LA Clippers’ 11-Man Rotation GAMBLE: Brilliant Strategy or Recipe for Disaster?

LA Clippers’ 11-Man Rotation GAMBLE: Brilliant Strategy or Recipe for Disaster?

On today’s show, what does our roster look like with these 11 players in place? Going to be talking about all the rotation possibilities on today’s Locked On Clippers. [Music] You are Locked on Clippers, your daily Los Angeles Clippers podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network. your team every day. Yes, sir. You are locking in with the Clips. Thank you for making Locked On Clippers the first listen of your day. Your team every day. I’m your host, Darian Vizeri. Born and raised in LA. Been a Clipper fan for 20 years. Been covering the team for five on my own YouTube channel Dimeropper and three right here on the Locked On Network. Your team every day. Make sure you subscribe on YouTube and hit the notification bell and listen wherever you get your podcast. This episode is also brought to you by Game Time. Game time is the best place to get great deals last minute on tickets. Just download the Game Time app. Create an account and use code locked on NBA for $20 off your first purchase. All right, so in this episode, we’re going to be talking about what we now look like with these 11 players, what we look like with the man down, depending on who that guy is, and then what we look like with multiple guys out. So, I always believe that rotations throughout the NBA season should be about 10 guys. 10 guys during the regular season. You shrink that rotation to about eight or nine in the postseason. Last season, we made a consolidation trade with Terrence man going out the door and then we brought in Bogey. We also got rid of Kevin Porter Jr. So, we kind of shrunk that second unit down, picked up Ben Simmons. So, in the playoffs last year, in addition to our starting lineup of Harden, Norm, Dunn, Zoo, and Kawaii, off the bench, we had Ben Simmons, Bogey, Derek, and Nico. So, nine guys, nine guys that played throughout the year. And then before we had KPJ instead of Simmons, Terrence man instead of Bogey, and then Amir Coffee, which made 10, but it was pretty consistent. And then some games we played our small ball big, but Kawhai was out so we could put our small or not not small ball big, our backup center in Mo Bomba, and that was 10 guys. So we had a pretty like we weren’t the deepest team last year. We weren’t we really leaned into Norm James Hard and Eva Zubots and they came through for us with some really solid role players around them. But now we have an offseason where Kawhi Leonard’s going into it healthy. We’re going to have Kawhai from day one barring any setback. So fully healthy. We have 11 rotation players. And Lawrence Frank talked about rule awareness. I talked, check out the last episode where I went in depth about Lawrence Frank’s comments at the post beal and post Chris Paul media availabilities that he did. He said, “We usually play nine 10 guys.” And he said, “We usually play nine, but a rotation is typically nine or 10. We have 11.” And he said 11, so there’s going to be some, you know, people got to buy in. He said about Chris Paul, some nights he’s going to play a lot, some nights he will not. That didn’t imply that he’s not going to play at all, though. And here’s my question. If we’re fully healthy, is Tailoo going to play 11 guys? Cuz that’s going to be tough to navigate. It’s going to be tough for guys to get a rhythm. It’s going to be tough tough to optimize the best lineups with 11 dudes, and someone’s going to feel slighted playing very few minutes. Now, of course, throughout the regular season, there aren’t going to be many nights, I don’t think, and I hope I’m wrong, but aren’t going to be many nights where we’re fully healthy with all 11 of those guys, but we want to be in the playoffs, right? We put the team together with the idea that hopefully all these guys are healthy. Who catches a DNP? Let’s just talk about that because if it’s 11 guys, man, if Tailoo can manage that and everybody stays happy and everybody can stay in a rhythm, by all means, like he’s amazing. But I just don’t think it’s possible. You know, Bugdanovich, how many minutes are you fitting with these 11 guys? You know, Bogdanovich is not going to be in a rhythm playing 11 minutes a night. You know what I’m saying? That’s not going to work. Chris Paul is going to play 10 minutes. I honestly think Chris, so that’s why we should talk about this. But it’s hard to just fit minutes in with all these guys, truthfully. So, let’s say we shrink that rotation, make it a 10-man rotation. Who catches a DNP? Well, let’s remove the guys that are automatically never catching DNPs if healthy. Kawhi Leonard, James Harden, Zoo, Beal, John Collins, Chris Dunn, Derek Jones Jr. That makes seven. The four remainer remaining guys are Nico, honestly, Brook Lopez, like I don’t see any scenario where he would be catching DNPs. I know Tyoo loves his small ball, but really? So, let’s just add Brook Lopez into the mix. So, there’s three guys in consideration for a DNP. There’s Bogey, Chris Paul, and Nico Batum. I think the consensus when you ask most people who do you feel most comfortable with in the playoffs out of those three, the guy with the least amount of votes would be Bogdan Bogdanovich because of the way he played in the postseason last year. You know, he was and I like Bogey. He had a great run when he was traded to us, especially to end that season in that 18 and3 stretch we had. But in the playoffs, he averaged six points and shot 36% from the field and 29% from three and was not able to guard without fouling in the games in Denver. But he’s making $16 million a year and he he is a lot better fit with James Harden on the court being able to play off ball and work quickly off the catch than say a Chris Paul. And we know how much Tyoo likes his shooting even though we brought in Bradley Beal and playmaking. We brought in Bradley Beal. Okay, so now you got Bradley Beal instead of Norm Harden and Kawawaii. You might want another guy that can spread the floor because Chris Dunn and Dererick Jones Jr. aren’t reliable. And of course, Brook Lopez can spread it, but he’s a big I don’t know if Bogei’s catching DNPs. I think it comes down to Nicholas Batum and Chris Paul. And here’s the thing that scares me. You can argue it’s matchup dependent. That’s what everybody loves to say. It’s matchup dependent when we’re talking about a 10th and 11th man in a rotation of the regular season. Matchup dependent. Like it’s not the playoffs. Like I don’t know how much you’re going to be adjusting game to game with your 10th or 11th guy. There’s no situation to me where Nico Batum should not be playing if he’s healthy. He can switch. He can guard fives that can’t post up. He can spread the floor. He’s a very high IQ player. The ball doesn’t stick in his hands. He’s got great length and size. What else do you want? You know what I’m saying? For like a eighth or ninth man or tenth man. And then, but this is what scares me a little bit. Tailoo loves playmaking. Chris Paul catching DNPs. I still I know he’s here with his family and I know what Lawrence has said and I have said that I believe that he will. If there’s any situation in which he will be okay catching DNPs, it’s this situation back here with the clips. But is he really catching DNPs? The moral of the story is when fully healthy, I think it’s going to come down to Chris and Nico and it’s all on Tailoo. How can he manage this? Can he play 11 guys? Cuz when it comes to the playoffs, we’re going to have 82 games of sample size. Who knows if all these guys are even going to be on our team. So, it’s not worth it talking about the playoffs right now. But when fully healthy, and we want to be fully healthy. We don’t want a 2023 situation. And I’m definitely going to do an episode on if we have too much depth. But the reality is it all comes down to Tailoo. All of it to manage these and the coaching staff. So the coaching staff, not just Tailoo, but he’s the one that’s going to be making the final call. Like my my thing is, do they always think that we’re going to need Chris Paul because he’s such so good at what he does? You know, when when Harden’s out of the game, having Chris Paul is great. Unless you know what I you can go with what I was saying before we got Chris Paul which is Bradley Beal runs the second unit and if you stagger Kawawaii and Harden you’ll have Kawhai out there so you have enough offense and you have Lopez spreading the floor but there’s a lot of possibilities lineup wise and we’ll spend episodes talking about that as well but coming up going to be talking about what we look like with a man down and we’re going to talk about who that man could All right, so the Clippers have one of the deepest teams in the league. I think we got to talk about if we do have the deepest on another episode. So many episodes just coming to my mind. It’s crazy. But let’s talk about when we’re a man down. And when you talk about the LA Clippers and you talk about them being a man down, there is one name of course that’s going to come up before anyone else and that’s Kawhai. So, Kawhi Leonard, who played 37 games last year for us, again, as I’ve mentioned in this show, this is the first off season that he’s entered healthy since the 2020 offseason. And we all know what happened next. AllNBA season we made it to the conference finals for the only time in franchise history and in large part due to his masterclass first round against the Dallas Mavericks and a great games three and four to bounce back from a two nothing deficit against the Jazz. If Kawhi Leonard misses a game, I honestly think it makes Tyoo’s job a lot easier. He now