Which LA Clippers Have To Sacrifice THE MOST?

Which LA Clippers Have To Sacrifice THE MOST?

On today’s show, I’m going to let you know which Clippers are going to have to sacrifice the most this season with such a stacked roster. Going to be talking about it all on today’s Locked On Clippers. You are Locked on Clippers, your daily Los Angeles Clippers podcast, part of the Locked On 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 and hit the notification bell on YouTube and listen wherever you get your podcast. This episode is 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. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about which players have to sacrifice the most. And we’re going to be talking about all the rotation players and looking at them and their situations, but I’ve gone with Chris Paul, James Hard, and Brad Beal. So before I continue, I just want to say I feel like it is a point I should announce every time it happens because everybody always wonders since I’m the youngest locked on host. How old are you? Well, I just turned 27. So one step closer to 30 years old. 27, man. Crazy. Still the youngest locked on host though. I’ll take pride in that. But anyway, let’s talk about who I believe actually has to sacrifice the most. And I believe it’s going to be Chris Paul. And the reason why I say that is because if you look at Chris Paul’s entire career up until the 2023 24 season with Golden State, he was a starting point guard and basically an all-star caliber point guard every single year of his career from 0708 on. So playing for Golden State was a different experience for him. You know, coming off the bench, not having that same kind of a role. And then last year he goes to San Antonio and it was the first time we had kind of seen Chris Paul go somewhere where we’re like, “Oh, they don’t really have a chance to win a championship. They’re not even a competitor, but he could start every game.” So remember what he said when he had that sit down with Tony Parker that I mentioned before we got him. He said if he’s not going to be at home with his family, he wants to be starting. He wants to be playing. So going to San Antonio, he started all 82 games, but bringing him in for this Clippers team, we’ve talked about and Lawrence Frank talked about Chris will be in a reserve role. Now, we don’t know if that means just a bench role or if that means like a third string role or plays only when we have load management or injuries because as I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions and episodes, we have 11 players. So, the reason why I say Chris Paul is going to be the biggest one to sacrifice is from what we’ve been told or not told but kind of what what’s been going around is that Chris Paul might not play some games. This hasn’t come from the organization or anything like that. It’s just kind of fan speculation based on what we’re hearing cuz if everybody is healthy, it’s going to be extremely difficult for Tai to balance 11 guys playing, right? So, especially when I did the like lineup combinations thing and we realized we can’t really go total bench with the unit that we have on the bench right now. When I say total bench, I mean all bench players with no starters. We would probably have to stagger one of Kawhai, Harden or Beal at all times, which again would make it hard to play everybody and give them ample minutes. So my guess is that Chris Paul some nights might not play and for him that’s going to be the biggest sacrifice of his career and a sacrifice in which he I believe will make because he’s back with his family. Even if he catches a DMP, he will probably be told he’s catching a DMP. He gets to be a leader on the bench and then he gets to go home to his to his wife and his kids, which he hasn’t been able to do consistently in years. So, for me, Chris Paul has to sacrifice the most cuz he’s might be catching DNPs. He’s really, and I’ve mentioned this as well, I don’t like the combination of he and James Harden in 2026. It’s not great defensively. They’re too stagnant. They do a lot of the same things. You want shooters and defenders around each and neither of them are they’re both good, fantastic shooters, but not as much off the catch. So, and it’s more more about their willingness to shoot off the catch as opposed to them not being high percentage. Chris Paul actually feels I think he’s willing to shoot off the catch, but his release is kind of slow and he’s a smaller guard, so the close out seem to be right in his face when he shoots it or sometimes prevent him from getting the shot off. But for me, Chris Paul is the person that has to the player that has to sacrifice probably the most because he’s going to be in the most unfamiliar role of his career. That’s the honest truth from me. Now, I looked into some stats. Last year, the Clippers had the 15th were 15th in offensive rating, right? Dead middle of the pack. San Antonio was 19th. But if you talk about with Chris Paul on the court, they were 115.3, which would be good enough, believe it or not, for 10th place in the NBA. So with Chris Paul on the court, the San Antonio Spurs and that’s counting games that Wemmy didn’t play. We’re still top 10 in the league in offense. That’s how good Chris Paul is. Now again, I if you’re wondering, Dime, why don’t you give us more stats? Why don’t