By Adam Madison, TalentedMrRoto.com
September 16, 2006 - 9:36 a.m.

2005-06 OVERVIEW

Elton Brand has long been a standout, but quietly one of the league’s best players since the day he entered the league. With career averages of 20.3 points, 10.4 rebounds, 2.1 blocks, and a field goal percentage of 50.1 percent, Brand is one of just three current players to have averages of at least 20 points, 10 rebounds, two blocks, and 50 percent from the field. The other two – Tim Duncan and Shaquille O’Neal – are sure-fire Hall of Famers.

Will Corey Maggette's tenacious style of play lead to more injuries this season? (Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE/Getty Images)

Yet Brand was still underrated for one sole reason: team success. If you’re not an exceptional talent at a young age, and your team isn’t a consistent threat for the postseason, you’re not truly a “superstar.” Brand suffered from this sentiment each and every year, and while people did praise the man was a great basketball player, it was usually a backhanded compliment. It was an acknowledgement that yes, Brand was a superb player, but he was a superb player on a losing team, so what’s that worth?

If the Clippers can reiterate their success from last season, Brand, while, for the most part, being the same player, will see his stature catapult. Prior to the acquisition of Brand, a curse was placed on the Clippers, and the team was everybody’s favorite joke. Even Brand’s arrival in 2001 couldn’t change things; even though the Clippers finished just four games under .500 that season, they still missed the playoffs, and had won less than 40 percent of their games in the Brand Era before 2005 .

Ah, glorious 2005-06. With 47 wins, the Clippers finished in second place in the division, snapped their 12-year sub-.500 streak and finished with the ninth-best record in the NBA. Even more surprisingly, the Clippers pushed hard in the playoffs, finishing just one game away from the Western Conference Finals. Brand was a legitimate MVP candidate – partial thanks accredited to Sam Cassell, no doubt – and the Clippers, stocked with young talent from perennially-high draft positions in the past, believe they can become a stable force in the Western Conference powerhouse.

To wit, the Clippers made few changes: they allowed Vladimir Radmanovic, a sharp-shooting 6’10” small forward acquired in the middle of the season for Chris Wilcox, to depart during free agency, and added Tim Thomas, a – surprise, surprise – sharp-shooting 6’10” small forward. The Clippers did not add an immediate presence to their team through the draft, either – their 2005 lottery selection, Yaroslav Korolev, is still a project, and this year - lacking a first-roundpick - they selected Paul Davis with the 34th overall pick. All in all, the Clippers are smartly built around young talent – Shaun Livingston, Chris Kaman, Quinton Ross, Corey Maggette, and Brand, with the average age being just 24 – and veteran players, with Cassell the eldest at 37, but Thomas and Cuttino Mobley both in their thirties. The idea is sound – any decline the older players have should be off-set by the younger players’ improvement – but it remains to be seen if the Clippers can truly improve on last year’s impressive season with the majority of their roster unchanged.

ADDITIONS:
Tim Thomas, SF
Paul Davis, C
Aaron Williams, PF

LOSSES:
Vladimir Radmanovic, SF
Walter McCarty, F

PROJECTED STARTING LINEUP:
C – Chris Kaman
PF – Elton Brand
SF – Corey Maggette
SG – Cuttino Mobley
PG – Sam Cassell

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN 2006

Many things really clicked for the Clippers last year, but the change did not happen overnight. Coach Mike Dunleavy has worked for years to instill a proper defense into the Clippers. Plus, in 2004-05, they were a playoff contender before injuries to Maggette, Marko Jaric, Kerry Kittles, Kaman, and Chris Wilcox mounted. The Clippers have done a great job of finding cheap talent and making the best of it – Bobby Simmons, Rick Brunson, and Quinton Ross have all come from nowhere to make large impacts on the team – and as a result they have been able to slowly bring along their top young talent into the meld of quality you see today.

The Clippers did not change much from last year, and not much should change fantasy-wise as a result. Kaman and Livingston showed significant improvement throughout the course of the season, and Ross stepped up as a true elite defender against quicker guards – especially point guards – while stepping in for Maggette. In Mobley, Kaman, and Brand, they have three positions taken care of – none of the three are significant injury risks – so the questions arise at small forward and point guard. Cassell, if healthy, is the starter, but at age 37, good health can not be assumed for anyone. If Cassell goes down during the midst of the season, and Livingston plays well in his absence, a potential murkiness arises: how do you balance a superstar level of talent in Livingston with the wily veteran who gives the team the best chance to win this season but not for future seasons? Maggette, the other question mark, is a fierce competitor that has no problem banging bodies on his way towards the basket, but whose unwilling determination to get to the line has resulted in a litany of injuries. Maggette is treading into the realm of injury prone, but his offensive prowess is tempting for fantasy owners. If such problems arise, expect to see the same decision-making from Clippers brass this year: gradually play Livingston more as the season moves along and limit Maggette’s minutes by splitting with Ross.

