Do you feel like he (Bill Simmons) was somewhat right about Dunleavy now that they are playing better or is it just health?
The answer, of course, is that the Clippers aren't playing better since Mike Dunleavy resigned as head coach. As of Thursday, February 25, they are 3-5 since Kim Hughes took over, and, like was generally the case during Dunleavy's tenure, the team has been competitive when healthy, and lost when not. With that one question, though, I have been inspired to write everything I can think of pertaining to Bill Simmons and the Clippers. It's been a long time coming.
What started with me getting fired up about another misconception credited to the ingnorance of Simmons quickly turned to amazement at just how powerful this man is. His primary skill is the ability to relate to such a wide variety of people, not his knowledge of sports. That is not to say that he doesn't have above-average experience watching and writing about sports, but so do many other people, and yet no one else elicits such praise in the field. Men, women and children from all kinds of backgrounds have made him America's most-read sportswriter, and for that he deserves a lot of credit. But with that, I believe, he has inherited a responsibility to his readers that, with regards to the Clippers, he has neglected in favor of progressing his agenda as an entertainer.
He cares much more about pop culture than I do, as evidenced by his penchant for comparing things in sports to The Wire and Jersey Shore, but I'm going to stay away from that right now. His general style is not for me, particularly his tendency to diminish the importance of bloggers despite having started as one himself. But here I will concentrate on his bizarre and often factually inaccurate, yet largely accepted, take on my Clips.
Bill Simmons is not a Clippers fan.
He is from Boston, is a fan of the Celtics. The fact that his whole "Sports Guy" schtick with ESPN plays great with a pair of Clippers season tickets in L.A. is fine, but it doesn't make him an authority on the Clippers. That Paula Duffy of the Sports Examiner calls him a "long-suffering Clippers season ticket holder," is exactly the kind of B.S. (no pun intended) that endears the man to his loyal readership as such. More on Paula Duffy later.
As a de facto authority, however, based on his immense popularity and the frequency with which he muses about the Clips, he will almost certainly open up any discussion about the team with a comment about Mike Dunleavy. His critiques of Dunleavy span from his merits as a coach and G.M. to his wardrobe. I am no fan of personal jabs when discussing actual people and events, especially when not provoked. Simmons apparently has no problem taking such shots, though, so I'll concentrate on the facts.
Dunleavy as G.M.
In her piece from this past summer, Duffy references a feud between Dunleavy and Simmons, in which Simmons, "used Twitter to express more thoughts, piling up the facts and the stats to prove that Dunleavy is also a poor excuse for a general manager." I don't use Twitter, and a quick attempt to locate such Tweets was unsuccessful, so I will have to assume that the "facts" and "stats" that Simmons used to "prove" that Dunleavy is a "poor excuse for a G.M." are simply incorrect.
Even among his most adamant detractors as a coach, you will find many, if not most, find it difficult to quibble with his record as G.M. Since taking over for Elgin Baylor before the 2008 season began, Dunleavy has done the following:
-Sign Chris Kaman
When the Clippers signed Kaman to a five-year, $55 million extension the 2006 (second round playoffs) season, Elgin Baylor was technically the general manager. Dunleavy, however, was the man who made it happen. The deal that Kaman signed will pay him far below his market value as an All-Star center through the 2011-2012 season.
-Draft Eric Gordon (7th pick, 1st round) and DeAndre Jordon (5th pick, 2nd round).
After scoring over 16 points a game as a rookie, Gordon has firmly established himself as one of the top young players in the league. His status as part of the team's core in unquestioned. As successful as Gordon has been, it may be Jordan who turns out to be the steal in that draft. Very few big men have as much potential as DJ, and at 21, his coaches and many around the league have already seen that he is developing ahead of schedule. In fact, Dunleavy recently felt comfortable trading Marcus Camby during one of his best seasons, as everyone understood the benefit of giving more minutes to Jordan. Tough to question either of these Dunleavy acquisitions.
-Sign Baron Davis
The source of much consternation from Clippers fans thanks to unrealized expectations thus far, Davis is perhaps the essence of Simmons' misplaced critique of Dunleavy. Coming off of a year in which he averaged nearly 22 points and eight assists, while playing all 82 games, Dunleavy inked Baron to a five year contract worth about $65 million. Many questioned the length of the deal, but if Davis played anywhere near his career level for even a majority of the contract, it appeared a deal worth making. Coupled with Clippers owner Donald Sterling's reputation for not spending money, Dunleavy appeared to have made another move to benefit the franchise. But in the 2008-09 season, Davis floundered. After the season he would admit that his attitude was not what it should have been. Simmons will accredit this to Coach Dunleavy, but more on that in a bit.
-Acquire Marcus Camby
In the summer of 2008, Dunleavy traded a conditional second round pick to the Nuggets for Marcus Camby. The Nuggets will literally get nothing for losing Marcus Camby last summer. Mike Dunleavy got one and a half seasons of elite play out of Marcus Camby for nothing.
-Trade for Zach Randolph, Trade Zach Randolph
These moves, to me, show why Mike Dunleavy is, in fact, a terrific general manager. He traded my least favorite Clipper, Tim Thomas, and Cuttino Mobley, who retired with a heart condition, for Zach Randolph and his huge contract. In return, Randolph put up 21.9 points and 9.4 rebounds as a Clipper, lifting the team to a few wins along the way. In the off season, Dunleavy then traded Randolph and his supposedly untradeable contract to the Grizzlies for valuable cap space. In fact, Simmons himself said of the initial acquisition: "he blew any chance they had for a superstar in the Summer of 2010 by dumping Cuttino Mobley’s corpse and Tim Thomas’ corpse to New York for Zach Randolph." Nice "facts," Simmons!
-Acquire Craig Smith, Sebastian Telfair, Rasual Butler
Another vintage Dunleavy move, adding these three to the team allowed the Clips to compete in 2009-10 -- which they did, when healthy -- without committing any money past this season. Both Smith and Butler have been invaluable to the team, providing key contributions to more than a few victories this season. Telfair was moved at the trade deadline in a deal that cleared about $5 million from next season's cap and also netted Drew Gooden. Again, none of these players will be on the Clippers' books as they head into the off season.
It's worth noting that after the trade deadline, many were quick to accept Dunleavy's moves as a concession of the season in a vain attempt to gain cap space to lure a top free agent, one that would be unlikely to sign anyway. The moves, however, have actually made the team better for the rest of this season. Drew Gooden, Steve Blake and Travis Outlaw have exceeded any reasonable estimate of what Marcus Camby, Al Thornton and Sebastian Telfair would have provided for the Clips this year, and none of them are on the books after the season. In the likely event that none of the worthy free agents signs a max deal with the Clippers -- because there are about seven teams vying for four guys -- they find themselves with three players who could contribute to a Western Conference contender around a healthy Blake Griffin.
All this talk of cap space and this off season are not a mistake. They are a testament to the plan that Dunleavy has followed since he took over. In this rendition of Simmons making something up and proclaiming it "fact" last season, he claims Dunleavy has "no plan whatsoever." Well, Bill, it looks like a year later, he did have a plan, and it's still right on course. He has convinced Sterling to pay deserving players (Kaman, Davis and Sam Cassell and Cuttino Mobley before them) and has surrounded them with a young core that most G.M.'s outside of Oklahoma City would die for. Over the past two years, he has acquired players who could help win in the short term, while positioning himself beautifully to compete for the top free agents on the market this summer. Sounds like a plan to me.
What's most troubling about Simmons' critique of Dunleavy as G.M. is that he applauds the situation the team is in now. He has talked on end --per usual -- about the possibilities for guys guys like Lebron James to come to the Clips, but somehow doesn't grasp that Mike Dunleavy is the man who created such an enviable situation.
Dunleavy as Coach
It's tough to begin discussing Mike Dunleavy as a coach. In 1991, his second year as a head coach, he took the Lakers to the NBA Finals. In 1999 he was named the NBA Coach of the Year with the Blazers. For these purposes, though, I'll focus on his stint with the Clippers. And Bill Simmons' obsession with his nearly seven year tenure in that position.
