Derrick Jones Jr. Addresses How Clippers Can Improve on Defense This Season

Finishing 18th in defensive rating is not what a team built on toughness wants, but that is where the Los Angeles Clippers landed last season on the way to a 42-40 record and ninth place in the West.

With the opener against the Sacramento Kings set for Wednesday, Oct. 21, at Intuit Dome, forward Derrick Jones Jr. was asked how this group can be better on that end, and he did not dodge the question.

Law Murray of The Athletic asked Jones how the defense can climb in a video he shared on Saturday, and Jones said the Clippers have to be aggressive instead of being timid and waiting for the game to come to them.

He wants his team to throw the first punch and put up some resistance, rather than letting the other team get comfortable.

Jones also said the Clippers "didn't lock in on the game plan a lot last year," and he put himself in that group when he said they did not guard to the best of their abilities.

When Murray asked who has been pushing that message in camp, Jones said it is tough to be heard over center Brook Lopez, and he added that the whole unit is trying to talk early so everyone knows what is going on.

I respect that Jones put himself on the list, because his own season was rough from early on, when he hurt his knee in the 13th game of the year against the Celtics and the MCL injury kept him out for well over a month.

The Clippers were 9-21 by the time he came back in late December, and four games later he got hurt the same way, again against the Celtics, and missed another month.

He still played 50 games with 45 starts, but his defense slipped a bit from his first year with the team.

Jones was with the first unit early in training camp, and a healthy Jones who takes on the other team's best wing each night would go a long way for this group.

Forward Brandon Ingram will not be ready to start the season after surgery for a right heel injury and a partially torn Achilles tendon, so the Clippers will be without one of their top scorers at the start.

Guard Max Strus suffered a partial tear of the plantar fascia in his right foot in the preseason opener in Hawaii and was set to be reevaluated in four weeks.

That puts more on the defense while the team is looking for others to step up, and I see defense as the best way to steal wins early on nights when the shots do not fall.

After the Kings, the Clippers visit the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday and the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday, so this approach will get tested fast.

Jones is right that this starts with effort and focus.

A top-12 defense is a fair goal for this team, as long as he and Lopez can get the rest of the group guarding with that edge from the first night.