for Team USA, but now he's not available to participate in everything during training camp, including drills. He'll be doing
strengthening for that right knee. Is there anything you can sort through there and just point us in the right direction of exactly what's going on the best of your knowledge with Kawhi.
Well, it sounds like there has not been a setback, and that's the important thing for me. Like we saw obviously how July went down about Kawhi being there wanting to play, mentioning himself when he was in Las Vegas that he's his knee is at a point where it's allowing him to play basketball and that he quote wanted to help it stay that way, right, And so I
thought we heard a lot of that echo yesterday. We know what Lawrence Frank was saying when Kawhi withdrew from the team, or more accurately, the team USA made the decision to withdraw Kawhi and have Derek White be on the roster, and it's that they were more comfortable with the player that they were going to go to the Olympics with that was Derek. But also it wasn't something that Kawhi wanted to do. Like Kawhi was preparing to play basketball this summer, and the Clippers were prepared to
have Kawhi play basketball this summer. Toronto lose there as a coach, Lawrence Frank said he was there at the first two practices. He reiterated again yesterday that he wished that Kawhi got a longer runway to play.
In the Olympics.
Like, we're talking about a guy who got a chance to win a gold medal taken from him, basically, but you can understand why USA was like, we need to get someone here who is not as risky, if you will, of a potential reoccurrence of this thing.
And that's that's.
Kind of the confusion for me. He was good to play for Team USA, but he's not fully ready to participate in training camp four months later after surgery.
So here's the difference between Team USA and July and what we're about to get into here. How many games you play in USA to try and win a gold medal?
Oh?
How many games do you have to play?
How many games we talking about? How many games.
Between the exhibition and the knockout round? I don't even know? Is it ten games? Seven games?
Basically? Right? How many games?
The NBA season eighty two? Still eighty two games? And so I think it comes down to this. It sounds like Hawhi, if we want to take Lawrence at his word, is ready to play. He wants to participate in training camp. Feels like if he needed to play a basketball game, he could do it, and now we need to talk about management, a management plan and that knee.
It sounds like has.
Actually made some progress from the time he had surgery to the July the Olympics, and from July to now he is.
Not one hundred percent.
I don't know what the hell one hundred percent is supposed to be for Kawhi Leonard. Like I don't I personally don't think such a thing exists.
You know what I mean?
Like normal NBA players say that nobody's one hundred percent by time the playoffs hit, So like, what does that mean for Kawhi Leonard? So that multi part phase that the team is talking about that Kawhi has to hit certain bars to get to all right, Like, I'm gonna let them have that one. I'm not going to really get into what is supposed to be one hundred percent for Kawhi, But I just feel like this is their
management plan. Like he probably could go through training camp buses ass like he did last year in training camp, right, because that whole team was on another level for Camp Russ and you know, be ready to open the buildings start the season. And to be honest with you, we saw that shit from two years ago, like when they went to Las Vegas for training camp, and that training camp was to be polite about it, not serious, like, but they went to Vegas or camp, Kawhi was coming
back from his injury. Paul had a pretty bad year as far as availability. He was going to be healthy. They had the team that went forty two and forty with those guys missing either most or all of the season. And you know, Kawhi played what the first two games, right, first two out of three games, and then he goes to Oklahoma City, his knee flares up and you don't have him for three and a half weeks. That's what happened two years ago. I feel like the Cliffers are
trying to avoid that shit this year. Get him to a place where, oh shit, he's progressed, He's gotten the swelling down, and maybe they see a path where in a short term that swelling could be a thing where it's not there anymore. And then when he does debut, whether it's in the preseason, whether it's four weeks from today in the regular season, when the Sun's visit for the opener, we are all hoping that six weeks from today, when Paul George and the seventy six ers come, Kauhi
will be right. But I think their priority is get him to debut so that when he does debut, this doesn't recur again. If you want to believe that there's no such thing that Kawhi is always going to have this issue, That's kind of what I wrote today, like who am I to whom am I to say that that's not going to be, you know, a factor. But I think that's where the Clippers are at right now.
They just feel like he could do camp. How about they manage him so that he can just be ready to debut and stay on the floor when he's ready to be on the floor.
Here listening to Clippers talk, I'm Ada MAZLM. We got La Murray on Law and Adam Ay in the morning going on right now. Rama Street says they're just being cautious. Adam, you should relax, guys, we're talking about Kawhi Leonard. I have questions to ask. I'm trying to do my part here because I know a lot of Clipper Nation was frustrated with some of the comments coming out yesterday, just the lack of clarity and understanding exactly what's going on.