you give us more like facts to back up your takes? Because I don’t believe that a lot of these stats accurately depict the true story. For example, I gave you a stat just now. The offensive rating of the San Antonio Spurs last year with Chris Paul is 115.3. Good enough for 10th in the league. You know what offensive rating is also dependent on though? Who else is playing with you? So yes, just cuz I used Chris Paul, there’s four other guys that are playing with him at all times that contribute to his offensive rating who you need to put around him. So that’s why I often like I’m not the biggest like stat heavy pod or stat heavy guy because I often feel as though those stats don’t really describe much. You know what I’m saying? I always give you the box score stats, of course, after a game, but that is why I don’t is because I feel like a lot of these statistics, while valuable to some degree, don’t always encapsulate what the true story is because a lot of these stats are team dependent and not totally, you know, they don’t show exactly what you need to see about the individual. So, and I, you know, I’m not a huge fan of like the facts or like people are like, you know, you got to have facts to back it up. Stats are just numbers for a specific situation that are, you know, you can use to prove your points or to back up your points, but they don’t always tell the full story. Like the NBA or basketball is not built on facts. It’s it’s a very often black and white thing. Sorry, I’m sorry. There’s a lot of gray areas, I should say. It’s not always black and white. And you know, for the untrained eye, a lot of times you need to rely on stats. And I’m not saying I’m some basketball guru or anything like that, but I can describe to you what’s going out there on the court without numbers. Now, it is sometimes good to have numbers to back up the eye test. So, San Antonio, I mean, so in Chris Paul’s case, he’s still a good player. you know, almost average a double double, you know, nine and seven last year and now he would be potentially in a reserve role catching DMPS some nights. Now, you might be wondering why Chris Paul. I thought Bogey would probably be the guy to sacrifice the most. Yeah, I don’t know about that because Bogdon Bogdanovich is getting paid $16 million a year. He’s in the latter half of his prime. And by the way, just for reference, if you’re wondering how what was the offensive rating for the Clippers with just James Harden on the court, it was 116.5, which would be good enough for seventh in the NBA. Seventh in the NBA in minutes that just James Harden played. Now, this is an interesting statistic. What was our offensive rating without James Harden on the court? Stat Muse is not giving it to me, unfortunately. So, I’m gonna have to search a little bit harder. But anyway, that is the reality. Bogdanovich sacrificing, being the 11th man, not catching minutes, getting DMPS. I just don’t see it. I just don’t see it. You know what I mean? So, that’s my take on that. And then, like, is Brook Brook Lopez, you can actually say that he’s making a big sacrifice. You know, he’s coming off the bench for the first time in his career. So, you can argue that’s a big sacrifice. But coming up, I’m going to be speaking about why James Harden to me is the player that needs to sacrifice the most after CP3. I got to tell you a little something about game time. Have you ever been in a situation where you’re getting off work, you don’t know or you don’t know who can come with you to a game, so you haven’t bought tickets yet, and you’re just waiting for the last minute? Well, game time makes it easier to grab lastminute tickets without the stress. And with the money you save on tickets, you can go harder when it comes to food, merch, or whatever it may be. Game time makes buying tickets fast and simple. Prices on the app actually drop the closer you get to the first pitch. I used it for the NLCS game one against the Mets last year for the Jadgers. And they’ve got incredible last minute deals, clear seat view so you can know exactly where you’re sitting, and a lowest price guarantee that takes the worry out of buying. 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It’s a big change for him, but I think it’s one that he’s very willing to make and I have no fear that he’s going to make it. I think with Chris Paul, you know, I don’t see him not buying in because he’s so happy to be home. So, that’s really what it is. I don’t see him not buying in because he’s so happy to be home. Bugdonovich. I just don’t see that. Chris Dunn, we don’t want him to sacrifice. But here’s the thing. He’s going to have to hit less minutes than last year, which I don’t necessarily know if that’s a good thing, but Chris Don’s just, I think, thankful to be a relevant part of a good team. Remember, this is a guy that was kind of out of the league. So, I don’t think he’s going to be like complaining like that. Derek Jones Jr., he might have to sacrifice a little bit, not starting as many games. For example, last season he started 55 games. You know, that’s a lot. So, he might have to sacrifice a bit as well. The guy I’m going with that has to make the second biggest sacrifice is James Harden. And I don’t mean in terms of role as much. I just mean in terms of you don’t need to do as much as you did last year. You