Jeff Van Gundy is the clippers' secret weapon: “He changed the identity of our team”

Throughout the season, the players of Los Angeles Clippers heard the same refrain from Jeff Van Gundy, team's main assistant coach and defensive coordinator. “His everything is that we have to be aggressive and anticipate everything,” said Clippers striker Nic Batum recently.

During the matches, Van Gundy illustrates this state of mind of the sidelines. He shouts. He points. He waves his arms. He often leaves his seat, sending his glasses sliding along his nose. “He always makes us go out, going around the other team,” said Clippers leader Kris Dunn. “It is really intense.”

But when the team’s qualifiers were to open up the Denver Nuggets on Saturday, Van Gundy was presented with an opportunity almost never offered to coaches: a chance to practice what he preaches. With 34 seconds to play in the fourth quarter and the clippers clinging to an advance from a point, the ball – after being out of the hands of Kawhi Leonard – landed on his lap.

The referees judged that he had touched Leonard for the last time, but it was a tight call. While the clippers coaches were reflected in the opportunity to challenge, the star of Nuggets Nikola Jokić rushed to their bench. Van Gundy quickly diagnosed the situation. He knew that Jokić's goal was to bring and take out the ball from the referees before the Clippers could make a decision. He also knew that the game was at stake and that at that time, what the clippers needed most was more time. And so, while the Jokić of almost 7 feet and 280 pounds and more headed for him, Van Gundy, only 5-9, tightened the ball with both hands. Even when Jokić stretched out, Van Gundy was held strong, refusing to let go, while looking at Jokić.

The additional few seconds bought enough time the clippers Ty read head coach to challenge the game. The call was confirmed, and lost it in overtime, but the time has encapsulated everything that Van Gundy brought to the Clippers during his first season with the team. He knew not only what his opponent wanted to do, but he also knew how to disturb him.

Upon entering the 2024-25 season, the expectations for the mowers were weak. Paul George, nine times, had left for free agency. Leonard was to miss the first months of the season with a knee injury. The only players added to the list were companies like Derrick Jones Jr., Batum and Dunn. And yet, the Clippers won 50 games – just a shy last season's total – and after Monday 105–102 Match 2 Victory In Denver, are only three victories of their first victory in the eliminatory series since 2021.

How did they do it? Leonard returned to Its MVP level shape. And the mixture of pop and offensive sustainability of James Harden maintained the clippers offensive. But the biggest difference this season is that the clippers, despite the loss of George, a selection four times, have turned into one of the best defensive teams in the league.

Ivica Zubac becoming one of the first defensive anchors of the League helped. Thus the additions of Dunn, Batum and Jones, all players with a defensive spirit. But ask anyone on or around the clippers who is the most responsible for the jump of the 16th row team of the defensive note last season in the third year, and they all give the same answer: a former 63 -year -old broadcaster at Glasses who, before this season, had not trained an NBA match since 2007.

“He changed the identity of our team,” Wing Norm Powell said Clippers about Van Gundy.

“His addition,” added Batum, “could have been the best of our offseason.”

(Grant Thomas / Yahoo Sports Illustration)

Van Gundy, who began his career training the high school ball in Rochester, New York, (and who refused to be interviewed for this story) is the coach of the coach, a basketball salary that other coaches have long venerated. “I remember talking about (Gregg Popovich) around which should lead our qualification group,” said Sean Ford, director of the American national team of the American team. Ford threw a few names before mentioning Van Gundy, a longtime friend. Almost a decade has passed since Van Gundy had resulted in the NBA for the last time. Ford was not even sure if he was interested in work. “But as soon as I mentioned Jeff,” said Ford, “Pop says,” Oh my God is the guy. “”

Popovich was not the only admirer of Van Gundy from the NBA. Read, which briefly played for Van Gundy in Houston and then worked later by his side while with Team USA, had been trying to hire Van Gundy for years. “But he was not ready to come back,” said Lue. This changed after ESPN dismissed Van Gundy in the summer of 2023, ending its 16 years on the network. Van Gundy consulted the Boston Celtics during the 2023-24 season before finally agreed to join LUE staff in June.