But I think Laws put it into good perspective here with you know there's ten games or so you'd have to play with Team USA. We're talking about getting ready for a season where there's eighty two games and then playoffs. And even though we know it's likely he's not going to be playing back to backs, that's still sixty six games and then hopefully you have them for the playoffs. So it's just a completely different I guess work tool
that would be expected on Kawhi Leonard. And so I think that's an interesting and good clarification law on that it sounds like. And this is something I kind of worried about back in April. It's just tricky to bandage inflammation code. It was Lawrence Frank who said yesterday it's tricky, and they're trying to figure out ways to do it. But they're also kind of learning as this goes along, and they have all the doctors you could ever want to be at Kawai's side for this and figure out
the best ways. But maybe they are just being so overly cautious as you kind of alluded to there with maybe Kauai could be doing more in training camp but why push things at all when right now the knee is in a good place where the swelling is almost gone, and it's not like a guy who's thirty three and has been in the league for sometimes really needs a ton of reps out there. So why do not you strengthen the knee? Does that make sense?
I mean that's part of it.
Like, again, the team and you know Kawhi, they're kindred spirits in this. We already we know the history of both, so we we obviously know that whatever they say pales in comparison to what they do and what actually happens. Okay, so when Kawhi gets on the floor is when everyone should take the hook to take them off the hook. And then Kawhi actually playing an extended stretch of games without something coming up, that's when you can quoe unquote relax.
But in the grand scheme of things, Yeah, like Kawi knows what he's doing. I think him being around getting mental reps, focusing on strengthening his knee, whatever the heck that dude needs to do so that when he actually debuts, Like, look at it from from this perspective, what you don't want to hear is he had a setback in October, and you know what, the setback can come, whether he's
playing or not. Like again, this injury has dominated the conversation with Kawhi for six months, the greater part of six months. You're not going to really believe anything until he actually gets on the damn floor. I do think you got to look at it from the whole team's perspective. They're not going to play eighty two games with Kawhi Leonard this season. If they play seventy, then that would be more than last year. Like sixty five is the
award cut off. We'll see exactly how that goes, especially if he doesn't play in back to back shich I'm not sure how they'll handle that yet. The team doesn't want to share how they'll handle that yet. That's a bridge that we'll have to have to cross when we get there. I obviously know that it's tough when you're entering a season and you're talking about a player who has to be handled with kids gloves from a physical perspective, But I do think and I don't want to keep
going with rose colored glasses and silver linings. I'm just being real here. You're going to play games without Kawhi Leonard. The team in needs to focus on are how they're going to play without Kawhi. Maybe their training camp is understanding that James Harden will be there and that all those dudes are going to have to play their ass off and play smart and play with a significantly decreased margin of error to.
Be competitive and win games.
And they're going to be focusing on that from the day one, starting training camp next week, and hey, Kawhi is going to be there, He's just not going to be in everything that the team is going to be doing. And maybe that's how they start the season knowing that if we got to play with Kawhi, they got to play way better without Kawhi than they did, especially two years ago.
Now I'm not expecting an answer on this, but I'll do my due diligence at least and ask this question for Stratos, who's wondering what the procedure was. Was a nice scope was to clean up I do think it's decent deduction by him if he was thinking about playing in the Olympics almost a month a month and a half after whenever the procedure happened in May, it couldn't have been anything too significant, and that is something Lawrence
Frank talked about that press conference regarding Team USA. If it was something significant, they would have reported it then. So do you have any clarity on what type of procedure if it was just clean up.
Yeah, it's a cleanup, one of those things where do you get it done in May? And like I said, by the end of June he was he was back doing basketball activities to basically give Team.
USA officials some level of.
Calm, like that he could be in training camp when the entire team got together in Vegas in July. So you know, we're not it's not like this was ACL surgery or anything like that, which we know we've been through that part already.
Like there are people I remember back in twenty twenty one.
People thought, oh, it's only a partial AC out there, like that was going to help anything Like.
The same surgery.
It's the same surgery, same timeline, you know, like you gotta repair that ligament. So we're not talking about a ligament that needed to be repaired. We're not talking about even in twenty twenty three when he tore his miniscus and you know he needed to repair that and was ready for training camp. And that's surgery again for a more serious injury. Probably that took later. He didn't get
that clean up until later in that off season. So again, it's the tough part about this is it's a recurring thing with his knee.
His right knee.
