At his pregame news conference Sunday, Clippers coach Doc Rivers described his deep roster as both a luxury and a riddle to which he doesn’t yet have an answer.
“The good thing about our team is we have up to 11 guys that can be on the floor at the end of a game,” he said. “The bad thing about our team is we have up to 11 guys that can be on the floor at the end of the game.”
Whereas Rivers stayed with a single lineup for long stretches during the fourth quarter of the Clippers’ first two games, he mixed and matched in the final minutes Sunday in a victory against the Houston Rockets at Staples Center to find the right personnel to best defend the Rockets at one end and score at the other.