Clippers get demolished by Jazz in season opener after scandal-riddled offseason

After nearly two months of scandal around an alleged no-show job for Kawhi Leonard, the Los Angeles Clippers finally got the chance to shake off the looming NBA investigation and play some basketball on Wednesday.

And then they no-showed like they got paid for it.

In the most shocking result of the NBA’s opening slate of games, the Clippers got blown out 129-108 by the Utah Jazz, a team that was tied for the worst title odds in the league entering the season. Disastrous doesn’t begin to describe how this looks for them.

Leonard scandal aside, the Clippers spent the offseason adding talent to a roster that won 50 games last season. Out went Norman Powell, in came Bradley Beal, John Collins, Chris Paul and Brook Lopez. They created easily the oldest roster in the NBA, but it was a unit loaded with talented players who were supposed to keep them competitive every night.

That didn’t happen in Utah. By the end of the first quarter it was 43-19 for the Jazz. By halftime, the Jazz were up 31 points. The second half was no better for the Clippers. It was a complete pasting at the hands of a team that won 17 games last season and was expected by Vegas to be only 1.5 wins better this season.

[Yahoo Sports TV is here! Watch live shows and highlights 24/7]

No player on the Clippers roster broke 20 points. Ivica Zubac was close with 19 points on 9-of-13 shooting. Any time Brook Lopez (15 points on 5-of-12 shooting) finishes with as many field-goal attempts off the bench as James Harden (15 points 5-of-12 shooting, plus 11 assists) and more than double of Beal (five points on 2-of-5 shooting), you know something has gone wrong in your offense.

It was about as bad a Clippers debut you could imagine for Beal, and Paul’s return performance also got off to a rough start with four points on 1-of-5 shooting and four assists.

Meanwhile, the Jazz shot lights out as a unit in the first half (12 of 21 from 3-point range) and overwhelmed L.A. in the paint with 27-of-32 shooting. Their first missed shot in the paint came in the third quarter.

Walker Kessler’s performance was intriguing in particular, as the big man posted 22 points on a perfect 7-of-7 shooting and 2 for 2 from 3-point range, plus 9 rebounds, 4 assists, 4 blocks and 4 steals. He shot 17.6% from deep last season.

Leonard finished the game with 10 points on 3-of-9 shooting plus 4 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 turnovers in 29 minutes. That would have been his third-lowest scoring game of the season in 2024-25, and his worst with at least 25 minutes played.

It was only one game, but if the floor is this low for the Clippers, you have to wonder how many more losses they have in them. You also have to wonder if the brewing scandal could be affecting them as an organization more than the Clippers let on.

The Leonard scandal broke in early September and has looked worse as time goes on. Team owner Steve Ballmer is alleged to have sent tens of millions of dollars to Aspiration, a bankrupt sustainability company whose co-founder recently pleaded guilty to wire fraud, as a way to circumvent the NBA salary cap. Aspiration reportedly paid Leonard a curiously similar amount of money to do a job that he appears to have ignored.

Ballmer and the Clippers have pleaded innocent and the NBA is still looking into the matter. If the team is found to have lured Leonard by paying him outside the salary cap, it will be facing a breathtaking array of possible punishments.

Of course, right now it looks like playing basketball could be plenty of punishment for them in its own right.

Clippers get demolished by Jazz in season opener after scandal-riddled offseason

Tags: