Why The Los Angeles Clippers Will Win 41 Games... Maybe



Clipper stars Blake Griffin and Baron Davis


First things first, yes I am a Clipper fan. And not just because Blake Griffin has declared war on rims all across the NBA (see here, here, and here and everywhere else on youtube). I've been a fan since the Larry Brown, Danny Manning, Ken Norman and Loy Vaught days. Witnessing the Clippers lose year in and year out has made me quite realistic with my expectations. So when the Clips stumbled out the gate to a 1-13 start I was a little disappointed but not surprised.

Ever since Griffin's 44-point, 15 board dunk fest against the Knicks, the Clippers have played much improved basketball, with a record of 10-11 going into today's game vs. Golden State. They have even notched impressive victories against the Spurs, Bulls, Hornets, and most recently a 13 point blowout against the Nuggets. The Clippers were even on the verge of a victory over the Lakers if not for the last second heroics of Derek Fisher. Not bad at all.



Eric Gordon



Part of the success can be attributed to the young core realizing their potential. Eric Gordon has developed into a consistent scoring threat on the perimeter, while Griffin has been an absolute beast in the front court. Young center DeAndre Jordan has shown nice potential while filling in for Chris Kaman  and compliments Griffin well in the post. Even veteran PG Baron Davis is rounding into form after reportedly coming into training camp overweight (pun intended) and is contributing 11.4 and 7 dimes as a starter.

The Clippers currently sit at 11-24. They would need to finish 30-17 to reach 41 victories. So how can they finish at .500? Taking a look at the remainder of their schedule, the Clippers have 26 games against sub-.500 teams. I won't go as far as to say that they win all of these games, but they can easily take 20 of them. So that leaves 21 games against teams with winning records. Looking back at the recent 10-11 stretch the Clippers are currently on they have gone 4-7 against winning teams (.363 winning percentage). If you apply that percentage to the remaining 26 games against winning teams, you get about 9-10 victories for the Clippers. So by my calculations that would get them to 30 wins over the final 47 games in their schedule.

It may be a bit of a stretch but it's feasible and gives us Clipper faithful something to get excited about (besides Griffin of course). Now if we can only find a way to get Donald Sterling's foolishness out of the way...

-ALR