This is a team that doesn't know what it is. And there is little evidence that Vinny Del Negro, the person in charge with forging the Clippers' identity, has the imagination and direction to cultivate one...The offense still relies on the simple diet of high ball-screens with Paul and Blake Griffin, isolations for Griffin and, of course, Paul's magical improvisation with the ball when things get hairy. The Clippers rarely go to counters, secondary actions or misdirection. In-game adjustments are far and few between...Opponents are now prepared for that pick-and-roll, and back-line defenders are ready to rotate to Griffin when there's even the hint of a dive or a spin to the hoop. After a confounding loss to Phoenix recently, Del Negro confessed that the team's fourth-quarter offense was predictable and disorganized. Players have confirmed as much.
The defense has yet to climb out of the bottom third of the league statistically and lacks bite. Rarely does a big man jump out aggressively on a ball handler and force the action to the sideline. Whether that's by design or by nature, opponents with refined offensive game plans are having their way with the Clippers' defense. Aware that the Clippers primarily use a "flat" coverage to guard pick-and-rolls, penetrators attack the team from the get-go, scrambling the Clippers' base defense and wreaking havoc with rotations. After that, it's a sampler platter of options that includes wide-open 3-pointers, baseline duck-ins, or mismatches gone bad.
...Paul...must unilaterally manufacture a game plan. Time and again, Paul cruises through the first three quarters of a ballgame, well aware that if he doesn't pace himself, the Clippers are likely doomed in the fourth. That's because the Clippers don't have a fourth-quarter offense so much as they have a fourth-quarter offender -- Christopher Emmanuel Paul. Many of the Clippers' wins feel like found money -- games won spontaneously, but not methodically...Del Negro has never claimed to be a strategist. He maintains that every team in the league runs the same basic stuff, and feels that giving players the freedom and confidence to work their strengths is his primary responsibility as coach...Right now, the Clippers need...someone who can compose a symphony with his last 10 play calls of the game, someone who can devise sets that take into account a game's rhythms and themes.