‘There’s not enough basketballs on the planet for this team’

The “there’s only one basketball” line was the easy joke to make when the Clippers traded for James Harden, placing him next in a Los Angeles native quartet with Russell Westbrook, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George.

But to hear it from a Clippers player? This line was in the fantastic Sam Amick interview with Harden at The Athletic.

As veteran forward P.J. Tucker put it, “There’s not enough basketballs on the planet for this team, really.”

Okay then.

Coach Tyronn Lue has been clear that developing chemistry on this team is a work in progress, but watch the Clippers play and you see four stars playing next to each other most of the time, not with each other. Here is what Harden had to say on building that chemistry.

“We show really good signs, and then we have (lapses) where it’s like, ‘Damn, we should’ve won if this would’ve happened.’ But we’ve got a whole season of this. Obviously we want to win games while we’re going through figuring it out, but we’ll see what this team looks like going into the postseason. That’s the most important thing.”

“Let’s see what we look like in the playoffs” should have been the Clippers tagline the past few seasons, and it hasn’t tended to work out as well as it seems like it should on paper.

After an ugly 0-5 start after the Harden trade, the Clippers are 6-3 over their next nine with a +5.4 net rating over that stretch — a good sign. However, this is still an isolation-heavy team — the Clippers average a league-high 11.7 isolation possessions a game, of 10.5% of their possessions (also a league-high). Los Angeles scores 0.99 points on those possessions, which is good for isolation possessions (top 10 in the league), but it’s not the most efficient way to score.

The Clippers have an assist on 63.6% of their buckets in those nine games, up over their season average (60.3%) but not as dramatically as Lue might have hoped. There is not a lot of movement off the ball with this team yet, and they don’t get out much in transition with the starters (Westbrook pushes the pace when he comes in).

It’s a lot of “your turn/my turn” still with the Clippers and if they are going to be a playoff threat like they hope that has to change (and they have to stay healthy, a concern with this roster). Things are taking a step in the right direction, but there are a lot of steps to go.