Look What I Wrote

...just one week ago:

I like the Rockets to win game 5 tonight at home, but the Clippers will take game 6 back in LA.  Do the Rockets have a miracle comeback in them?  I doubt it and the chances that the Clippers have a catastrophic collapse in them seems to be dwindling.  (Dude, Chris Paul hasn't even broke a sweat yet...they don't need him)

Ha!  Man, I loves me some reality.  The miracle comeback, the catastrophic collapse...I was so close. Yes, the prediction was 100% wrong but...not really.  I had the right picture, I just caught it from the wrong side of the mirror.  Clippers done clipped when I felt like Blake in particular was ready to be the mega-star he's been preparing to be for so long now.  (Hate to even entertain the thought but Blake is developing a Eric Lindros-nish about him?  Nah, come on.  He just balled out against the Spurs, that dude can play)  I'm (still) in the camp that says Chris Paul can't win a championship: that guy just puts too much sweat into every moment of every game and the upward spiral of competition night after night is too much for him.  I love his game and I'd love to see him go deeper in the playoffs but I just don't think his style can overcome the rigors of a championship run (when he morphs into the Jamal Crawford role, he'll still have some great years, the hired gun thing might be his best chance to net a ring).

Do the Clippers blow it up?  Hell no.  First off they can't (that is blowing it up isn't really even possible much less likely); secondly, they've still got a great core.  They just need to coach up whoever they can get to play around them.  We complain about Doc the GM but frankly Doc the Coach has not blown me away in his Clipper tenure.  Making the most of the supporting cast has got to be the coach's job.  Doc the GM has made some bonehead plays so far but Doc the Coach was supposed to bail him out.  Big Baby Davis and Austin (Little Baby) Rivers had good moments in the playoffs but not that good, further down the bench brought nothing at all; Crawford is a big-game-every-4th-night-out kinda guy; Reddick sometimes falls into struggle mode where he just gets nothing done; Deandre does the things you need him to do but none of the things you want him to do; Barnes is most effective (I think) when the Clippers have a lead but generally not much help coming from behind.  Where's CJ Wilcox?  Couldn't make it work with Farmar or Raduljica?  Or Nate Robinson?  (Hey man, Nate is a crazy spinning top that makes weird things happen for 2-3 minute stretches, they mighta coulda used him in game 6)  The coach has to make the most of these ingredients and Doc doesn't seem so impressive to me.  Doc the GM is a bonehead, Doc the Coach is unimpressive, neither strikes me as a great argument for making drastic moves in the off-season.

If I'm not mistaken they do NOT have an MLE available to them this year (because they signed Hawes last year, that means they don't the MLE again until next year, right?).  They posses NO draft picks this year.  They've got a team option on Austin (Little Baby) Rivers but Doc the Dad emerges at this point and I just can't see them letting him go.  Hawes could be trade bait considering Doc clearly doesn't like him and while I think that's a movable deal, I don't see it netting the Clippers a savior off the bench.  So after they max Deandre (to my mind the right move in every way), they'll already be over the cap before they fill out their roster.  Pretty well seems like the Clippers will look pretty much the same next year.