Orlando Magic Playoff Lessons: LA Clippers valued depth, but it had a breaking point

Any team with Kawhi Leonard always seems to be flirting with injury.

Ever since his injury issues boiled over in San Antonio, everyone around him has worked on his schedule and at his comfort. Leonard’s team has had to have a plan to manage him and have him ready for the playoffs and the games that really matter.

What this means in reality in a salary-capped league is that the team with Leonard has to spend smart. With their understanding that one of their highest-paid players will miss anywhere from 15-20 games minimum, they need a bench that can pick up the slack.

The LA Clippers picking up Paul George certainly helps. He went a long way to restoring his reputation throughout last season and last season’s playoffs. But another high-salaried player only increases that attention.

As Shaquille O’Neal likes to say, the playoffs are about the stars but there will be a point where “the others” have to step up too. For a lot of teams, it is those others that can make the difference between a lower and a higher seed.

In the end, though, depth is nice. But deeper into the playoffs, it is star power that matters. And no team can survive for long without its stars.

Depth is key to getting through the marathon of the season. But the LA Clippers showed that depth has a limit and that stars rule in the Playoffs, especially deeper in the postseason.

Injuries to star players later in the season become far too much to overcome. The deeper a team goes into the postseason, the more it needs its stars.

It was the LA Clippers’ depth that carried the team past the Utah Jazz in that upset win. But it was losing Leonard that ultimately doomed the LA Clippers against the Phoenix Suns in the Western Conference Finals.

Depth is nice and important. But winning at the highest levels requires star power.

The Clippers have long been masters at building teams with extreme levels of depth. They made the Playoffs in 2019 wholly on the strength of a deep roster whose best scorer in Lou Williams came off the bench.

They used that depth to acquire George in a trade after signing Leonard in free agency. And then rebuilt that depth with a low-cost pick-up of Ivica Zubac and Luke Kennard along with nice free-agent signings like Serge Ibaka and a big draft pick in Terrance Mann.

The Clippers had 10 players start at least 10 games last season. They ended the season fourth in the league in bench scoring with 39.4 points per game.

In the playoff series against the Jazz, the Clippers averaged 22.7 points per game off the bench (fifth of the eight teams). They posted 25.3 points per game off the bench against the Suns.

It should be abundantly clear even from these numbers how much bench points decrease for teams in the playoffs. By their nature, star players take the lead in these moments.

So when the Clippers lost Leonard to a knee injury — that will likely keep him out for the entire 2022 season — the Clippers’ playoff hopes completely changed. Leonard went out in Game 5 of their series with the Jazz.

The team might have been able to hang on against a similarly egalitarian offense like the Jazz — they did not rely wholly on Donovan Mitchell for scoring, but he is rightly considered the one star on that team — but they could not hang on against the individual brilliance that Devin Booker and Chris Paul brought to the Western Conference Finals.

At a certain point, the Clippers ran out of gas.

Los Angeles Clippers

Paul George certainly did not. He averaged 28.7 points, 10.5 rebounds and 5.5 assists per game in the series, shooting a 48.5-percent effective field goal percentage. That included dropping 41 points to stave off elimination in Game 5.

Reggie Jackson, a player who really emerged in the postseason and in this series specifically, scored 20.3 points per game. He is the exact kind of player the Clippers have continually found through the years to step up in big moments.

And indeed, he stepped up big in the conference finals. But it was clearly not enough. He is not Leonard.

Depth was only so important for a team. As rotations shortened, the team needed its stars on both ends. And the Clippers missed that when Leonard left the roster. They finally broke.

Depth is not the bet to make in the playoffs. It is still all about the stars.

That is obviously the big missing piece for the Orlando Magic. It is something we have spoken about on this site and every Magic observe has spoken about for nearly a decade now.

It is why the team ultimately decided to trade a two-time All-Star in Nikola Vucevic. Because while he is certainly an All-Star and able to wrack up points — including that stellar playoff series against the Milwaukee Bucks in the bubble in 2020 — he is not the kind of star who can take over a game or seemingly win on his own.

The Magic, after all, struggled in Vucevic’s best individual season last year.

Star power wins in this league. That is the biggest lesson that can come from the Clippers for the Magic. As nice as depth is, stars win titles. Depth can be replaced.

Orlando Magic

This current Magic team is starting to build up its depth. Everyone is talking about all the young players and even how the Magic cannot possibly play them all.

Orlando this season is going to lean on the depth of its youth to both develop and compete in games. The Magic can feel like they can play easily 12 players. Even a second-year player like R.J. Hampton has rotation-level experience and talent.

If the team is going to make a surprise playoff push, it is going to because of this egalitarian system. Everyone is going to do their roles so well and the attack come from so many different players that it propels them forward.

But that is not a formula to win in the playoffs. Those spunky teams ultimately get put in their place by individual brilliance. Those teams rarely even hold home-court advantage.

The team needs that star to tie things together. And then they need an elite-level star to carry them through late-season playoff games. It is almost impossible to build depth and then find a star. Depth surrounds the star.

And in the end, no one can control when an injury might hit. And even the deepest teams can struggle when their star is out of the game. Especially deeper in the Playoffs.

Orlando certainly hopes it drafted a star in Jalen Suggs. The team may have another star-level player in Jonathan Isaac. And there seems a good chance the Magic get another bite at the apple in the 2022 Draft.

The team needs its stars before it can even think about this problem.

Becuase there is one truth about the NBA that is proven time and time again: A team only goes as far as its stars can take them.