Qua's right knee has ruined his previous four NBA seasons. Okay, it's just if a guy suffers a sprain ankle every year Steph Curry for example, Right, I don't care how many years Steph play. Is Like after Steph had his third year ruined by the ankles, every year, you're you have in the back of your mind that dude you got to protect his ankles. Like Marcus Smart runs up on Curry's ankles two years ago in a regular season
game and Steve Kurr lost his shit. I mean a lot of that came from fear because you see your whole season flashing before you. So that's gonna be what it is with Kawhi's the unfortunately, like Kawhi's like, they're trying to make it so that they do with their part so that when he plays, he's playing then the games that matter and that he has the best chance of this not coming up, knowing that it might come up again.
I think part of the reason people talk about a lack of transparency with Kawhi the Clippers health stuff, Well, to me, law some of it is just what Lawrence Frank talked about yesterday when I don't know if you asked him or somebody asked him about playing in game one of the regular season, is like that, I don't have to see. Yeah, you asked him that, and basically he said, we have to see how he responds to the treatment, to the exercises, to the strength train of
the knee. How can you project something like that until you actually see how his knee responds. So I don't know. I don't know what people are asking for. Sometimes there is no crystal ball for this stuff. Kawhi doesn't know how his knee is going to respond, so how can the Clippers know how his knees going to respond? Is that fair?
Oh?
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely fair. It's it's tough, man, Like. The toughest part about it is, again we're dealing with a player who's chronically injured.
Like that's just what it is.
You know, you can't really get comfortable with this team, like, well, they could have told us nothing, which is close to what we get sometimes and like you're still going to be Like, man, I wonder if Kawhi is going to be all right going into camp, Like you know, I feel like they're basically saying, hey, look, Kawhi probably could have played, could have done everything next week, that's not the goal. They have different goals, Like we knew things were going to be weird this season as soon as
they were eliminated in the playoffs. I think own ask T Lou the night of Game six in Dallas about, you know, just managing Kawhi, like what are they going to do? And T Lou jokes, I'm going back to low management, and you know, like he's laughing.
But how can they blame them?
How could I blame them?
Exactly, Like you know, this is the low management.
Like I think that it would infuriate people on the other side of the coin if Kawhi.
Because he's stubborn and wants to play. And I've seen that again.
I was in Memphis when that dude played the first half of a front end of a back to back and no one when the team knew he wasn't going to play in the second half of the game, right, and then they go to New Orleans the next day. Kawhi kills it because he's strong enough to play in the back to back.
But the Clippers got they lose anyway.
That was literally April of twenty twenty three, and so it's the same shit. It's like, dude, if you let Kawhi do what he wants to do, runs rogue does everything in camp, something gets messed up, y'all gonna be upset about that shit too.
So you gotta protect players from themselves.
Players want to play exactly.
And like, like I said, I asked my question for a reason because I don't care about training camp and the preseason when it comes to Kawhi at this point, like, okay, cool, he's not doing whatever. Y'all holding him back, y'all restrict to them. Tell me when he's fighting, and they couldn't. We're not they're not committing to that, which again, it's not putting pressure on Kawhi. It's not putting pressure on the organization to say, hey, we said this and this
turned out. I look, I've been doing this for a long time. I get the coach speak, the front office speak, the group speak.
Whatever you want to call it.
I think what y'all all care about is when is that dude playing and how long and what shape and what condition is he in to sustain himself over the course of the regular season because you had to play regular season games that you can get to the playoffs. I think that's I think we can understand and agree to that.
Adam, Yeah, you can't just wait till March to play Kawhi because you won't make the playoffs if he doesn't play before that.
Yeah, So like that's my concern.
The needle that moves everybody since we're talking about this is when will Kawhi letter play? Answer that question for me and then we can go forward.
That's kind of what I said yesterday on the podcast. Somebody said, what's the Clippers ceiling in the standings this year? And I'm like, I don't know. Tell me how many games you got Kawhi playing, and I'll spit out a number of wins for you maybe. But since we don't know that, we can't know a lot of where this Clippers team is going to be at when it comes to a brutal Western Conference, which Lawrence Frank also talked
about yesterday. I know somebody here said hard and Ball to win fifty five games than Kawhi ball for the playoffs. Harden is not winning fifty five games without Kawhi Leonard. Even with them, guys, they won fifty one last season with Paul George out there and going on a twenty six and five run. That's not happening. Like, you better hope for forty five wins right now, and Kawhi can play close to sixty games and James Harden can give you sixty five plus. Let's be somewhat realistic about this.
