Court Vision: The latest around the league

• Blake Griffin continued his violent reign Thursday in the Clippers’ win over Sacramento, and he’s got the writers at ClipperBlog wondering if the franchise is, finally, headed some place:

“After 25 years of futility in Los Angeles under Donald Sterling, it would seem that the Clippers have finally found their star, the one player who can not only lead the franchise out of the wilderness, but who can do so in spectacular fashion.

It is possible that Blake’s performance against the Knicks might be the turning point for this season and perhaps the franchise.”

The recap also contains high praise for the Eric Gordon-Griffin pick-and-roll combination, which raises a question: What do the Clippers do with Baron Davis when he gets healthy?

• Stan Van Gundy did not want to talk much about why Ryan Anderson has fallen out of the rotation in Orlando. Anderson has appeared in just two of the Magic’s last seven games, and Brandon Bass is playing well enough to make you wonder how and when Anderson might work his way back into things.

Anderson is in his third season, meaning he has this year and next year left on his cheap rookie deal. His potential as a stretch power forward makes him a uniquely good fit in Orlando, and he’s too good to waste away on the bench like this. I wonder if teams will start calling Orlando GM Otis Smith about Anderson.

• A plea, with video and photos, for the Hawks to stick with their new motion offense instead of bailing on it after some early hiccups. Atlanta’s offense looked great Thursday against the Wizards, but Washington’s defense was pathetic, even by its own standards. The Wizards constantly lost Atlanta players in transition and near the rim in half-court sets.

• Knicks president Donnie Walsh calls Ronny Turiaf one of the team’s most important players, and the early stats show New York’s defense has played much better when Turiaf is on the court versus when he’s on the bench. Also: Make sure you pronounce Turiaf’s first name correctly.

• Carmelo Anthony’s response to Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith, who said recently they don’t think Melo is playing hard (via the Denver Post): ”I don’t pay those guys no mind.”

For what it’s worth, Anthony is on pace to blow away his career high in rebounds per game.

• Justin Kubatko gives his take on the Spurs in The New York Times, and his piece contains my favorite stat of the day: Matt Bonner has zero turnovers this season. I don’t care that he’s missed games, or that his role is mostly to spot up and shoot open threes — it’s hard to go through eight games, logging about 23 minutes per contest, without coughing up the ball once. The Matt Bonner Turnover Watch is on, at least at The Point Forward headquarters (i.e. my parents’ couch through Sunday).

• Mo Williams’ buzzer-beater to give the Cavs a win over Milwaukee on Wednesday made for a nice highlight, but John Krolik says Williams played with a new assertiveness throughout and discovered (or rediscovered) some nice pick-and-roll chemistry with Anderson Varejao. Also: J.J. Hickson is struggling.

• J.J. Redick offered some smart words about how to attack Miami’s defense (via Orlando Pinstriped Post) after the Magic’s big win on Wednesday:

“Redick said they turned the Heat’s defensive aggression against them: ‘With how they close, they close really hard, and they pull to the ball side, and we got some good stuff when we played to the weak side.’”

• At ESPN.com’s Heat Index, Brian Windhorst reports that Dwyane Wade and LeBron James haven’t figured out how to play together on offense. Crazy stat from that piece: Opponents have outscored the Heat by 25 points this season when James and Wade have been on the floor together without Chris Bosh.

Toward the end of the fourth quarter against Orlando on Wednesday, LeBron (sharing the court with Wade and Bosh) got the ball on the left wing midway through the shot clock. He held the ball and took several jab steps before hoisting a contested 20-footer that missed. That strikes as exactly the kind of shot you shouldn’t have to take when you’re on the court with Wade and Bosh.

• Shaquille O’Neal put together his best game as a Celtic in Boston’s win over New Jersey on Wednesday, but his typically so-so pick-and-roll defense briefly turned Johan Petro into Antonio McDyess from mid-range. It was Shaq’s laziest defensive performance of the season. He has shown a willingness to jump out on the pick-on-roll occasionally against good teams and threatening players, but he had no interest in sliding out to contest Petro’s shots.

• BrewHoop and Bucksketball both lament Brandon Jenning’s failure to accomplish much on the pick-and-roll, something I mentioned as a possible factor behind Milwaukee’s abysmal offensive performance. Now that I know the smartest Milwaukee fans are seeing the same thing, I’ll watch even more closely.

• Oklahoma City dished 19 assists in the first half of Wednesday’s loss to Dallas, and the team has climbed (barely) out of the basement in assist rate. Still, that 22nd-ranked defense is a major cause for concern.

• The Sixers provide a reminder that Andrea Bargnani can torch you if you can’t match his height.

• Something to monitor: Utah is 23rd in offensive rebounding rate and 29th in defensive rebounding rate, according to Basketball-Reference. It’s hard to win that way long term.