don’t need to carry the offense as much. You’re going to have Kawhi Leonard from day one. So, automatically, this is this should not feel like a James Harden team. This should feel like a Kawhi Leonard team from day one. Last year, we didn’t have Kawhai. So, James had to kind of carry that load and run our offense. And he’s still going to run our offense, right? He’s still great at what he does. But I think we’re going to have to, even if it comes at the expense of as efficient of a regular season offense, just to get us into that habit of playing through Kawi Leonard, we need to be more of a Kawawaii ISO team than a hard and pick and roll team. And I don’t necessarily mean more Kawawaii isos than hard and pick and rolls. I just mean the balance has to be better. I always reference this stat, but in the postseason against the Nuggets, James Harden had the ball in his hands for an average of four minutes. Not four minutes of regular time, four minutes of course the ball being in play than Kawawaii, four minutes. And James Harden was top five in the postseason with average time of possession. We do not want to be that reliant on one guy. So for James, I’m not saying I think he’s going to have a problem sacrificing as much. He just needs to understand, you know, we don’t need you to do as much. We have to run through Kawhai because during the playoffs, we don’t want to be saying, “Oh, Kawhi Leonard only got 15 shots up in a game. Oh, Kawhi Leonard was double teaming. He hadn’t dealt with double teams all season long.” You know, that’s something that we don’t want to have to experience, have to face, have to talk about. So that’s one aspect of the sacrifice. Then there’s Bradley Beal, who everyone is saying, yeah, he can slot in for Norman Pal, which is what he is slotting in for, or who he is slotting in for, but Bradley Beal is a lot more dynamic than James than Norman Pal. He can get his own shot at a higher level. He can create and pick and roll more, which can ease the burden for Harden. So, for me, it comes down to Harden’s touches and his amount of pick and rolls, basically his usage. He needs to save himself for the long haul. Save himself for the playoffs. And that’s going to come at a statistical sacrifice, which we’ve seen that Harden’s not too opposed to making in terms of points per game and shot attempts as we saw in 2013, sorry, in 2023 24. He needs to go back to that kind of what we where he was with Paul George. You know what I’m saying? When he was on the roster. So, letting Bradley be work a little bit more so he can conserve your energy for later stages of the game. also playing 35 minutes. That’s a lot. In 2023 24, he played 34, which is still a lot. And every season of his career since he’s become a starter in 201213, he’s averaged 34 minutes or more. His lowest being that 23-24 season. I truthfully think he should average 33 minutes a game this year. Like lowest since OKC. Because we got Chris Paul to take the burden off of him when he’s out of the game. Like we’ve got the next best pick and roll God we can think of in that reserve role for Harden when he’s out of a game. Maybe some more rest games. 79 games is a lot. And I love that James Harden wants to play every game. I admire that about him. But we don’t honestly if we’re going to rest other guys, let’s let James Harden play 75 games, maybe 70 games. Let Chris Paul run the show for those other games. especially if you got Kawhi Leonard and Brad Beal. So, it comes down to we don’t need James Harden to do so much. We don’t want him to get burned out for the playoffs with a high usage kind of ball game. He needs to not dribble as much, not run as many pick and rolls and it might come at the expense of some like the in the regular season, James Harden pick and roll might be the best source of creating good shots for us. But in the playoffs, we know that teams can take away what they want or teams can take away what we want in some to some extent with that. Take away shots from James. Ultimately, if your best player cannot get shots off in and he’s a scorer in the playoffs, that’s not a good thing. So, we need Kawhi Leonard to be given the ball more, to be played through more runs to pick and rolls more. Then of course we still have to be mindful of the development of if it’s Zubots, you know, still feeding him the ball in the post. So my takeaway is it’s going to be a lot less hard and pick and roll in my opinion and he has other guys that can create. So, it’s going to need more offball game, more offball play from James Harden, more willingness to shoot that catch and shoot three and hopefully less minutes so we can conserve him for the long haul, which he always seems to get a little gassed for because he’s handling the ball so much and all that. We’ve given him ball handling. We’ve given him Bogey. We’ve given him Chris Paul. We still have Chris Dunn who can handle it a little bit as well. And now hopefully a full season’s worth of Kawawaii and Brad Beal. So, there’s really no excuse. I think James Harden this season from last and by the way I’m not saying he’s not willing to do it. I’m just saying let’s see it. You know he’s got to understand we don’t need to rely on him so much. And I think every Clipper fan could agree with that. So there’s going to probably I don’t expect James Horn to average 20 this year. I