Defense Ramping Up Early On Road Trip

Rowan Kavner

MIAMI – With point totals of 114 and 110 in the first two wins of the road trip, it’s easy to forget about the other side of the court.

The Clippers have gotten out in transition thanks to a better effort defensively, holding the Magic to 90 points and the Heat to 93 points the last two games. A Clippers team that entered the road trip allowing more than 100 points per game surrendered just 15 points to the Heat after one quarter and 40 points at the half.

”It’s funny, everyone at halftime was talking about the offense,” said head coach Doc Rivers. “I said ‘Guys, they had 15 points in the first quarter. It was our defense. Our defense gets stops. When we get multiple stops, we get in the fast break, we move the ball, we share the ball and we’re a different team.

“I thought the key was we keep getting defensive stops, and it allowed us to play the way we like to play. The only way you can do that is by rebounding and getting stops.”

The Clippers held the Magic to 39.5 percent shooting and the Heat to 44 percent shooting and 23 percent shooting from 3-point range. The Heat’s 44 percent shooting mark could be deceiving, with many of those buckets coming with the game already wrapped up. The Clippers held the Heat to just 38 percent shooting in the first half.

That allowed the Clippers to get out in transition and find the open man for easy buckets, compiling 20 more assists than the Heat.

“We’re doing what we’re supposed to,” said guard Chris Paul. “The biggest thing for us is defending. Even when they were scoring, we were getting the ball out quicker, playing with a faster tempo. A lot of that’s on me.”

The defensive prowess the first two games of the road trip comes from a Clippers team that was allowing teams to shoot 50 percent through the first few games of the year. That number’s steadily decreased, but prior to the Heat game, they were still allowing opponents to shoot 45.7 percent from the field and 36.1 percent from 3-point range.

Thursday against the Heat, they forced Miami to go 6-of-26 from deep. The game prior, they held the Magic to 33 percent shooting from behind the arc.

That’s led to more rebounds, more fast breaks and more opportunities in the lane. The Clippers scored 44 points in the paint against the Heat to bring their average to the season up to 35.6 points in the paint per game.

“One of our biggest issues is we’ve been playing so slow,” Paul said. “Part of that’s because we’ve been taking the ball out of the net so much. I think we’re one of those teams, like most teams, our offense and defense is connected.”

While the defensive effort was better, forward Blake Griffin isn’t yet satisfied, and he admitted the Heat missed a lot of open shots. But the last two games provide a better example of how the Clippers’ defense can get them in transition and looking more like last year’s playoff squad.

“We were good, but we weren’t great,” Griffin said. “We can be better than that. I think we all know that, but you saw like we talked about, defense leads to offense for us and really gets us going and gets us that confidence.”

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