LONG BEFORE THE NBA bubble or Playoff P, before the side of the backboard shot or “All the Smoke” thrown at former coach Doc Rivers, the conversations that would reshape Paul George and the LA Clippers this season were taking place in Chauncey Billups’ man cave in Denver.
Billups was still in his first year as the team broadcaster. Tyronn Lue was Rivers’ lead assistant. And like so many Americans during the early days of the pandemic, they’d picked a group of friends to pod up with until a better understanding of when the season — and society overall — could resume.
Billups’ wife, Piper, was OK with the idea on one condition:
“I told them, ‘If y’all are going to come, I’m not putting that pressure on my wife. We’re hiring a chef,'” Billups said to the group, which included Lue’s cousin J. Carter and former Cleveland Cavaliers assistant coach Damon Jones. With the restaurant industry struggling, they hired the furloughed chef from Ocean Prime.
Basketball was the main dish on the menu, however.
“We dove into it for four or five hours a day,” Lue said. There were regular Zoom calls with Rivers and the rest of the Clippers’ staff. But the working group at Billups’ house became its own think tank. The space gave the individuals an opportunity to look at the team — and their own careers — with fresh eyes.
“All that time spent talking and studying, doing all the stuff with Ty,” Billups said. “That’s actually what really made my decision to coach.”
The Clippers were among the favorites to win the NBA title, but there was something about the offense that wasn’t feeling right. Kawhi Leonard and George were great individually, but the two superstars weren’t making each other or the rest of the team better.
There was only so much that could be changed before the season restarted in July, though. When Lue took over as head coach in October, he asked Billups to be his lead assistant and to take charge of the Clippers’ point guards.
However, the Clippers didn’t have any traditional point guards on the roster — and there wasn’t much help coming on the free-agent or trade market, either. So Lue and Billups went back to a concept they’d been talking about for months: working with George and Leonard to take on more of the playmaking duties.
“I just think with your two primary scorers, they have to be able to make guys better,” Lue said. “Those two guys can get their shot off on anybody at any time. Now, we talk about attacking the rim to make your teammates better.”
Billups has taken the lead role with George, Leonard and Reggie Jackson, watching film and talking with them throughout the game on how to see the game through the eyes of a point guard.
IT’S A DIFFERENT role for each of them. Leonard has played alongside playmakers such as Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet. George has played with point guards such as George Hill, Russell Westbrook and Raymond Felton.
But for the Clippers’ offense to become greater than the sum of its parts, it’s a role each has learned to embrace.
“It’s definitely growth for me,” Leonard said. “Especially coming from last year, [with us] really not having that true, true PG.”
Leonard and George can often be seen during games talking with Billups, a candidate for several head-coaching openings, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
Off the court, Billups does even more individual mentoring and film study with George on the finer points of running an offense.
“I just want to teach him how to see the game,” Billups said. “What to look for on certain plays — not just worrying about the guy in front of you, if you can beat him. ‘Where’s the guy going to help from? What shooters do you have? Where are they on the floor?’
“There’s a mindset that comes with that. Because sometimes you just want to be a killer out there and take advantage of every matchup. Well, as a point guard, you can’t quite do that. You got to kind of play chess.”
Billups said the key to his relationship with George is consistently watching film and talking things through. Not just after good games or bad games — after every game, like an immersive language experience.
That’s what it takes to learn to think and see the game through a point guard’s eyes. And it has borne dividends on the court throughout the regular season and playoffs, as the Clippers tried to shift away from the isolation-heavy offense they often devolved into last season.
According to Second Spectrum, the Clippers shot 55% off George’s passes during the regular season — best among the 68 players in the league who recorded 400 assist opportunities. George’s effect on winning in this role is even more pronounced. Over the past two regular seasons, the Clippers shot just 49.3% off George’s passes in losses. That jumps to 57.4% in wins, however.
“When he gets going, the whole team, we start riding his wave. We start riding his energy,” Jackson said after Saturday’s 132-106 Game 3 win in the Western Conference semifinals, which the Utah Jazz lead 2-1. “His energy is electric and contagious. Once he gets going, we all feed off it, and it makes the game easier for us.”
Turnovers are still an issue. George is averaging 3.3 a game this season, up from 2.6 over his career. But it’s better than last season, when the team would often stand around waiting for Leonard or George to make something happen. They are still the team’s two leading scorers, but they’re doing it with a playmaking mentality now, rather than a play-finishing mentality.
GEORGE MADE HIS reputation in the NBA as a two-way wing, but the point guard mentality comes easily to him.
At Knight High School in Palmdale, California, coach Tom Hegre once asked every player on the team at halftime if they wanted George to shoot more. Each player in the room raised his hand, letting George know not only that they were OK with him shooting more, they needed him to.
“He’s such a good person and such an unselfish player that you have to force him to be that dude,” Billups said. “Because, just naturally, he just wants to be a team guy.”
In the Clippers’ first-round series against the Dallas Mavericks, Billups and George held long film sessions on how he would create opportunities for others by attacking the rim — even with 7-foot-4 center Boban Marjanovic camped out in the middle of Dallas’ zone defensive scheme.
Go right at him, Billups would say: north-south, not east-west. Challenge Marjanovic to defend the rim without fouling. It’ll either get layups or force the defense to collapse — opening up outside shots and off-ball cuts for teammates.
“We watched it, and we watched it, and then, boom, before you know it, he was getting layup, after layup, after layup,” Billups said. “He was just like, ‘Damn, I can’t believe I’m still getting layups.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, until they change up, we’re not changing. Just keep getting downhill, just keep getting to the basket.'”
The message is the same in this series against Utah — only it’s three-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert manning the middle, instead of Marjanovich.
During the Clippers’ losses in Games 1 and 2, Gobert was a dominant presence; Utah was plus-19 in his 69 minutes and minus-10 the other 27 minutes. With George in attack mode early on Saturday, the script was flipped: The Jazz were minus-16 in Gobert’s 30 minutes.
“It’s just putting pressure, whether I’m shooting the ball, scoring or making plays,” George said. “It’s just all about putting the pressure on the defense and just staying with an attack mentality all game.”
Billups was already rewatching Game 3 as George was breaking down the win for the media. Billups will usually watch the game two or three times before showing George the clips he wants to go over.
But at this point, they’ve been speaking the same language for so long that it’s become second nature.
“Chauncey’s been a big influence on my game,” George said. “He’s been a great person to talk to and have as a resource — on decision-making and tempo, pace, a lot of stuff from a point guard mindset and a point guard point of view.”
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