The Los Angeles Clippers have won six games in a row to bring their record up to 22-13, and they look like the championship contenders everybody thought they would be before the season. Five of those six wins have come without star forward Blake Griffin, as he is dealing with a quadriceps injury, and even with Griffin out Josh Smith still has not been seeing much time. Head coach Doc Rivers doesn't expect that to change anytime soon either, according to Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times.
Rivers didn't just come out and say that Smith will not re-enter the rotation anytime soon, but when asked the question he responded with a question of his own. "Right now, why would you want to touch what's going on?" said Rivers. Rivers is completely right too, because the Clippers may be playing their best basketball of the season, so why mess with a good thing?
Smith was brought in this season to be Griffin's backup at power forward, and he started the season in that role. Smith has had his issues this season, though, and whether it has been poor play or failure to play within the system, his fit with the Clippers doesn't seem to be all that great. Smith recently lost his spot in the rotation to Cole Aldrich, but when Griffin went down it looked like Smith might find some more minutes. Instead Smith has only appeared in garbage time since Griffin went down and appears to have fallen completely out of favor in Los Angeles.
Smith's name has come up in trade rumors recently, and although Rivers has denied those rumors, it seems like a trade is the only way Smith might find playing time. The Clippers seem to have a solid group of guys that are willing to work together to achieve their goals of winning an NBA title, but Smith seems like an outlier as every off-the-court story in Clipperland has involved him. Most recently it seemed like Griffin took a subliminal shot at Smith for not knowing his role.
Smith is in his first season with the Clippers, and he has not played all that well in very limited time. Smith is averaging a career-low 14.0 minutes per game and has also only added 5.5 points and 3.8 rebounds in 30 contests so far. Smith likely won't be able to improve those numbers with the Clippers this year, so it will be interesting to see if they will trade him at some point to at the very least get rid of the distraction.
