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The 2024-25 NBA regular season ends on April 13. Candidate pools for season awards have become shortlists, and time is dwindling for dark horses to stake their claims. Looking across the league, a player with notable cases to win various awards—Los Angeles Clippers center Ivica Zubac—has not received much attention for their growth at all. Is it too late to point it out?
Zubac is the first player to record 50 double-doubles in a season for the franchise since Blake Griffin in 2011. The big man is averaging a career-best 16.5 points per game heading into Friday's bout with the Dallas Mavericks. His average of 11.7 points last season, his seventh in the NBA, was his highest at the time. It won't be for long.
Zubac's growth on the offensive end of the floor involves more than scoring. His playmaking for others has resulted in an average of 2.5 assists per game, almost double his career average of 1.3.
“I think it’s just me getting more touches in the post,” Ivica Zubac told ClutchPoints in an exclusive interview. “Most of the teams now, they send a double team – so it’s just kind of reading the game, you know?”
The numbers back his claim up. With 304 post touches, he's the only NBA player with more than MVP-candidate Nikola Jokic. He had just 91 last year in 68 games. Zubac was proud to say that having James Harden as a teammate has also helped him show his playmaking prowess.
“A lot of teams double James in pick-and-roll, and I get the ball in the short roll,” Zubac explained to ClutchPoints. “And we play 4 against 3. I feel like I’m one of the best in the league in having the ball in short roll and playmaking out of that.”
The “Offensive Estimated Plus-Minus” metric popular among NBA teams shows Zubac's season as the second-most impactful of his eight-year career thus far, other than his 2020 campaign during which he only played 18 minutes per game.
How Ivica Zubac has grown into his role as the Clippers' anchor
Zubac told ClutchPoints that his additions to his offensive arsenal are the best examples of his growth this season. After noticing teams adjust to his post-ups, which he says truly began last year, he realized he needed counters.
“I spent a lot of time just working on my counters over my right shoulder that I think are really helping me right now,” Zubac explained. “And teams can’t really be like, ‘just send him to his left.' Because now I can shoot with both hands.”
Anchors have to rebound, too. Zubac feels he and the Clippers as a team have grown significantly in that regard.
“I think I improved in defensive rebounding, a lot,” Zubac attested. “Last year we were one of the worst rebounding teams, this year I think we’re #1 or #2 in defensive rebounding rate. There’s a lot of little things.”
Right again. The Clippers were 23rd in defensive rebounding rate last season. This year, they're only behind the Orlando Magic. Zubac himself leads the entire league in both total rebounds and contested rebounds. Zubac had the NBA's most double-doubles in March with 15. And he's averaging the fourth most double-doubles this season.
Los Angeles is 12-3 in its last 15 games and has the NBA's fourth-best defensive rating in that stretch. But it's not small sample size theater. Their season results are even more impressive; the team has the third-best defensive rating overall.
Centers are generally impactful enough on defense to be the only position that “Defensive Estimated Plus-Minus” is able to well-encapsulate the impact of. Zubac has the highest D-EPM of any center. Excluding players ineligible for awards, he's rated fifth overall in the league.
Teams are averaging 6.7 fewer points per 100 possessions played when Zubac is in, per Cleaning the Glass. He's playing 32.7 minutes per game, over four more than his previous career-high in 2022-23. But he's only committing 2.2 fouls per game, tied for the third-lowest of his career.
Filtering out players that play fewer than 10 minutes per game and looking at another defensive metric, DARKO D-DPM, the scatterplot above shows Zubac as having the league's third-highest rating. And he's fouling less than every leading candidate for Defensive Player of the Year.
Zubac didn't know he was committing fewer fouls than the season before for the second straight year. His reaction to the news was just a pleased, “Nice.”
But he then explained that there hasn't been a specific effort to produce those results.
“Experience, kind of anticipating everything, just trying to be a step ahead – one second ahead – reading the game and knowing what’s going to happen,” the center shared. “I never came into the game thinking, like, ‘oh, I can’t foul,' you know? I've never had that mentality. I always want to make the right play.”
How Ivica Zubac found his voice after being traded by the Lakers
Making an All-Defensive Team has been a goal of Zubac's for years. Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue said before the season that the big man should go for the Defensive Player of the Year award. But aside from the obvious benefits, the motivation behind Zubac's defensive progress stems from his desire to prove draft doubters wrong.
“Before I got drafted, all the scouts, draft analysts, they all were saying I can’t defend,” Zubac told ClutchPoints. “‘I’m a bad rim protector, bad pick-and-roll defender, bad defender in general'. So it was my goal from the beginning of my career to just kind of get better on that end, prove people wrong, and show that I can play both ways.”
That wasn't the only time Zubac has made the most of an unfavorable situation. He was traded early in his career in a rare crosstown deal from the Los Angeles Lakers to the Clippers in 2019. And much like a student before their first day of school, he was eager to make a good first impression.
“That first practice, I was like, ‘Ok, I’m gonna be a starter from now on, I’m starting with a clean slate, I’m gonna be vocal as possible,'” Zubac recalled.
The precedent was set by veterans from the start of Zubac's career. He credited Lakers teammates Tyson Chandler and Andrew Bogut as well as Patrick Beverley from his first couple of seasons on the Clippers.
Zubac told ClutchPoints that players either have it in them to be vocal or they don't. And that the reason he made it part of his identity as a Clippers center was simple.
“I’ve seen throughout my career that all the good defenders are vocal,” Zubac revealed. “And if I wanted to be one, I had to be vocal too.”
The key influences behind Ivica Zubac's career season
Between Harden, Lue, opposing defenses keying in on his signature post hook, and draft analysts, Zubac's development over the course of his career can be traced back to countless sources of inspiration.
But there are two new factors, only relevant to this season, that Zubac considers major advantages. The first is the additional 10 pounds he told ClutchPoints he gained in the offseason.
“I feel strong, moving guys,” Zubac noted. “I can move a lot of guys out of the way and it’s been really showing this year.”
The second is the addition the Clippers made to their coaching staff last offseason. By hiring Jeff Van Gundy as Lue's lead assistant, the organization added 11 years of NBA head coaching experience to their bench.
Zubac singled Van Gundy out as the individual he'd credit most for his growth this season, saying that the coach only directs the Clippers' defense but has had a significant impact.
“JVG for sure,” Zubac began. “He trains our defense…we changed all the basics of our defense and he’s really asking a lot from me, we’re communicating a lot, he’s pushing me.”
Zubac clarified that he isn't the only player that Van Gundy has helped become more impactful.
“He’s never satisfied,” Zubac said of the coach. “Even when we keep teams under 100 points, he always finds stuff where we can get better. I think he really helped everyone on the team this year defensively.”
Ivica Zubac has played 463 total games for the Clippers in his career, the eighth most in franchise history. He has played in 74 of their 76 games this season and has intriguing candidacies for the Defensive Player of the Year and Most Improved Player awards as well as an All-Defensive team.
He may not have won a single one of the NBA's “Defensive Player of the Month” designations this season. But he's one of four Clippers averaging over 15 points per game and also serves as their lynchpin on defense. Zubac is one of the best developmental stories across the entire NBA.
Just don't ask him to choose which end of the floor he thinks he's improved the most on overall.
“No, I would say- yeah,” Zubac began. “I would say both ends, yeah.”