has 10 guys that can play. You start with James, you start with Brad, you start with Derek, you start with John, or you can go with Chris. I prefer Derek just because the size and the athleticism and we’re going to have some shooting out there. But you know what? Since we have Beal, maybe you can go with Chris. I prefer Derrick, so let’s just go with Derek. but it’s interchangeable. And then you have Collins and Zoo. That lineup can defend. You have a point of attack guy. You have two guys that can protect the rim with Jon as a helpside defender and Zoo as an interior presence. You have two guys that are kind of questionable on defense. I would say one is much more questionable than the other. Of course, Harden, but we’ve seen Harden lock in throughout regular seasons, last year being one, that he can be a solid defender, decent. He can be average. And if you’re the one average defender and everybody else is good, you can have a good defense. And I would say James Harden has had good games defensively last season, too. I’m not just saying that he’s average at best every night. I’m saying average at best throughout the course of the season on average, but that makes his job easier. And then off the bench, we have the whichever one of Chris Dunn or Derek that we’re not starting. Bogey CP3. For size purposes, I might have to start Chris Dunn and then we bring Derek off the bench. But we have Nico and Brook Lopez. You can It’s interchangeable, but that’s a really solid five. I mean, the Chris Paul, Brook Lopez pick and pops. Just give them one or two other threats. If you’re talking Bogey and Nico, I mean, that’s a lineup that I think could provide five or six good minutes against highlevel competition even with Kawhi Leonard and James Harden or and if it’s a Zubots and Bradley Beal, all not in the game. Like I genuinely believe you get Chris Paul Bogey and one other point of attack guy Derek or Chris Nico who’s another guy that can guard point of attack and Brook Lopez because Chris is not not going to not try on defense especially when he’s getting less minutes. Bogey he’s okay. But we can literally run with that. We can literally run with that. So when we have a So then let’s go to by the way like a team of that quality because now we have Beal. He can get buckets when Kawhai’s out and then we can just lean more into Zoo. I just think the problem is we have so many options, so many possibilities. I just hope that we get whatever the fully healthy version of this team is. We find an identity with those guys cuz I see that we’re prepared for anything in the regular season. We clearly want to be a top three seed and last year’s team was never in a position to get a top four seed. Yet, we did get a top five seed, got the fifth seed. But now we have that team plus Kawhi Leonard coming back and we have insurance just in case the two guys that if they had gotten injured we would have been screwed. Ivita Zubat and James Harden now have a backup that is starting as ear as recently as last season in Brook Lopez and Chris Paul. So let’s say we have James Harden missing a game, right? This this season is what 2021 or 2023 should have been. Let’s put it that way. Except Kawhi Leonard and James Harden or Kawhi Leonard and Paul George were younger. So, I still had more belief in them. Like last year, Kawhi Leonard in the playoffs, he gave me belief that we could win a series, but to go all the way, I think he’s going to need to get more shots up and create more easy baskets for himself and others. And I don’t know if he has the stamina and the legs to do it for four series. Not for one series or two, for four. That’s my opinion. Doesn’t mean I’m He can still prove me wrong. It’s not like his career is over. But that’s just my opinion as an honest Clipper fan, but most mostly as a basketball watcher, right? It’s not because I’m just because I’m a Clipper fan. I ignore my actual opinion. But we are positioned that whoever misses a game, we have the depth to supplement them and still win regular season games. We didn’t We tried to do that in 2023 and we failed miserably cuz Reggie Jackson and Marcus Morris truthfully just fell off a cliff. We didn’t have a third star caliber player in 2023 and you can argue we have one now in Vit Zubots and Bradley Beiel. So let’s say that James misses a game. Simple fix. Hey CP3 Chris Brad Kawawaii John Zoo off the bench bogey. uh Chris, Derek, Nico Lopez. You’re definitely not going to be able to play all five of those guys at once, though. You’re probably going to have to stagger. And that’s what makes it a little complicated in terms of minutes even with 10 guys cuz you’re going to have to leave in I just don’t think that you’re going to leave have to leave in one of Brad or Kawawaii I think in each unit or at least one of Brad Kawhai or Chris Paul because let’s say you have CP3 one of the