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Los Angeles Clippers reserves Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell are taking the fight to the Golden State Warriors

Watch Golden State Warriors @ Los Angeles Clippers Game 4 live on Sky Sports Arena at 8.30pm on Sunday evening.

Electric reserves Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell in action for the Los Angeles Clippers
Image: Electric reserves Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell in action for the Los Angeles Clippers

In Lou Williams, the Los Angeles Clippers have the NBA's best sixth man. In Montrezl Harrell, the have the best seventh man too. The electric reserves are taking the fight to the Golden State Warriors, writes Sky Sports NBA analyst Mark Deeks.

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Playoff Picture: How things stand

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When the Los Angeles Clippers' season ends, reserve guard Lou Williams will have completed his 14th NBA season. Having been a member of the last ever Draft class able to enter the league directly out of high school, Williams is relatively young despite all that experience, only turning 32 in October.

Yet with 936 regular season appearances alongside 55 (and counting) postseason games played in that time, Williams has an awful lot of miles on the clock already.

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This in itself would not be particularly noteworthy were it not for the fact that, somehow, Williams has continued to improve throughout his career. He simply seems to get better the older he gets.

It is a matter of significant debate and conjecture as to what is the average age an NBA player enters the prime years of their career. No sides in that debate, though, would consider the age of 31 to be a likely breakout year. This nonetheless is what Williams did last season - he hit new levels not seen in his previous 13 years.

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Of course, he was already good, a scorer of at least 15 points per game in each of the previous three seasons and winner of the 2015 Sixth Man of the Year award for being voted as the league's best player off the bench. However, last season Williams kicked that up to a giant 22.6 points per game to go along with a career-high in assists per game at 5.3, numbers he near-enough mirrored this regular season with averages of 20.0 and 5.4 respectively. A second Sixth Man of the Year award followed accordingly.

Indeed, Williams improves not only between seasons, but during seasons. He increased his scoring average across each of the first five months of this season, from 16.7 points per game in October up to 24.5 per game in February, and doing so while maintaining a mere 26.6 minutes per game average on the season, far down from last year's 32.8 mark.

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Lou Williams poured in 36 points as the Los Angeles Clippers produced the biggest comeback in NBA playoff history to stun the Golden State Warriors

And now in the first three games of the Clippers' first-round playoff series against the two-time defending champion Golden State Warriors, he has thus far totalled 77 points and 26 assists in only 85 minutes.

Williams does not need to come off the bench to do what he does; he is scoring on all comers, not merely feasting on reserves. Nevertheless, because he does so, he is the NBA's best reserve, and a third such award will almost certainly follow this year.

NBA Primetime on Sky Sports
NBA Primetime on Sky Sports

The Warriors visit the Clippers in Game 4 on NBA Primetime - watch live on Sky Sports Arena on Sunday at 8:30pm

The Clippers, as unconventionally built as they are, run out a more defensive starting line-up featuring Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Patrick Beverley, knowing that their best scorer will be on hand to put pressure on opponents to keep their stars in the game when they would ideally be staggering their line-ups to get rest.

And by virtue of being so relatively well-rested himself given his low minute share, Williams is also fresh and ready come the latter stretches of games, something perfectly demonstrated in how he led his team to an 85-point second half performance in Game 2 of this current series to make NBA history and overturn a 31-point deficit.

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Lou Williams sealed a dramatic regular-season win for the Clippers with an epic buzzer-beater

What is striking about what Williams does is quite how he does it. Notwithstanding the fact that he has become a good perimeter shooter over the course of his long career, the core of Williams's game involves driving to the basket, and the whole world and his wife know that Williams prefers to do so by driving to his left-hand side.

Being able to anticipate that Williams would rather go that direction, however, is different to being able to prevent him from doing it. And if a defender is able to get Williams to drive right, they have normally only done so by overplaying so much as to give Williams a step's advantage, enough for him to get to the basket or to drive and kick (something at which he also excels).

Lou Williams gestures for fans to make more noise
Image: Lou Williams gestures for fans to make more noise

The fact that Williams prefers to go left does not mean he cannot go to his right. His attack is fairly predictable - handle in the half court, drive around screens, attack the rim, shooting plenty of pull-ups, leading the break in transition and trying to turn everything into a semi-transition opportunity wherever possible - yet the predictability somehow makes it more artful.

Remember that the league's leading scorer James Harden's attack is similarly predictable. Defenses can, and often do, anticipate what Harden is going to do from the three or so options he has. It matters not when he can create the space and hit the shot anyway. The same goes for Williams, whose guile, speed, handle, consistency, shot-making and relentlessness seem to just keep getting better.

Montrezl Harrell scored 22 points against the Memphis Grizzlies
Image: Montrezl Harrell reacts during a 22-point effort against the Memphis Grizzlies

Particularly galling for Clippers opponents, and particularly important in the playoff series thus far, has been the play of the Clippers' other electric reserve, Montrezl Harrell.

Harrell himself has broken out this season at the comparably youthful age of 25; taking up much of the center time opened up by the departure of DeAndre Jordan, he has become a much more impactful presence on the interior defense, and more than that has become a vastly improved offensive player.

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Los Angeles Clippers' big man Montrezl Harrell threw down a huge dunk off a pick-and-roll play in Game 2 against the Golden State Warriors

The physical specimen whose athleticism and motor saw him set all kinds of dunk and efficiency records has flashed a much-improved post game this season, something to add in half-court sets to his cuts, put-backs, transition opportunities and dump-off finishes. The big man not only finishes plays; he starts them now, too.

Between the two, the Clippers have an extremely potent pick-and-roll option. Harrell is in the 88th percentile of pick-and-roll rollers offensively, hitting 68.9 per cent of his field goals when used in that way, while Williams ranks in the 81st percentile for scoring efficiency as a pick-and-roll ball handler.

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Montrezl Harrell unleashed a vicious dunk en route to 32 points in the Los Angeles Clippers' 121-112 win over the Dallas Mavericks

With 'Lou Will' also being one of the better passers to the roll man in the game today, the two excel at the most fundamental skill of all. Basketball is built around the pick-and-roll because it is so hard to stop when executed properly. And these two are doing just that.

For five years, the Clippers boasted the bench scoring prowess of Jamal Crawford, a three-time Sixth Man of the Year winner himself. As he departed, Williams was immediately brought in, and was somehow even better than Crawford had been.

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The Clippers are not only seemingly always in possession of the league's best sixth man every year, but they are also currently in possession of the league's seventh-best man as well.

In this series, they are going up against the ridiculous star power of the Warriors.

Yet in having so many playable options, so much depth, a duo that no one has figured out how to slow all year, a chemistry that breeds hustle and a confidence belying their seeding, they are proving themselves entirely up for the fight.

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