Vinny DN was 56-26 his last year and might have made a deeper playoff run but for injuries. And it's not like the West was a cakewalk last season.
Doc will, at best, finish 58-24.
Mike
If you don't think that there was a change for the better from VDN to Doc, I present you with this Blake Griffin gem from last year:
We switch up our defensive principles every game
http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/story/_/id/9086277/vinny-del-negro-blake-griffin-expect-los-angeles-clippers-defense-improve
And, almost on cue, it's worth pointing out that their defense was a little better last year than this year.
Sort of -- their most played lineups in 2014 have defensive ratings of 99.6 and 98.1. But neither of those have Chris Paul, so they're not a real barometer of the playoff Clippers.
For reference: The best defensive team in the league this year was Indiana, who had a season average defensive rating of 99.4
With Paul, the lineup that logged the most minutes has a defensive rating of 102.5 (for reference, the Celtics had a 107 Drtg for the season this year), but a pace of 117 which is stupid fast -- the fastest team in the league this year was Philly, who had a pace of 99.2
That's the Paul-Collison-Barnes-Blake-DeAndre lineup.
Substituting Collison for Crawford, the team gets even fast (117.5) and gets a defensive boost, a DRtg that'd be good for first in the league with 97.1
Substituting Collison for Paul (having Collison and Crawford on the floor at the same time), the DefRTG goes up all the way to 104, and a Collison-Reddick-Barnes Blake-DeAndre lineup gives up a putrid 109.
All those numbers are points per 100 possessions, by the way.
Compared to 2013, when Chris Paul was healthy for the entirety of the season and they had Eric Bledsoe, the main Clippers lineup (they logged 700 minutes together) of Paul, Willie Green, Caron Butler, Blake and DeAndre had a defensive rating of 103.4
Their second two most played units, with Bledsoe, Odom, Crawford, Turiaf and Mat Barnes, and a terrifying DefRTG of 89.8 over 283 minutes.
Playing one minute less was Billups, Paul, Blake, Jordan, and Caron butler, who had a Defensive Rating of 103.2
So, the biggest takeaway is that the Clippers miss Bledsoe and Caron Butler on defense.
Figures here:
http://stats.nba.com/teamLineups.html?TeamID=1610612746&pageNo=1&rowsPerPage=25&sortField=MIN&sortOrder=DES&PerMode=Totals&columnOrder=&MeasureType=Advanced&Season=2012-13http://stats.nba.com/teamLineups.html?TeamID=1610612746&pageNo=1&rowsPerPage=25&sortField=MIN&sortOrder=DES&PerMode=Totals&columnOrder=&MeasureType=Advanced&Season=2013-14and here
http://bkref.com/tiny/QwGrI