Overqualified for first round, Spurs and Clippers series would be worthy of NBA Finals

Jonathan Raymond argues the Western Conference's No 3 v 6 pairing between the San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Clippers is overqualified for the first round of the NBA play-offs.

The first round of the NBA play-offs are, usually, treated largely as a formality.

Excepting the generally toss-up No 4 v 5 seed pairings, for the most part the No 6-8 seeds are proven overmatched by their No 1-3 counterparts when the 16-team first round is good and finished.

But that sense of a first round fait accompli is a little bit misguided. In the last 15 years, there has been at a nearly once-a-year average a bottom three seed upsetting a top three heavyweight in the respective conference quarter-finals.

And this year, for certain, offers a doozy of a No 3 v 6 first-round affair.

The third-seeded Los Angeles Clippers face the sixth-seeded San Antonio Spurs in the West, a meeting vastly overqualified for merely the first round.

If one were to short-list five teams with a real chance of winning the 2014/15 NBA title, both Los Angeles and defending champions San Antonio would have to make the cut. Yet, the vagaries of seeding and generally hyper-competitive nature of this year’s West have conspired to ensure at least one of these teams won’t even count among the last eight.

The Clippers in any other year would seem a certain favourite in their position, overqualified themselves for the third seed after winning 56 games and posting the league’s second-best point differential at plus-6.6.

Read more:

Their star point guard, Chris Paul, is one of the greatest of all-time – entering the play-offs on the heels of one of his most prolific seasons in years. A season which has unfairly been dismissed in the MVP conversation.

Centre DeAndre Jordan was one of the league’s dominant, if not its most dominant, inside offensive presences this season. Blake Griffin is an otherworldly athlete who seems to have finally shaken off the injury bug in the last month and resumed his acrobatic excellence.

The only real fair knock on the Clippers is that their depth isn’t at an elite level.

Unfortunately for Los Angeles, they’re playing the team that in the modern NBA have pioneered parlaying elite depth into titles.

The Spurs, coached by best-in-the-business Gregg Popovich, can plausibly counter anything the Clippers have to throw at them.

Small forward Kawhi Leonard, probably the best pound-for-pound defender in basketball, could shift down a couple pegs on the positional chart and guard Paul. He has the speed to move with the Clippers’ cerebral floor general and the size to neutralise the exceptional physicality Paul wrings out of a 6-foot frame.

In this scenario, capable and fleet-footed big men Boris Diaw and Tiago Splitter (both slightly positive influences on the Spurs defence this year by points per 100 possession numbers) keep Blake Griffin in check, with the wily Tim Duncan, who defensively suppressed field goal percentage inside six feet this season by a whopping 9.4 per cent, shutting Jordan down inside.

Where Leonard is somewhat vulnerable is guarding against three-point shooting. He can man outside ably but Paul is an elite three-point shooter and creator. If Leonard, 6ft 7in, is being exposed he can go big and lock down 6ft 10in Griffin.

Leonard was able to suppress field goal percentages from less than six feet by 2.9 per cent this season and by 3.3 per cent from 10 feet, where Griffin does the best of his work.

In that case someone like Cory Joseph or Danny Green could reasonably shift onto Paul. Joseph suppressed field goal percentage beyond 15 feet by 3.3 per cent this year. Players defended by Green were 0.4 per cent better than normal, but he’s long and smart and quick and supressed field goal percentage out that deep by 6.0 per cent last season.

Meanwhile the Spurs can park Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker or Patty Mills out on the wing and force the likes of JJ Redick or Jamal Crawford or Matt Barnes to beat them.

And that’s where the Clippers’ threats pretty much end.

That’s not to say it’s a piece of cake. The Clippers were the league’s best offensive team this year (109.8 points per 100) and one of their biggest strengths, three-point shooting (fifth in three-point attempts per game, third in percentage), happens to be the weak spot in the Spurs’ third-ranking defence (99.6 points allowed per 100).

San Antonio allowed the sixth-worst opponents three-point percentage (36.0) in the NBA. However, they were generally able to keep opponents from taking them in the first place at a league-low 18.9 per game.

It’s an exploitable hole, but a small one.

And while one does not merely just stop a player like Chris Paul or Blake Griffin or DeAndre Jordan, it can be done. It takes a game plan and personnel, which San Antonio have the depth and flexibility for.

That’s where the Spurs are so dangerous, and why they’ve been able to claim a title-worthy team for so many years. LA only have about 5-6 credible offensive risks to contain. San Antonio have a full, flexible menu of defensive options.

Making matters worse for the Clips, the Spurs are also just now hitting their stride as an elite offensive unit.

While the Clippers were the league’s most prolific offence, their defence was middle-of-the-pack, ranked 15th while leaking 103.0 points per 100 possessions.

The Spurs had the sixth-most efficient offence, overall, scoring 106.2 points per 100. They’ve been even better in the last month or so.

Normally you could chalk that up to a team hitting a random hot streak at just the perfect time to fool commentators and analysts into thinking they’re more dangerous than they actually are for the play-offs. But these are the Spurs.

Popovich sits his aging stars liberally during the season, they give real rotation minutes to guys like Jeff Ayres and Matt Bonner. If any team has earned the benefit of the doubt regarding “flipping the switch” as the season reaches its crescendo, it’s San Antonio.

And since March they’ve gone 19-4, scoring 113.2 points per 100 possesions, a rate that would dwarf even the league-best Clippers. This while maintaining their defensive solidity.

If it seems cruel to discount the Clippers, well, it is. Chris Paul particularly deserves to be spared any more cacophonous nonsense about his past play-off “failures”.

But the Spurs just seem better. There’s little to distinguish this team from the one that won the NBA title a year ago, except that Kawhi Leonard is even better now.

Whatever doubt undeservedly swirls around LA, it has swirled doubly undeservedly around San Antonio year after year.

The Clippers can win this series, but the Spurs should.

In either case, whoever survives will immediately count as the Golden State Warriors’ biggest threat on the path to the Finals.

This series, really, would be worthy of the Finals itself.

Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE