The Clippers Are A DISASTER… For Now

The Clippers Are A DISASTER… For Now

You can make the argument that the LA Clippers are in the worst situation of any team in the entire NBA. Like, you have teams like the Kings that are sad and pretty bad. You have teams like the Pelicans that are bad and owe their pick next year to a different team. You have the Mavs who just are completely disorganized. You have the Grizzlies who look completely disinterested. You have a bunch of Eastern Conference teams that are really, really bad. Yet, somehow the Clippers actually combine all of those things into one team. As of this recording, the Clippers are on the outside looking in on the playin in the Western Conference, which is just not where anyone expected them to be coming into this season, coming off of back-to back 50 win seasons. Most preseason win total projections put them somewhere between 47 and 50 wins. And for them to be where they are to begin this season was really unexpected, especially when you consider how surprising they were in a positive way last year after letting Paul George walk in free agency. And there were actually numbers towards the end of last season, especially defensively, that pointed towards the Clippers potentially competing in the playoffs. That obviously didn’t happen cuz they’re the Clippers and they disappointed in the postseason again. But still, there was a lot of reason for optimism around LA this year. And the expectation for them, no matter what you thought their ceiling was, was at the very least competency and a high floor. Because as much as traditionally it makes sense to make fun of the Clippers, they have been a very competent organization for a really long time. They haven’t won less than 40 games in the regular season since 2011. And in the last 14 seasons, they’ve made the playoffs 12 of those 14 seasons. So even though it’s the Clippers and we make fun of them for postseason stuff or weird decisions or offseason scandals, now in terms of regular season competency, they’ve been really, really good. And coming into the year, that was the expectation once again. Not necessarily that they were going to be top tier contenders against teams like the Thunder, the Nuggets, the Rockets, a variety of other teams. But we definitely thought that they would be good. They made some interesting moves in the offseason. They got rid of Norm Powell. They brought in John Collins. They brought in Bradley Beal, Chris Paul, Brook Lopez. And unfortunately for the Clippers, although it’s not the entire issue with their team, a lot of those offseason moves just did not work out. First and foremost, the Norm Powell, John Collins, Bradley Bele triangle of moves here. The thought process here for the Clippers was they traded Norm Powell to Miami who’s playing out of his mind and was really, really good for the Clippers last year, especially at the beginning of the season, and they brought in John Collins and that did two things for them. One, Norm Powell wanted a contract extension, and the Clippers didn’t want to give that to him. They didn’t want that hanging over their team. And for reasons we’re going to get to later, it was really important for the Clippers to not give Norm Powell that contract extension. They didn’t want to deal with that. They moved him out. They also felt like they could upgrade their front court by bringing in John Collins, someone that provides them versatility as both a roll guy as well as a a three-point shooter and a spacer. And having a front court of Derrick Jones, John Collins, Brook Lopez, Zubots. Having those guys all together gave them a lot of versatility. And then later on, which is one of the reasons they made the Norm Powell move in the first place, they were able to sign Bradley Beal, which the expectation was that could give them some percentage of what Norm Powell gave them the year before while also getting that front court upgrade, which in theory, of course, all sounds like a good thing. The problem is Bradley Beal was really bad and is now hurting out for the year. That also screwed up their rotations cuz they couldn’t really figure out who they wanted to start. And John Collins has been fine, but certainly not as impactful as Norm Powell was last year, especially at the beginning of the season. And I think if you were going to point to anything at the beginning of the year that has kind of submarined this Clippers season, it has been not having Norm Powell on the team. But then the other offseason moves that they made kind of point to the other issue with this team. Bradley Beal, Chris Paul, Brook Lopez. I I already mentioned Beiel’s out for the year. Chris Paul like doesn’t play. Lopez is is fine, I guess, but they all point to kind of the identity of the team, which optimistically you would say is this is a really deep veteran group, whereas pessimistically you would say this group is really, really old and you’re always worried about injuries. Now, you’re always worried about injuries with the Clippers regardless, but things have definitely fallen more in that pessimistic category. sometimes because of injury as is evidenced with someone like Bradley Beiel but more often this issue manifests itself on the floor where this is a very slow a very plotting a very disinterested team especially on the defensive end of the floor and that’s what made them really really good towards the end of last year all these advanced numbers pointing to the Clippers as one of the best defensive teams in the league and given their personnel their age their injury issues that side of the floor has completely fallen apart to begin and all of that is scary the fact that they’re old, the fact that they’re injured, the fact that they’re near the bottom of the Western Conference standings outside looking in on the playin, all of that scary. But what makes it even more scary is the focal point guy, which is James Harden, because Kawhai’s been out with an injury, is actually playing extremely well. James Harden is averaging as many points per game this year as he has in any season since his final year in Houston, his final full season with the Rockets where he averaged like over 30 points a game. You have to go that far back to find a season in which James Harden scored this many points per game. And that obviously points to a team that is one really heavily relying on James Harden to be way more than he has been over the last handful of seasons and also is completely out of luck if James Harden does suffer an injury. He’s been incredibly durable, knock on wood, throughout most of his career. But this is just way too much to ask for from a guy that hasn’t had to do this much offensively in years and is at this point in his career and has played this many games and yes has been durable in the past, but in the more recent past has had some injury issues. And at any point if James Harden misses a week, misses two weeks, we are looking at freef fall potential with the Clippers. And if that happens, things get very dark very quickly for the Clippers because, as I mentioned in the intro, when you’re kind of combining the bad situations of all these different teams, they don’t own their pick this year. The Oklahoma City Thunder do and that’s going to be a theme over the next handful of seasons where the Thunder either have pick swap rights or another team has pick swap rights. The Clippers don’t have a lot of future draft assets. And that means that in any season in which you make some bad offseason moves, you’re disappointing, you have injuries, you’re overrelying on someone like James Harden, then he gets hurt, you put yourself in a position where they are this year, where they might just give away a top five pick to a team that’s already at the top of the conference in the Oklahoma City Thunder. So, there’s a scenario here where the Clippers are really bad this year. They give away a high pick and then you go into next year and you just kind of have to run it back. like you have the bad season, but then you don’t get the benefit of the bad season because you don’t actually get the high pick. Now, having said all those things, and as disastrous as things look right now for the Clippers, I would point to two things. One, they did not expect to compete for the title this year. This year and last year were very similar in terms of expectations in terms of they want to be competent. They want to be competitive. They want their home games to be fun like they were last year as they opened up the new arena. But the long-term goal and the second point here is moving towards some new era of Clippers basketball and the what’s circled right now in terms of that pivot point is the 2027 offseason because if you look at their salary cap sheet this is very very intentional. They have nobody signed beyond next season. Once you get to the summer of 2027 it’s zubots. It’s a couple of rookie deals and that is it. And that is the plan here in LA regardless of what happens with their draft pick this year. Regardless of what happens with the team this year or next year, which it’s probably going to look pretty similar, they have set themselves up to completely reset in the summer of 2027. And this is a strategy that we don’t really see teams employ that often anymore. There was kind of this craze from like 2013 to 2021 of teams really making sure they had a lot of cap space to try and sign big free agents. We saw it with the Clippers in 2019 and the Nets in 2019 bringing in Kyrie and KD and Paul Georgie Kawaii. But over the last handful of seasons, players have been more likely to sign extensions and then request a trade rather than just go into outright free agency. And clearly, the Clippers are targeting the summer 2027 as their chance to capitalize on other teams maybe not thinking about free agency that way. And they could theoretically have a lot of options in 2027 free agency. As of this recording, these are the list of guys that are eligible to be free agents in 2027. does not mean they are going to be free agents. It just means their contract or their player options potentially line up with 2027 free agency. Steph Curry, Anthony Davis, Giannis, which I think is probably the big fish here that they’re planning on. Jimmy Butler, Jokic, who is obviously said he wants to stay in Denver, but you never know. Carl Anthony Towns, Paul George, unlikely, Donovan Mitchell, Kevin Durant, Trey Young, Kyrie Irving, Brandon Ingram, and a variety of other guys. And for a team that, as of this recording, has $27 million committed to, ironically, the summer of 2027, that puts them in a position to add two, maybe three of those caliber of players, even if they’re not actually on the list right now. And that obviously would completely change things for the Clippers moving forward. And kind of puts into better context what the actual plan is here. I can guarantee you they did not think they were going to be this bad to begin the season. And there may be coaching staff changes. There may be a lot of changes potentially for the Clippers as we go throughout the season, but it’s just interesting to see a team that is this bad, that doesn’t own their pick, but does actually have some kind of future. So, I would actually argue that amongst the teams that I mentioned in the intro, if you’re talking about the next 3 to 5 year futures, I actually don’t think the Clippers are the worst. I think I think unfortunately it’s probably a team like Sacramento just because of a lack of talent. Even though things do look really, really bleak for the Clippers right now, they might actually have some semblance of a future, although it heavily heavily relies on free agency in a couple

The LA Clippers might be in the worst situation of any organization in the entire league

You have the Kings who are bad and sad, the Pelicans who are bad and don’t have their own pick, the Mavs who are completely dysfunctional, the Grizzlies who look completely disinterested, and a bunch of really bad Eastern conference teams… but somehow the Clippers are all of that combined… for now.

#clippers #laclippers #nba