Even Lawrence Frank was saying, you know, I got the Internet, I got the WWW. I have I've seen the Vegas odds for our team. He's not putting a cap on what they can do, but they also know what people are saying about them here. So I think we've exhausted the subject with Kawhi Leonard and there's not much else we can really dig into or know. But I appreciate all your reporting on kind of a murky, mysterious thing for a few years now. It's just the way it is.
It's more this way with Kawhi, but It's not that different to me with some other players in the NBA. I know Lakers fans have felt like this with Anthony Davis for some time. Teams are never going to give you everything. That is the way it is, that is between them and the players. Confidentiality stuff. It's not that simple. But we did get something, a real nugget yesterday from coach Lou talking about starting positions with an s plural being open when it comes to training camp competition. It
sounds like law. Correct me if I'm wrong, But it's not just Paul George's position that's gonna be up for grabs when it comes to competition and guys trying to win that slot, but also Terrence Man is not guaranteed to have that number two spot right next to James Hollard in the starting backcourd.
I mean sure, I wrote that in July, so well, you're no, absolutely not like no one should be surprised by that.
I felt like in July that.
You could lock in Harden Kawhi and if ship, you might as well open up three because if Kawhi is not ready.
To start the season, then someone's.
Got to start in his place, right and Harden and Zoo are locked in, and obviously when Kawhi is healthy, he's locked in. I felt like those other two spots are are are open because it's a matter of fit, who fits with who who fits the best. I think ideally you want Terrence and Dereck Jones to be those other two starters. For Derek, it just requires him just getting it with with TLU and and what he wants to do.
He has an easy job.
I think all Derek Junis has to do is show that he's the guy that they saw enough time to give him the deal that he got. So I think that one's pretty simple. I think the spot that's most up for grabs is Terrence's spot, and that to me makes sense. You're losing offense in Paul George more than you're losing his defense because of what Paul was in
position to do last year. So for me and I think we talked about this before, if Terrence scales up the way that I think he can, that the front office clearly thinks he can, and that TLU knows Terrence is capable of, then that gives the Clippers the best chance of doing what they've been doing the past couple of years, which is have enough defense in the starting lineup and let Norm cook when he gets into games, cook those second units like he's capable of doing. But
it's a competition, it's training camp. No one should be handed anything. That includes Derek Jones Jr. That includes Terrence Man, a guy who's trying to get a new content. Well I'm not sure if he's trying to get a new contract, but the Clippers sound like there, you want to give it to him, you know. So Norm has made his bones the last two years, especially two years ago, about wanting to be a starter. Well it's like Anthony Edwards talking about how they ain't no Kobe on Team USA,
like ain't no Paul George. So Norm is not going to be as content to come off the bench looking at who's on this team now then he might have been last year when there were three future Hall of Famers that it started lineup with a fourth on the way.
Harden wasn't even on the team. Yet.
There's just so much more touches and so much more shots that open up, and Norm is going to look everything I've seen from Norman this summer, that dude looks great. So Norman is going to give Terrence Man a real run for his money. Terrence Man should give Darry Jones Junior a real run for his money, because maybe you start Norman Terrence together. I don't see that happening. Because the team made a virile point about point of attack defense.
I think Chris Dunn might be in the competition because what Lawrence mentioned yesterday is that he's seen Chris Dunn play games this month and not only be the point of attack guy, an on ball guy because he's a point guard, but also play plenty off the ball and succeed off of that.
And guess what, that's a great fit next.
To James Harden because James is going to be on ball a lot, and Chris Dunn is one of those point guards who, yeah, he's a combo guard. He can play the one or he could play the two. So you should consider Chris Dunn as a part of the competition. A mere coffee. I know y'all want to disrespect the mirror, but a mere coffee was a starter two years ago,
not two years ago, three seasons ago. Now, when Paul George suffered his elbow injury, I would consider him to be in the mix of Kawhi Leonard has to miss real games. Niko Batoum. I know no one wants to see, including probably Nico. Nico probably doesn't want to start games, but I would consider him a part of the battle. I would consider Kobe Brown a part of the battle because Kobe Brown, unlike Nico and like PJ. Tucker, unlike
a mirror. To a certain extent, Kobe Brown is comfortable, more comfortable with the ball in his hands than he is with the ball not in his hands. If you look at his Missouri tape. One of the most intriguing things about Kobe Brown is that dude can run either end of a pick and roll. He can play in the post, he can play spaced out. He can play facing the basket and driving, putting the ball on the floor, making plays. We've seen two summer leads with Kobe Brown.
