With less than 24 hours remaining until the LA Clippers take the floor again, we walk you through what the first scrimmage
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00:00After a four-month long delay, the LA Clippers are officially less than 24
00:04hours away from returning to the floor. On Wednesday, July 22nd at 3 p.m. Eastern
00:09Time, the Clippers will face off at the Land of Magic, which will be the first official
00:12NBA game since the season was suspended on March 11th due to the coronavirus
00:16pandemic. Not only is this a big deal for the Clippers, who effectively begin their
00:19title chase tomorrow, but it's huge for the league as well. After months of diligent
00:23planning and preparation, fans will finally get their first look at what
00:26basketball will be like for the next three months. So how exactly is this
00:30scrimmage going to go? For starters, we should expect plenty of rust. A full off-season
00:34is about the time this passed since Clippers last played on March 10th.
00:36Unlike a normal offseason, the team has not been able to participate in standard
00:40basketball activities. Training facilities were open for a brief period
00:43of time, and some players had access to home gyms. For the most part, things have
00:47been strictly limited. Because of that, we should expect guys like Kawhi Leonard
00:51and Paul George to come out in mid-season form, if they even play in
00:54tomorrow's contest, and we certainly shouldn't expect it to be a clean game.
00:57Chemistry is going to be shaky, turnovers are going to come in bunches, and players are
01:01going to get winded much quicker than usual. Fortunately, there are some rule
01:04changes in place for each team's first scrimmage that will make things a bit
01:07easier on teams. First of all, quarters will be limited to 10 minutes rather than
01:11a standard 12-minute quarters. Additionally, there will be a reduction of normal game
01:15presentation elements until the seeding games begin, allowing players to focus on
01:19getting comfortable with the new setup before all that kind of stuff begins.
01:22Secondly, we shouldn't expect intensity to be too high. Clippers coach Doc Rivers
01:26told reporters on Tuesday's Zoom call that he expects each scrimmage to get
01:29increasingly competitive, with the first actually being treated as a scrimmage
01:32rather than a preseason-type environment, saying, quote,
01:35We're looking at this as an opportunity to get better for both teams.
01:38So coaches are absolutely sharing things. We'll ask them in this quarter, can you do
01:42this? Out onside, out of balance, can you do this defense? Then what do you want me to do?
01:46Right now, I think most of the coaches are in the get better mode, not exactly
01:50the winter preseason game mode. This doesn't mean that some guys will be going
01:54through the motions tomorrow. Some players will absolutely treat their first
01:57scrimmage as something more than it is, but this will hopefully be the least
02:01game-ready Clippers look for the remainder of the season. And finally, we
02:04shouldn't expect, we shouldn't base too much on this first appearance. There are
02:08a number of reasons why this first scrimmage shouldn't be viewed as an
02:11actual representation of how each team performed in the bubble. For one thing, the
02:15Clippers must hopefully not have a full roster available in tomorrow's game as
02:18Ivica Zubac, Landry Shaman, and Montrezl Harrell currently aren't with the team.
02:22That means there'll be non-rotation guys in a lot of minutes, and on top of that,
02:26some wacky lineups probably won't see it again, especially not in postseason. But
02:30despite everything that LA's first scrimmage won't be, it'll still be
02:33exciting and well worth your time to watch. It may not be the start of a new
02:36season, but with how long we've waited for this return, it sure feels like one.