point of attack guys. See, that’s my thing about both point of attack guys coming off the bench is now you’re pairing them together a lot or not a lot necessarily, but frequently it’s kind of weird. It’s going to hurt the shooting in those lineups cuz if you don’t stagger, you’re going to have Chris Paul playing with two guys that aren’t shooters and then Brook Lopez and then say Nico or Bogey. If it’s Bogey, I just don’t know about those lineups. Chris, Paul, Bogey, Chris Dunn, Nico, and Lopez. I mean, that could work against bad teams, but I don’t know about against good teams. So, when Harden’s out, it gives Tailoo like you got to think about what you want to do. You got to think about what you want to do. I assume Chris Paul’s going to slot right into the starting lineup. And you still have Beal, Kawhai, Collins, and Zoo. Then, who’s running your second unit? You got to leave in one of Chris or Beal. I assume I’d assume. I’d think Beal. So then you run with Beal, Bogey, you still have a play 11 guys. So it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge. Then with Beal’s out that then we get the lineup that I think would be the best, which is Harden, Chris Dunn, or Derek. One of the two. I’m just going with Derek. Harden, Derek, Kawhai, Collins, and Zoo. Some might argue there’s not enough ball handling, so let’s just put Chris Dunn in there. And then off the bench you have Chris, Bogey, Nico, Derek, and Lopez, which is a really solid unit in my opinion. You have the shooting of Nico. You got Brook Lopez with that pick and pop with Chris Paul, which is going to make his life a lot easier. But if I’m a team, what I would do if I’m playing against the Clippers and we have Dunn and Derrick Jones out there with Chris Paul, Brook Lopez, and then say you can throw in Bogey or Nico. What I would do when Chris Paul and Brook Lopez run pick and pops is I would stay attached to Lopez if I’m the center and then whoever’s guarding Dunn or Derek Jones in the corner come wall off Chris Paul’s right elbow mid-range and so then they force him to pass to them and whoever is guarding Nico will play twoon-one on the backside on the opposite baseline. So you’re going to leave those guys open for three. That’s what I would do completely take. So, it’s not like Chris Paul and Brook Lopez’s pick and pop is going to be so lethal that it makes Derrick Jones Jr. and Chris Dunn’s lack of shooting like it’s going to it’s going to hide that. It’s not going to hide that because teams are going to give that up if they have they’re both out there. It becomes harder with only one of them out there. So, that’s why I think it makes the most sense for Beiel to come off the bench, but it doesn’t it’s not going to happen. So when Beal’s out, our job becomes a lot easier because we have one of those point of attack guys in a lineup. And then we have CP3, Bogey, Nico Lopez, and Derek Jones coming off the bench, which I think is a really solid lineup that has plenty of shooting and can spare James Harden for a couple of minutes. But if you really want to, you can just get Yeah, you can really you can stagger Kawawaii and Harden and you can play 11 guys. No, I’m sorry. Not play 11 guys, but you’re just going to have to mix up. You can’t just go a total bench like all five guys off the bench. You’re just going to have to space it out a little bit. But yeah, again, it’s just a lot of decisions for Tai. But I think if we’re a man down, we’re perfectly set up. Now coming up, what if we’re multiple guys out? Does that presume any uh does that provide any challenges? Going to be talking about that coming up. All right, so the Clippers, one of the deepest teams in the league, have 11 legit options that can play for them. Now, here’s the thing. I keep talking about what if everyone’s healthy? What if one guy’s out? And people are going to say, “Dime, we’re gonna have multiple guys out some nights.” Well, let’s talk about that. So, let’s say we’re missing multiple guys, two guys. Doesn’t matter who they are. You got nine guys. We have so much versatility. So much versatility. Let’s say you’re missing Harden and Kawaii. All right, I got a lineup for you. CB3, Brad Beal, Derek Jones, John Collins, Zoo. That’s it. That lineup can get buckets. We still have Chris, Paul, Beal, and Zoo. And then off the bench, Bogey, Nico, Lopez, and Chris Dunn. That’s not a terrible team. That’s not going to make the playin if if that was a team the whole season, but for a given game, that team is pretty good. That and that’s our two best players out. You know, I could do all those kind of combinations. Let’s say we miss one point of attack guy and James Harden. play those nine guys. You have to lean more in the Nico. Maybe more size with Collins and Zoo. We still have the shot creation with CB3 and Kawhai. And it’s like we just have so many options. Now, if we’re missing