We know that he plays better when the ball is in his hands. More like if you're missing Kawhi Leonard, who literally is the first option on this team. If not, he's not going to beat the primary playmaker or the guy wh leaves the team in touches. But I've always
been saying Kobe Brown needs to touch the basketball. So he's to me in the mix to potentially replace Kawhi Kawhi Smiths time, it's gonna that's like what eight guys like, that's a lot of competition for what's really two and a half spots because again Kawhi status.
Let me bring up a guy you didn't bring up that Coach Lou brought up and had quite the confidence in. I thought this was interesting. I don't know if you've wrote about this. In July Law talking about KPJ. Quote, Coach Lou said for him for us to have success, he's gonna have to be a big part of that. Said he's gonna coach them hard, talked about how talented he is. I mean, how much in the mix is KPJ. And do you know anything yet about the NBA's investigation regarding his off the court issues.
Yeah, that investigation is still open, and that means that we don't know what's going to happen with Kevin yet. And I know I've had a talk often ever since Kevin got signed about two things. One Kevin Porter Junior's transgressions from the past that led him to not play in the league last year. That's been the number one topic of conversation for me, and I don't want to lose track of at like you know, I mean, Kevin and I got a chance to catch up the end of August.
So, like we all know what it is like.
We needed to be able, especially as men, to be able to talk about things and hold certain things accountable. And so that is going to be my number one thing, not to harp on it or to pick on them. I think that's like y'all need to not be ignorant about stuff like this, Like we need to just be accountable. So that's number one. And because of number one, everything that he has from a talent standpoint is going to
be curved by their consequences of what has already happened. Yes, he got a twenty million a year deal from Houston, and a year later Houston traded him so that someone else could wave him because they weren't they didn't even want to see the legal play out the way the way.
That it wound up playing out, and.
So the consequences and so the consequences are Yes, I know, Kevin is is literally the kind of on ball talent as far as what he is capable of from a load perspective, that James Hardin is. Literally that's exactly how Houston used him. We ain't got to talk about the ineffectiveness of that offense, but from a touchstandpoint, from a can you run all these picking rolls? These ISOs, Kevin
is literally a dollar store version of James Harden. Now, when is that guy going to be able to play with his teammates outside of a training camp setting, outside of a pickup basketball setting. If we saw Josh Primo get signed by the Clippers literally the friday before training camp began last year, the NBA did decided they were
going to suspend Primo for four games. And what that four game suspension did was not only did it eliminate Primo from playing the first week of the NBA season last year, but it also took Primo out of all
of the preseason games as well. And so any NBA suspension that gets handed down to Kevin, not only does that potentially take him out of the first week of the season, but it also means he's ineligible to even be in the building for preseason games when you're talking about competition for minutes and you have established guys already. We again just talked about a whole bunch of dudes that either were on a team last year or played significant NBA minutes last year. Not that Kevin got any
of that last year. Right, We're talking about a team that wants to win, already has guys, already has stars, and already has guys that they brought into a higher commitment than Kevin. So Kevin's going to get a chance, especially if Kawhi's you know, not right, Especially if James isn't right, Kevin's going to get a real chance.
T Louz looking forward to coaching him.
That guy has a real ability to get his and he has experienced making place for others, and he has size at the guard position. I just question when that opportunity will come for Kevin. I can tell you it will come, but to begin the season week one.
If he gets suspended, then he's behind it.
If he's not eligible to play, what are we talking about?
You know what I'm saying, And then other guys are establishing roles already, and then he has to get past them somehow while being implemented as the season has already started. That's just not easy to do. But obviously coach lou is a fan of his game and was to coach
him and that is exciting. Quickly, before we get out of here, law the identity of this team, We've talked about it a lot during the summer, but we knew that they were leaning into defense immediately when they brought in Derek Jones Junior, right after they were about to lose Paul George, or at least when they released that statement saying they were no longer negotiating with him. They tipped their hand or they showed their hand right then, and then Chris Dunn and then Niko Batoom is back.
Are you buying in because coach Lou said, Oh, We're gonna have an identity this year. Because I've asked the last couple of years, what's their identity? What is it? It seems like they know that it's been kind of obscure, it's been vague, and now they need to have something more defined. Is it going to develop this time into that defense of mentality?
I feel like they had a damn identity these last couple of years, or an ISO heavy team, which I asked about, Yes it is.
Well.
