Crawford the key for Clippers survival

Jamal Crawford is an offensive dynamo. He's the vocal point of the Clippers bench, a guy who makes shots you should never make and takes shots you should never take. He makes hard shots look easy and easy ones look hard. There is nobody in the league like Jamal and currently there may be no bench player in the league that's as important.

For much of the 2014-15 reg season the Clips' bench scoring burden was Jamal's alone to cope with and with the exception of a couple games in the 1st round against the Spurs this looks to still be the case. When Jamal is not really a player that can be game planned for, his ridiculous shot making and creating ability combined with out-of-this-world ball handling skills making him very tough to stop when he gets going. Therefore, the Clips will be relying on Jamal more than ever in the postseason. Doc will need him to get hot and stay hot since the Spurs bench is no joke. Spurs back-up point guard Patty Mills has out played Hall of Famer Tony Parker so far in this series, while Diaw and various other bench components have done great things  on the court for the Spurs.

But, none of them are Jamal. He has the capability to put up better numbers than both of those combined if he was really feeling it and with the stakes so high it would be nice if Crawford could return to 100% sixth man form.

To be fair, you could argue that the Clips don't need much from their bench since the Clippers starting 5 consisting of Paul, Redick, D.J, Barnes and Griffin was arguably the most dominant in the league during the regular season but at the end of the day no championship is won without a bench. Nor is series.

Spurs head coach Greg Popovich recognises the huge importance Jamal has for the Clipper team and how he's simply irreplaceable in many ways.

"He's tough to game-plan for unless you go ahead and double team him and never let him shoot and dribble more than once" said Pop. "He's an uncanny scorer. He's such a great assets of the bench because he can bring so much offense to your team".

During the playoffs Jamal has often found himself playing half his minutes with the starters as-well as the bench meaning he's had to integrate his ability to complement a unit with his ability to feature as the focal point. With the starters there will be less shots for Jamal but he's always been good at feeling his way into a game with the 1st unit. Crawford has proved himself able to contribute to the Clippers in every way they want him to since he started his tenure in L.A. If he plays great then the Clippers NBA best offense may be too much for the Spurs. Crawford is the key to the Clippers escaping the 1st round alive.