think maybe around 20 maybe 18 19 would be good. But there’s another guy on this team that’s going to have to make some sacrifices as well. But we want him to be aggressive and that’s Bradley Beal. And coming up gonna be speaking about the sacrifices that I think he needs to make as well as does John Collins need a sacrifice. Gonna be talking about that coming up. I got to tell you a little something about open phone. If you’re running a business, you know that every mis call is money left on the table. When I run my club team, you know, I got to make sure I answer all the calls, make sure all the parents are getting responded to and all that. If the first person didn’t answer, did you wait? Probably not. You moved on. That’s why you need Open Phone. Open Phone is the number one business phone system built to streamline and scale your customer communications all from an app on your phone or computer. Open Phone lets me manage business calls and texts from a single app. So, it’s very easy for me to separate my personal calls and my business calls for my club team and whatever it may be. Open Phone is offering my listeners 20% off your first six months at openphone.com/locktonba. That’s op ph.com/lockdonba. And if you have existing numbers with another service, open phone will port them over at no extra charge. Open phone, no missed calls, no missed customers. All right. So, the Clippers, when you have, look, when you have a team with this kind of talent, this kind of depth, you know, you have to have sacrifices throughout the roster. And every single championship team in history, especially teams that won multiple years, they always talk about sacrificing, sacrificing stats, sacrificing touches, sacrificing your ego. And I think that that has been hard for some guys throughout the course of their career on this team in terms of Bradley Beal. He it’s an interesting one because he just came from a place in which he had to sacrifice majorly compared to Washington. Right? This is a guy that as recently as 2021 was averaging 30 a game. Then he came to the Suns after averaging about 22 23 points a game. Narrows that down or reduces that to about 18. So that’s sacrificing. He’s taking less shots with Phoenix, getting less touches. You know, you know the deal. But with the Clippers, he’s kind of coming into a similar role that he was in Phoenix in terms of third best perimeter scorer, third perimeter scorer. But, you know, I’m very curious to see who takes more shots per game, Harden or Beal. How does that come about? You know, how often is the coaching staff looking to run plays through Bradley Beal? Is Bradley Beal running his own lineups without Harden, especially with Chris Paul there? These are all questions that are going to be answered when the season starts. But, I just think Bradley Beal needs to be ready to sacrifice for this reason. You’re a luxury player with this team. You’re not a necessity in my opinion. We would like a third guy that can get B. I mean, first of all, we have Vitita Zubat. So, in my opinion, Bradley Beal, this is the lowest he’s ever been on the totem pole on a team because with Washington, he was always the top two player with him and John Wall. Then he became the best and then second best with Westbrook. And then in Phoenix, he was the third best player at worst. Now, he’s the fourth best player cuz Kawhi, Harden, and Zoo. He needs to accept that. He needs to accept that he might average 11 shots a game. What if our point of attack defense isn’t very good to start the season and Tailoo moves him to the bench. Is he okay with that? That all matters to me. He needs to be willing to sacrifice in a large way. He might be averaging 15, 16 points a night and he’s got to be okay with that, right? And I guarantee it’ll be efficient. But what his agent said, Mark Bartlestein, about Brad is used to being a score. or he wants to be in attack mode and stuff like he hasn’t gotten to play his game. That sounds like we’re getting more Bradley Beal than we got in Phoenix. And again, I only say that with worry because there’s one guy on this team, two guys actually, who I don’t want sacrificing at all. One is Kawhi Leonard. When we first got James Harden, what did we see? A bunch of natural deferring from Kawhi Leonard. And it wasn’t good for him. It wasn’t good for us. You know, I do think at high levels, like certain teams in history, the stars had to sacrifice statistically. In 1980, I watched Magic’s playoff run during CO and I realized how unselfish he was about not having the ball for large stretches. When I watched Larry Bird, there was a couple games I watched during COVID. He was very comfortable just letting Kevin McCale look like the best player on the team for an entire half and look like a role player and it would be okay. So there are circumstances in which guys have to s the number one option has to sacrifice their stats. But I think Kawhi Leonard just doesn’t have the same demand of the ball that some of the alphas in the history of basketball have had. So I think you just kind of kind of have to keep him aggressive, you know, as a as a as a team, as a coaching staff. He’s also so efficient that we don’t want him taking less shots. That’s my opinion on it. We don’t want Kawhi Leonard taking less shots because he’s not like a holds the ball a ton kind of guys. I think kind of guy. I think sometimes he can hold the ball a little too long when he ISOs, but in general he’s not like a Chris Paul or James Harden kind of player where he’s, you know, controlling everything, dictating the game, you know what I’m saying? High usage. Um, but yeah, so I don’t want Kawhai sacrificing. I don’t want Zoo sacrificing, but I think he’s going to have to. I don’t think he’s going to like I I don’t know if he’ll average as many points truly and I don’t think he’s going to get as many minutes with Lopez, which is very unfortunate because I want him to continue to ascend. And I don’t think that because he’s going to get less touches, less uh average less points and play less minutes that he’s going to, you know, go the other direction. But if when we look at the stats, you know, over the years, we’re going to be like, uh, it feels like he didn’t progress that year. But it’s all sacrificing for the role. I just don’t want to see that big of a sacrifice from Zoo. I want us to still play through him. So that’s the key, right? The biggest sacrifice to me has to come from Chris Paul because he might not even play some nights and he’s never been in a situation like that. Then James Harden, you got Beal that can handle the ball. You’ve got Chris Paul that can handle the ball. You’ve got Kawhi from the beginning of the season. It can’t be the James Harden show all year long. Even if the James Harden show is successful in the regular season and then Beal, you know, this is the smallest role you’re going to have ever had in your career. you got to be ready to potentially get moved to the bench, potentially not get as many shots, score not score as many points. That’s all relevant. And then of course, Brook Lopez, you know, being a backup for the first time in his career, that all matters. So, championship teams, and I’m not saying we’re one, but very good teams often make sacrifices, and you’re going to have to make sacrifices throughout the roster. Statistical usage, just not playing the way that you’re probably used to playing. And I think that when Chris Paul came to the Clippers, and I know this for a fact, he wasn’t willing to not have the ball, you know, that’s part of the reason why we got rid of Chanty Bilips and brought in a JJ Reick. Of course, Chanty was old, but Chris Paul wanted to control the offense. He wanted the ball. That’s why it would have been interesting to see if he did go to the Lakers, would he have, you know, been as ball dominant with Kobe? You know, they wouldn’t have been coached by Phil Jackson, so he’s not playing the triangle. That would have been very interesting to see. I think he and Kobe because they’re so competitive, they would have gotten along just fine. But it would have been interesting to see Chris Paul relinquish that spotlight earlier in his career because with the Clippers, he loved being the man. We didn’t go out and get anybody better than him because he thought, you know, we he and Blake could do it together. You know, he wanted to be the guy. James Harden and Houston, he wanted to be the guy. And then they both came to a position where they were like, you know what, I probably won’t succeed in winning a championship as the guy, so I’m going to go be the second guy. Chris Paul, James Harden. And I think one of the biggest things with Chris Paul is had he been a second option and kind of realized that maybe that’s where he should be in his prime, maybe we wouldn’t be talking about Chris Paul with zero rings right now. Cuz the one year we got to see it before he started declining really 2017 18, you know, that’s one of the biggest whatifs in NBA history if James Harden and Chris Paul would have won that ring against the Warriors. So then Harden, you know, I’m honestly not even going to say anything, but we saw him as a first option. He got very close. I mean, imagine as a sec I mean, we did get to see him as a second option in 2021 and it looked like championship, but then he got hurt. So, they’ve both had some bad luck throughout their their careers as well. But yeah, can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Dimedropper Pod. Subscribe to my own YouTube channel, Dimeropper, for even more LA Clipper and LA Sports content, NBA content. And of course, this podcast, Locked on Clippers. You can subscribe on YouTube. Let’s get to 8,000 subscribers before the season starts. That’s our goal. And of course, you can listen wherever you get your podcast. Make sure you hit the notification bell so you know every single time we post a video. The age old proverb continues. Go Clippers.

The Los Angeles Clippers face tough decisions as star-studded roster demands sacrifices. Which players will need to adjust their roles for team success?

Die hard LA Clippers fan and Host Darian Vaziri analyzes the potential adjustments required from key players like Kris Dunn, James Harden, and Bradley Beal. The discussion covers Dunn’s possible reserve role, Harden’s need to reduce his usage rate, and Beal’s scoring expectations. Vaziri explores how these changes could impact the Clippers’ championship aspirations and draws parallels to sacrifices made by NBA legends.

Tune in for an in-depth look at the Clippers’ roster dynamics and how they could reshape the team’s path to success.

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