It was the perfect time for him to do so. The Clippers, aware that they were about to lose George, sought ways to reorganize their list. An option was to try to replace George's score. But Lue and Lawrence Frank, the president of the team's basketball operations, had a different plan in mind. The Clippers already had two elite offensive players in Leonard and Harden. They were also only a few months away describing his own group as “soft. “So why not, thought Frank and read, rather surround their stars of defenders impatient and reshape the character's character?

“His addition could have been the best of our offseason.”

Nic Batum on Jeff Van Gundy

And Van Gundy, both believed, was the perfect coach to help them do it.

In August, the Clippers decamped for Hawaii, where their training camp took place. There, Van Gundy addressed the group. “He told us that we are going to become a team with a defensive spirit and that it starts by getting to work and being ready to do the work,” said Dunn. Van Gundy had two main goals for the season. One was to solve the clippers' rebound problems; Only six teams had been worse on the defensive glass the previous season. The other had to increase their defensive pressure; Only nine teams have forced a percentage of reversals.

Shortly after, Van Gundy began to implement the team's defensive patterns. “I arrived late because I participate (with France) in the Olympic Games,” said Batum. “And when I arrived, the guys told me that with (van Gundy) here, things were different now.” However, Batum was unable to understand what it meant until he saw a van Gundy practicing for himself. “He will be like,” don't hold here, don't hold here “, then he will literally move a thumb,” said Batum.

Van Gundy kept this attention to details throughout the season. Dunn described Van Gundy's game plans as “the best I have ever seen”. Several clipper players have delighted their procedures step by step on their agents.

“Many coaches tell you, but it breaks it to the nearest and closest detail,” said Harden.

Harden and Van Gundy are particularly close. Both speak frequently, in person but also by phone. Sometimes they will discuss the defensive strategy for the following night. Sometimes Harden, a basketball bare, will simply listen to that Van Gundy tells old war stories of all his years around the NBA. The relationship, people close to Harden say, is one of the reasons why Harden was more engaged in the defensive this season. The 3.5 deviations he has on average by 48 minutes are the most at 2020.

“He helps me a lot and I know he helps a lot of our team,” said Harden. “He understands the players.”

Like his teammates, Harden knows that Van Gundy does not ask for more efforts than he gives himself. “No matter when we go to the establishment,” said Powell. “Morning, night – it's still there.” At the house in Los Angeles, Van Gundy is generally on the road at 5 am, he begins his days to call his brother, Stan, the longtime head coach of the NBA and TNT analyst, who lives on the east coast. They will decompose the match of the previous night, taking only one break so that Jeff has his usual breakfast McDonald's from oatmeal and a diet coke.

“And if something did not go well in the game, it's always” I need to do a better teaching job “, or” I need to have a better plan “,” said Stan. “He doesn't blame others.”

This is one of the reasons why players love it. Another? He helps them win matches. The Clippers finished the season as the best team of defensive rebound in the League, and only seven teams forced reversals at a higher rate. The weaknesses of last season have become forces of this season, their new attack helping them to fly victories at the start of the season – even without Leonard and against more talented opponents. An example: an 114-110 victory at the end of December on a fully loaded grizzly team and then. It was one of the 17 games this season in which the Clippers collected at least 12 interceptions – just two games less than their total compared to the previous three years combined.

“This thing kept us afloat from these first 50 games while Kawhi came back to him,” said Lue. And now that Kawhi is back, the Clippers seem to have their best title drawn for years.

The BluePrint envisaged last summer by the team’s brain trust was fully exposed in the section of match 2. With just under 55 seconds, Leonard buried a disputed mid -range jumper, giving the Clippers a three -point lead and 39 39 points for the night. While the Nuggets were drinking the ball on the ground, Van Gundy jumped from his seat to bark the defensive directions. Shortly after being invaded by Harden in painting, Jokić launched a lazy pass to the 3 -point line, where Leonard chose him, the 13th flight of the team match and the seventh turnover of Jokić. Forty seconds later, the Clippers celebrated a victory in the playoff series.

During the post-match press conference of Jokić, a journalist questioned the reversals. “They were definitely aggressive,” said Jokić. “They attacked us. They attacked the ball. “

The players had learned from their coach.

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