three guys, depending on if it’s a if it’s a guard, I say we play Cam Christie. If it’s John Collins, Zoo Lopez is one of the guys out, I think, or two of those, we play Kobe Brown. But that’s as far as we go. And then if we miss to me, to be honest, if if one of Lopez or Zoo is out, I don’t think or I think Tai’s just going to go small because we have the ability to go small with Collins at a small ball five or Nico or Kawawaii or all three of them in one lineup. Like he’s got so much flexibility. Lawrence Frank gave Tailoo a great roster. The coaching staff has a great roster. They got to make it work now. But I don’t see many situations where Yannik would be playing. Unless it’s one of the bigs out and we only have eight players, then I think Yannik. But Kobe Sanders, Patrick Baldwin, like I don’t see it. Unless we’re like load managing everyone. We’re doing one of those scheduled losses, which I hate that term, but yeah, we have options. No matter what situation, it just comes down to Ty Louu managing those options. In the next episode, I’m going to be talking about like how I think what I think about our starting lineup and then our bench mob. Should we stagger Kawawaii and Harden? Should we stagger the point of attack guys? And then I’m going to give a bunch of lineup options like when we’re healthy, we can go defense first. You know, options besides the starting lineup. We can go defense first. We can go smaller. We can go the lineup that I like starting which I talked about which was you know Zoo Harden and Kawawaii Collins and one of DJ or Chris Dunn. We can do a switch everything all offense kind of lineup which is Beal Harden and Kawawaii Zoo plus Nico. We have just a bunch of shooting out there and still have a bunch of size. Or we could even replace Nico with Bogey but I wouldn’t want to have Bogey Beal and Harden. just brain dead in my opinion. Uh Nico would be the would be the guy. And then you can go ultra small ball with Collins at the five with Nico and Kawhai like I just mentioned and then Dererick and Harden which would still not be that small or we can use Beal instead of Harden there. Like we have so many options. So I’m going to do an episode just talking about all those possibilities because we it’s just the depth is crazy. It’s just a matter of managing it. And as I’ve repeated like a broken record in this episode, it’s going to come down to the coaching staff. you like and also the players. Every championship team has some level of sacrifice. Now, I know I’m on record saying that I don’t believe we’re a championship team, but that has nothing to do with like the the quality of the team. It’s more my faith in the guys at the top, as I’ve mentioned over and over. But from a team perspective on the inside, there’s no reason that they shouldn’t be believing that this is a championship roster, that this isn’t a championship roster. This is a very good team of 11 quality NBA players that all serve a specific purpose and can play a specific role. Everything starts at the top. It all comes down to Kawaii. But in terms of regular season, you won 50 games last year. You should be getting at least 52 wins this year. Remember, I’m not going to do 60. I did that in 2023 and I look like a clown. So, I need 52 wins minimum. Minimum. That’s my take. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram, DimeDropperPod. Subscribe to my own YouTube channel, Dimeropper, for even more LA Clipper, LA Sports, and NBA playoff content. I’m continuing to release NBA playoff content for the other series that weren’t LA because I didn’t do them because I was moving so much. So, I’m releasing those for people as well if they’re interested in what I was saying about playoff games or other teams cuz on this channel, it’s all Clippers. And of course, we’re on the road to 8,000 subscribers. I see the support recently, ladies and gentlemen, and I’m very appreciative of it all. Keep it coming. Let’s get to 8K before the season starts. And yeah, that’s all I got to say. Have a great weekend, everybody. The age old proverb continues. Go Clippers.

LA Clippers’ Roster Puzzle: Can Ty Lue Solve the 11-Man Rotation Riddle?

Die hard Los Angeles Clippers fan and Host Darian Vaziri breaks down the Clippers’ loaded lineup, exploring how coach Ty Lue might juggle minutes for stars like Kawhi Leonard, James Harden, and Bradley Beal. The discussion covers potential starting fives, injury scenarios, and the challenge of keeping 11 rotation-quality players happy. Vaziri analyzes how the Clippers’ depth could be both a blessing and a curse, offering insights on Chris Paul’s role and the team’s improved flexibility compared to previous seasons.

Tune in to discover if the Clippers’ star-studded roster can translate into a deep playoff run and a minimum of 52 wins this season.

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