The Clippers took three steps to win the championship: increase the rotation, strengthen Harden, and trade for a 3-point shooter
On December 26, Beijing time, the NBA regular season continued. It's the league's biggest game day, the Christmas game, but for the Clippers, the whole team can enjoy the holiday cheer at home and take a good rest. In 4 days and 3 games, and back-to-back battles, it is understandable that the Clippers suffered 2 consecutive defeats. The next thing is to make a good adjustment, wait for Xiaoka's comeback, and strive for a wave of winning streaks. As far as the current Clippers are concerned, although they have gone through the painful period of star running-in, the team still has big problems. If these problems are not solved, it will inevitably affect their championship rhythm and even usher in a losing season.
Winning the championship is never a pile of stars, but a good chemistry of the team, and all the players are twisted into a rope, so that they can burst out with enough fighting power to compete for the championship. Starting from the existing problems, the Clippers took three steps to win the championship: increase the rotation, strengthen Harden, and trade for a 3-point shooter.
Increase rotation
For a championship-winning team, the squad rotation must not be too thin, otherwise there will be injury problems and the entire tactical system will be invalid. However, Tyronn Lue has always used a nine-man rotation, and when George or Small-Ka are injured, it becomes an eight-man rotation. In fact, this is a potential crisis, why is it that the rotation lineup is reduced, which will inevitably lead to more playing time for key players, and the risk of injury will increase. On the other hand, there is less variability in the lineup, which is easy to be targeted by opponents, especially in the playoffs, when the two teams will play 7 games, and the disadvantages will be exposed. Therefore, for the Clippers to become a true championship team, Tyronn Lue needs to increase rotation and increase tactical variety.
At present, the Clippers' normal rotation lineup is Harden, Mann, George, Xiaoka, and Zubac to play the starters, and Powell, Theis, Westbrook, and Coffey to play the bench. However, with Hyland, PJ Tucker, and Kobe Brown available on the bench, Tyronn Lue really needs to figure out how to use these players to increase the team's strength.
Strengthen Harden
The real boss of the Clippers team is not Harden, it must be Leonard, and the next may be George, Harden can only be in third place. But if this team wants to get stronger, or even win a championship, it must strengthen Harden's role, otherwise it will still be at the level of the second round of the West. With George and Xiaoka as the core, the Clippers have assembled a lot of lineups, but they still haven't been able to enter the Finals, which means that none of these lineups have worked. As a result, the Clippers made up their minds to trade Harden in order to completely change the face of the team.
Yang Yi, a well-known basketball commentator in China, said: If the Clippers want to be strong, they must be strong with Harden! This sentence is very correct, Harden has decided the lower limit of the Clippers, and it is already a sure thing to enter the playoffs. George and the junior determine the team's ceiling and whether they can win a best-of-seven match. Therefore, Tyronn Lue needs to insist on Harden as the core of the offensive system to be the right path.
Trade in exchange for a 3-point shooter
Increasing the rotation of the roster and strengthening the role of Harden is not enough for the team to compete for a championship. The Clippers will also need to aggressively trade for at least a true outside shooter to address the team's roster flaws. From 6 consecutive losses to now 2 consecutive defeats, the team needs to open a trade, can not be satisfied with the status quo, the current team can use the chips to trade is mainly PJ Tucker, Hyland, Coffey and other players, draft picks are basically gone, the main thing is that these players can enter the team's rotation and can be traded with other teams.
Why do you need a three-point shooter, because Harden needs an outside player who can open up space, so as to ensure that Harden can break through more smoothly, so that he can tear apart the opponent's defensive system and play his best role. This is the Clippers' three-step strategy to win the championship, and only by doing so can the Clippers truly have the ability to win the championship.