Loss of Chauncey Billups leaves Clippers with no margin for error

Chauncey Billups will miss the rest of the season after tearing his Achilles in Monday's win over the Magic. (Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images)

The crazy year for Chauncey Billups officially ended on Tuesday. Tests revealed a season-ending Achilles tear after Monday’s win over the Magic, robbing the Clippers of the best among their crew of hybrid guards playing alongside the great Chris Paul.

It’s easy to dismiss the significance of this injury: Billups is shooting a career-worst 36 percent from the floor, and the Clippers have an armada of combo guards — Mo Williams, Eric Bledsoe and Randy Foye — ready to step into the vacated minutes. Foye in particular is listed at 6-foot-4, an inch taller than Billups, meaning he should approximate Billups’ ability to defend shooting guards. And on nights when Foye is overmatched but the opponent has a weak small forward — think of the Clips’ Staples Center co-tenants — Butler can take the tougher assignment, as he has in some games already this season. The Clippers were always going to have trouble against teams with both a top-shelf shooting guard and small forward — I’m sure you can think of some high-profile ones, including the current top seed in the West — and Billups’ injury doesn’t really change that reality, right?

But of course that is far too simple. Billups’ injury breaks up the single most effective five-man lineup that has logged at least 100 minutes so far this season, according to Basketball Value. In 255 minutes together — more time than all but five units league-wide — the Clippers’ starting lineup has outscored opponents by nearly 18 points per 100 possessions. It has provided consistently great defense for a team that has done poorly on that end. Substitute Williams for Billups, and that number drops to about 4.5 points per 100 possessions. As John Schuhmann pointed out at NBA.com, the drop-off has come on defense, where Williams, at 6-1, just cannot defend shooting guards, even though he’s in the best shape of his career and generally working his tail off.

A lineup featuring the starters with Foye in Billups’ place has only logged about 19.5 minutes together, not enough time to draw any conclusions. But Foye is historically an average three-point shooter, whereas Billups in his later years has morphed into a steady 40 percent shooter from deep. And Foye cannot draw free throws like Billups, who continues to fake and juke and contort his way to foul line six times per 36 minutes.

Bledsoe, for all his potential, is an unproven NBA commodity also listed at just 6-1.

Still, this isn’t necessarily the kind of injury that torpedoes a potential contender. You could easily argue Billups wasn’t even among the four most important Clippers this season — Paul, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan and Butler. The Clippers can still spare Paul at point guard, and they can still trot out the three-guard lineups — especially once Bledsoe is healthy — they’ve used to rest Butler. Ryan Gomes would seem primed to play more minutes on the wing. Apportioning minutes is crucial in the lockout-shortened season, and the Clippers, with four playable guards and two small forwards, are still positioned to at least try to do that.

But Billups was a solid No. 5 on a very thin team that just got a lot thinner and has nothing but the veteran’s minimum salary with which to upgrade the roster. Is J.R. Smith coming for the minimum when New York, for instance, has the full $2.5 million exception still on the table? (The Clippers have already used their $2.5 million exception on Kenyon Martin, who fills a huge void in his own right.) Aaron Brooks will be back from China soon, but he’s a restricted free agent tied to Phoenix. After that, you’re talking about the same scrap heap the Lakers are combing through right now.

The margin for error, and for injury, is basically gone now, pending a real impact signing. There are no real trade assets left on hand. If Foye regresses to his journeyman form and can’t defend top shooting guards, the Clippers will have a problem. If Butler gets hurt, they’re dead.

This is the price you pay for trading multiple rotation players in exchange for just one, even when the trade is a no-brainer. The Clippers will soldier on, but there will be short stretches in every game when they feel Billups’ absence. Those short stretches matter, and they might be enough to knock the Clippers from “contender” status to “only if absolutely everything goes right from now on” status. And if one more thing goes wrong, the dream of a real championship push might have to wait another year.

And that’s too bad, especially if this is it for Billups, which feels premature even though he’s 35. In the last year, he’s been traded from Denver (his hometown) to New York, cut via the amnesty provision, signed by a sad-sack team he reportedly had little initial interest in joining, and now this. That is a lot to deal with, even for a millionaire many times over. Billups was perhaps never quite as good as his reputation, but he was also far more productive in his later years than his surface stats might indicate. Let’s hope we see him somewhere next season.