I was like, tlu y'all were dead last and passes for a game yard dead last they and TLU said, yep, they're They've been talking about that part of things.
Right, more dancing the ball, playing faster.
Yeah, like all the things that you have to do to compensate for the fact that, unlike last year especially, you don't have talent margin to fall off of. When you have offensive talent, you can be lax with the other shit getting back on defense, second chance points and turnovers, just possession battle in general, like the defense in general. Like they basically could be league average in those categories because their offense was so overpowering.
They don't have that this year, bro.
Like, So, yes, they have the coaching, they have the personnel, and guess what, they have significantly diminished star power.
They're going to be better defensively because they had to be. I go back to two years ago or three seasons ago.
I'm sorry, I gotta remember it's twenty twenty four and we're already into this next season, coming.
Up to year two season.
Listen, that season, the Clippers were one of the least talented teams in basketball. I saw it with my own eyes. I was at eighty one at eighty two games. The one game that I didn't go to in the arena they played in Toronto, and I was in a hotel in Brooklyn, not getting COVID like T Lou was. So I saw every damn game up close and saw how stress they were when they had to make comebacks, when they were getting when the starting lineup was getting completely smacked.
Okay, jokers out here saying Terrence Man hasn't improved yet.
Terrence Man plays every damn game and is running one of the best second units in the league.
That year.
I digress like this team will be better defensively because they have to be teams defend their ass off when they know it's the difference between winning and losing. A lot of times, the Clippers defense last year wasn't the difference between winning and losing. It was just a difference between whether they blow you out or not. It's different
this year, so you know. And the Clippers always talked about how they liked their half court defense, but they gave up too many second chance opportunities and they got smoked in transition. No matter which guards were playing last year. Now they have different they have different personnel, they have different urgencies, different priorities. I still don't think they're going
to be a good rebounding team. But the fact that Lawrence and t Lou we're so adamant about how everyone needs to be better on the glass tells you that if guys don't rebound, they're going to sit on the bench. And I can't wait to see how that actually gets implemented this season.
You've made an interesting point there. You're right, it's not that they didn't have an identity, yet I've poorly phrased that is that how often do they enforce their identity on a night to night basis. That's the inconsistency part of this team I feel like we've seen over the past couple of seasons. But I hope that's gonna change because defense travels in the NBA as well as football, and if they got that every night, you got a
chance to win ball games. And that team from the twenty one to twenty two season did have a sense of urgency because they knew they had to play hard every night. And I think we are going to see that this year. They ain't gonna be seventeenth defensively this year. They got to be at least top ten. I think they need to be top eight if they want to be in the top six in playoff ceding in the Western Conference quickly low Since I I think I asked this earlier in the show or off the air, somebody
asked me about sealing with this team. Are you feeling any different about it? Or is it still just come down to Well, like I said, tell me how many games Kawhi is playing? If I tell you he's playing fifty plus games and James Harden's at sixty five plus, where do you think this team can land o?
No?
Man, shit? How many?
How many games Lebron playing this year? How many games John Morant playing this year? How many games Zion Wimson playing this year?
So, yeah, it's two things.
Things are not entirely new to me.
It's new that we know that he's not going to be a full participant in training camp. But if you were concerned about Kawhi before, your fears are validated. If you if you were comfortable with Kawhi, you got to remind him not to be comfortable. If you thought Kawhi was playing eighty games this year, you will fool. So you know, got your license. We'll see Monday, when Kawhi actually speaks.
We will be there at Media Day Monday into it Dome. He is the great law Murray again, follow him on x at La Murray and you and if you aren't subscribed to The Athletic, if you aren't reading him there, then don't even watch my videos. Don't because you're not gonna understand everything I'm talking about. Because I often quote La Murray, I am talking about things he's reporting on. I'm stealing some of his analysis. You hear how good
he is here. The first thing I wants you to do after you're done with this show is go to The Athletic and read his new article Clippers on Kawhi Leonard. Watch again on Kawhi Leonard, Watch again, Team Navigates stars Bulky Knee before the season. Read and support our local media and that includes La Murray of the Athletic. Wow, thanks for doing this today. A little early show. I feel like it's later in the day now. Just threw
everything off for me. So uh the breakfast, Uh maybe I need to eat some Sorry, mind myself what time it is?
So man, you get yourself some French toasts and have fun with Fred Rogan.
All right, French toast for Niko buttomb Let's gol. Thanks for doing this all right, take care. This has been another edition of Clippers Talk for lat Murray. I'm Adam Oslin. We'll talk to you next time.