Clippers are banking on familiarity to achieve success

REPORTING FROM LAS VEGAS â€”  A year ago, the Clippers received a motivational gift on the first day of training camp. Maps of downtown Los Angeles were distributed, along with an unmistakable message: “Pick which route we’re going to take.”

That would be the parade route after an NBA championship.

The Clippers didn’t get to stroll down Figueroa Street after falling to Oklahoma City in the Western Conference semifinals, but they’re hoping the familiarity of a second season under Coach Doc Rivers can provide a blueprint for going further than any team in franchise history.

“Just knowing Doc’s system, knowing the coaching staff mostly and knowing what to expect,” forward Blake Griffin said Tuesday after the first camp session at Nevada Las Vegas, “we’re already ahead, but we still have a lot of work to get back to where we were at the end of the season.”

Of course, familiarity can have its drawbacks as well. Rivers said the holdovers from last season’s team were running new offensive schemes the old way while the newcomers were largely executing the schemes properly.

“That usually doesn’t work,” Rivers said.

The Clippers have four more days to acclimate themselves to each other and this city before breaking camp. They arrived here after the Memphis Grizzlies took the spot the Clippers used last season at UC San Diego; Rivers joked that Grizzlies owner Robert Pera, an alumnus of the school, “gave them a pretty good donation.”

Rivers said he would have preferred the Clippers opened their preseason schedule in Las Vegas immediately after finishing camp. Instead, they will play four exhibition games before returning to play the Denver Nuggets on Oct. 18 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center.

Players have not been issued a curfew this week but don’t appear to need one. Griffin said most of his teammates were in bed by 10 p.m. Monday after returning from a dinner with owner Steve Ballmer.

“If you want to win, you’ll go to sleep,” Rivers said. “If you want to lose, you’ll go party. It’s just that simple and I told them that.”

Rivers isn’t exactly putting his players on lockdown, encouraging them to eat dinners together and attend shows along the Strip. Ballmer left town after the first dinner, heading to Stanford to teach a business school class.

The former Microsoft chief executive has already given the Clippers a lesson in branding, issuing Surface tablets to players instead of the iPads they normally receive at the start of each season.

“Steve swears they’re better,” Rivers said, “so we’ll see.”

The Clippers have directed their mental browsers to two areas of emphasis in the early going of camp: rebounding and interior defense.

“Our emphasis was guarding the three [small forward] and we did a great job of that” last season, Griffin said. “Now we have to get better at guarding the paint and the three.”

And your point is?

Oklahoma City Coach Scott Brooks called Russell Westbrook “the best point guard in basketball.”

Westbrook then agreed with his coach’s assessment, saying, “That’s how I feel.”

Uh-oh. Might that make things awkward between Westbrook and Clippers counterpart Chris Paul in the season opener between the teams Oct. 30 at Staples Center? Don’t count on it.

“If he said otherwise,” Paul said of Westbrook, “he would be nuts, you know what I mean? Like, what do y’all expect him to say? You want him to say no?”

Said Rivers: “I didn’t know there was a ranking; do you get a trophy or anything? … I don’t get into all that kind of stuff. I love Chris Paul. I’d take him all day.”