The Clippers struggles and acquisition of Harden has been extremely overblown. Take a step back and think, did losing batum, roco and morris cause the clippers to go from a great team to instantly one of the worst teams? Did adding the assist leader from last season instantly cause them to become one of the worst teams? No, this logic is extremely short sighted. The main reason for the clippers recent struggles have come from Kawhi Leonard, Kawhi is supposed to be the number one option and if they want to win games he needs to be the guy to take control. In these recent losses his shots and efficiency has been way lower than normal. There is no reason he should be having the same amount of shots as Russ, Harden, Norm.
We know Kawhi shows up in big games, he is very frustrated. He’s a winner, ultimate competitor, and I trust him to treat this game will a killer mindset and demand the ball. Pg has also been in a slump and im expecting him to pick it up. Last years assist leader will make his impact felt. Harden has the lowest conversation rate on assists/potential assists this season which means his teammates aren’t hitting their shots.
The nuggets do NOT have jamal murray and have a very weak bench. In the loss against the rockets they played Collin Gellespie 20 minutes off the bench and were forced to play young raw rookies. They lost against the rockets for a reason. Im expecting plenty of doubles on Jokic and it will be up to the roleplayers to match the firepower of Kawhi, PG, Harden, Westbrook which is something nearly impossible to do if the stars can get back on track.
Harden is NOT ball dominant and yes they will figure it out, all these seasons the clippers were missing an elite floor spacing passing pg and now they got the assist leader and an elite 3 point shooter. All of these posts saying clippers won’t win anything with Harden is hilarious. If you seriously regret trading MORRIS, Batum and the remains of roco for the one piece the clippers have been lacking for the last few years then you are lost. The clippers will figure it out
TLDR: Don’t fall for the media bait, the clippers are MUCH better than what you are being led to think
Agreed, if pg and kawhi alone had shot their averages they they’d probably have won 3 of the last 4 games. Even with how awful these last few games have looked.