For many, a coach's performance can be simply calculated by measuring his or her number of wins versus losses. In some cases, postseason success is weighed more heavily than others. With the Clippers, Mike Dunleavy has won 215 games and lost 326. As Simmons will have you know, not many coaches get to coach for almost seven seasons with a team while losing 60% of his games.
I tend to think that measuring a coach's influence may be more difficult than counting wins and losses, considering how much depends on the players themselves. But in assessing Simmons' most common criticisms of coach Dunleavy, we find even more inconsistencies.
The most recent issue that Simmons cited was Dunleavy's inability to maximize Baron Davis' talent. Davis, who captured us all with his play during the 2007 playoffs, signed a free agent contract with the Clippers, only to begin complaining about Dunleavy's offensive system soon after arrival. It is of this situation that I take a completely opposite opinion than Simmons.
Of the Davis signing and his ensuing displeasure, Simmons wrote this:
Simmons claims that Dunleavy did something to Baron Davis. Other than giving him $65 million, I'm not sure what Dunleavy did to Davis that is so objectionable.
Forget that he spent $65 million on Baron Davis this summer — a player who only thrives in a specific type of freewheeling system — then saddled him in a half-court offense with two centers and about 500 plays. Well done. Way to know your personnel, Mike. Maybe that’s why, within five games, poor Baron was regarding you with the same contempt that somebody’s wife would have if their husband showed up at 7 in the morning reeking of booze and cigarettes and wearing the previous day’s clothes. He couldn’t be more bummed out. It’s not possible. You did this to him.
Many will talk about the notion that Davis wanted to run, while Dunleavy wanted to slow things down. Simmons will obviously support this. It's not true. Both in comments, and on the sideline, Dunleavy implored the team to run. They actually did so at a rate above the league average, with a pace factor of 92.1, good for 13th out of 30 NBA teams. The problem for the team was not that Dunleavy's system held Baron back. In fact, he may not know it, but Dunleavy's half court system that is designed to exploit matchups is actually better for Baron. It may not be as fun to work a little for a good shot, but it's pretty clear that Baron is far more efficient when posting up smaller guards or running a high pick and roll with Kaman than he is taking jump shots off the dribble. The biggest problem for the 19-63, 2009 Los Angeles Clippers was that Baron was bad.
The other problem for the '09 Clips was that they weren't healthy. There it is, the "H" word. Dunleavy detractors, like Simmons, laugh in the face of health. To many, it's as simple as wins and losses, but to accept that logic would be like taking pitchers' win-loss records as sole indicators of performance.
In 2007, Elton Brand turned in yet another season in which he averaged 20 points and 10 rebounds. In 2008, he missed all but the year's final eight games thanks to an off season achilles injury.
In 2008, Chris Kaman averaged nearly 16 points and 13 (!) rebounds per game. In 2009, he played in only 31.
During those two seasons, Dunleavy's worst two as coach, he was without one of his two best players each one. Without those two together, the team had little chance to thrive. But thrive it had, only two years before, when the team came within a game of the Western Conference Finals on the strength of Kaman and Brand dominating the paint.
Any reasonable person would look at the situation and decide that the injuries were certainly the exception, and the players and the system were the rule. Occam's Razor, of course, begs that we accept the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions. Well, Dunleavy showed that his system, with his players healthy, worked.
This season, contrary to what Simmons will have you believe, was more of the same. The same ignorant Dunleavy bashing, but also the same injury story. When his starting five of Baron, Gordon, Butler, Camby and Kaman started together, they were among the league's best. They notched big-time wins over the Lakers, Nuggets, Celtics and Thunder, and largely fought 'till the end even when undermanned.
With Simmons and the Clippers, the act as grown tired. The lies, frankly, aren't doing anyone any favors. I guess I should mention at this point that I could not have been happier to see Dunleavy vacate the coaching job for full-time concentration on the front office, but that's merely because I believe fundamentally in the separation of the two positions. Whether they would have won more games with another coach over the past few seasons is debatable, but I can't imagine many fans would trade a few W's last season for the chance to see Blake Griffin play in a Clippers jersey next year.
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