KEY BENCH POSITIONS / POSITION BATTLES

Quinton Ross is a plain vanilla fantasy option without much value on his own, but he is of vital importance in assessing Corey Maggette’s fantasy value. Bringing Maggette off the bench upon his return in March paid dividends for the team: Ross, who was quickly emerging as a Bruce Bowen-ite on defense, presented the Clippers with a conundrum: how do we get our best pure scorer significant playing time without losing our best defensive stopper? The solution was to start Ross and bring Maggette off the bench as the best sixth man in the league. It worked well. After a rough start, Maggette was lighting up second-team defenses and actually ended up putting up the best per-minute stats in his career. Of course, fantasy players want to see 33-35 minutes per game, not 29, but the Clippers’ plans aren’t yet known. So far they have entered the off-season with a “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality, and considering this rotation between the two players got them deep into the playoffs, don’t totally dismiss the notion.

PLAYERS WE LOVE

It’s rare to see elite players – especially those six years into their career – truly improve their game and take their game to another level, but that is exactly what Elton Brand did last season. Brand set a career high in points scored with 24.7, an extremely high total for a traditional power forward such as Brand, and managed to approach, match, or exceed career highs in field goal percentage, free throws attempted and percentage made, turnovers, blocks, and personal fouls. Playing with Sam Cassell helped – let’s not forget Cassell was a big factor in Kevin Garnett’s MVP season – but Brand also worked out vigorously to make himself slimmer for the season. As a result, he vastly improved his jump shot, making 47.5 percent of his jump shots after shooting 41.8 percent in 2004-05, 38.9 percent in 2003-04, and 37.5 percent in 2002-03. Brand felt much more comfortable from farther out, attempted more shots and scored more points. As one can see, Brand has slowly but steadily improved his jump shot during this time. While he may not shoot exactly as well as he did last year, it was not a fluke. Expect Brand to be just as dominate this year as he was last year.

In the same amount of minutes per game, Chris Kaman improved his field goal percentage, free throw attempts, free throw percentage, rebounds, steals and points. The key to Kaman’s superb season was rather simple: the Clippers let him play with fouls. Kaman has always fouled a lot, as silly bone-headed fouls have often put a crimp in otherwise spectacular play, but the Clippers decided to simply let him play through it and see if he’d adjust on his own. Even though he still averaged three and a half fouls per game on the season, he ended up cutting his fouls by 0.3 in the second half. After averaging 3.7 and 3.8 fouls per game in November and December, he did not average more than 3.4 fouls in any single month from January on. Talent shines through in the end, and the longer Kaman learns to stay on the floor, the better the stats he’ll pile up. Considering he’s just 24 years old and has a contract to play for, he should again play the best basketball of his career.

PLAYERS TO AVOID

Sorry to pick on you, Corey Maggette, but what can I say – the facts speak for themselves. What makes Maggette so good on the offensive end is the same thing that leads to his injuries: aggressiveness. Watch Maggette play, and you see a bulldozer. He’s physically cut with the mindset to put those physical abilities to the best use. Maggette’s favorite play is to drive inside the lane from the perimeter, create contact, and get to the line. Maggette does this very well – he is always one of the leaders in free throw attempts and free throws made when he’s healthy – but it also leads to nagging injuries, such as the foot injury last year that some even briefly opined could threaten his career. While Maggette came back and showed he could still ball, there has to be some worry about a player turning 27 in November who has missed 66 games in the past two seasons. Worse, because he is prone to turning the ball over – he had more turnovers than assists last year – and is poor at best defensively, Mike Dunleavy may feel he is better coming off the bench, especially considering how enamored he was with Quinton Ross last season. With Elton Brand, Sam Cassell, Cuttino Mobley, and even Chris Kaman’s improved offensive ability, the Clippers really do not need 20 points a game from anyone else; as a result, Maggette can ill afford to get injured again, as his job – assuming he enters the season as a starter – may not be there when he returns.

Shaun Livingston may be the most gifted passer to enter the league since Jason Kidd, but the Clippers’ newfound team success is bad news for his fantasy value, because it means the team is playing for the present first and the future second. While a year ago it was easy to see Livingston taking over the point guard job as the season progresses, the Clippers can legitimately be a great team, a true threat to any other team; as a result when Sam Cassell is healthy, Livingston is going to take a backseat. His best chance at significant playing time is a Maggette injury, as his size – at 6’7” – means the Clippers can get away playing him alongside Cassell at shooting guard or even small forward in a small lineup. Barring a significant injury to Cassell, Livingston’s a ball of potential without playing time. In the long-term, it is a good thing – he still needs to work on his perimeter shooting, strength, and defense – but in the interim, it’s best that you temper your expectations for him.

BOTTOM LINE

The Clippers are one of the rare teams in a position to be an extremely good team right now while simultaneously setting up nicely for the future. Realistically, the Clippers are truly one step away from doing severe damage in the league, but they showed last year to be a tough matchup for any team. While the strategy of minimal roster change following a successful season has backfired on many a team, the Clippers’ youth at key positions should cover up any decline in its veterans, and as a result the team should replicate last year’s success, if not necessarily build on it. For one more year, the Clippers can get by with what they have. Fantasy-wise, this is very true, too; very few roles have changed and playing time expectations should be mostly the same for each player. With that in mind, the players you liked or disliked last year are, by and large, the very same players you liked or disliked last season. There is a benefit to this, of course: knowing what to expect means you can recognize and acquire the positive value without much second-guessing.

The views expressed by TalentedMrRoto.com represent only the views of the writers; they do not represent the views of the NBA or any NBA team.

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