Griffin Wong breaks down his analysis, prediction, and pick for Clippers at Kings on Friday.
In what has arguably been the most roller-coaster season for any team in the NBA this season, another era of the LA Clippers has come to an end. The Clippers’ teardown began on Tuesday, when they traded James Harden to the Cleveland Cavaliers for Darius Garland, and really accelerated with an hour remaining before Thursday’s deadline when they sent center Ivica Zubac to the Indiana Pacers for Bennedict Mathurin, Isaiah Jackson, a 2026 first-round pick that could potentially fall between fifth and ninth overall, and a 2029 first-round pick that could convey after Pascal Siakam starts to decline. Kawhi Leonard is now the only member of LA’s core last season still on the roster.
The new-look Clippers will play their first game tonight on the road against the Sacramento Kings at 10 p.m. ET. Garland, Mathurin, and Jackson won’t yet be available to make their team debuts, but everyone else should be healthy. For the Kings, Keegan Murray (ankle) remains out, while Domantas Sabonis (back) is questionable.
LA is a 3.5-point favorite on DraftKings Sportsbook (-166 on the Moneyline), with the point total set to 222.5. Sacramento is +140 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down this Pacific Division matchup and offer a prediction.
LA Clippers at Sacramento Kings preview, prediction
The timing of the Harden deal was confounding given the Clippers’ hot form at the time. When Harden requested a trade, LA had gone 17-4 in its last 21 games, climbing nearly to .500 for the first time since the start of November, but since then, the Clippers have lost two straight games, falling to the Philadelphia 76ers and the Cavaliers at home. Kawhi Leonard has remained hot — since December 20, he’s averaging 29.9 points, 6.5 rebounds, and 2.1 steals per game on 50-41-88 shooting splits — but LA’s braintrust evidently decided that the possibility of the fifth pick in the draft was more exciting than a first-round series loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder and shipped Zubac to Indiana for a tantalizing return.
Sacramento had a relatively quiet deadline, as the only major move it made was to deal Dennis Schröder and Keon Ellis to Cleveland for wing De’Andre Hunter, who’s in the midst of a horrendous season. One of last deadline’s prized acquisitions, Hunter has nailed just 31.1% of his three-point shots and has graded as a significantly negative defender by composite metric D-LEBRON. By the same metric, Ellis — a 26-year-old who’s made 41.6% of his threes in his career and ranked fourth in steal percentage last season — is a better player than Hunter even before considering Schröder, who provides veteran leadership and steady playmaking on his slightly onerous contract. Instead, the Kings are locked into an underwhelming core of Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, and Sabonis for at least the rest of the season.
Clippers at Kings pick, best bet
The trade deadline should change LA’s fortunes pretty dramatically. From December 20 until January 30, Harden’s final game with the team, the Clippers had a top-10 unit on both sides of the ball, ranking third in offensive rating and eighth in defensive rating. Harden’s departure might decimate the offense: with him on the floor, LA scored with the equivalent of the league’s third-best efficiency, and with him on the bench, that figure dropped all the way down to the equivalent of the third-worst. And while the lackadaisical Harden had a negative impact on the Clippers’ defense worth 6.7 points per 100 possessions, Zubac’s absence will likely hurt on that side of the ball, even though his raw on-off numbers weren’t special.
Zubac was never an elite rim protector, but LA will likely be worse in the paint with him off the team. During his earlier five-game absence with an ankle sprain, the Clippers allowed opponents to convert at the league’s 12th-highest percentage in the restricted area, and they also allowed nearly three more shots per game in the restricted area in that span. Rookie Yanic Konan Niederhäuser is a promising backup big, but in his limited action, he’s been a significantly worse rim protector than either Zubac or Brook Lopez, who will now be thrust into the starting role. LA will also likely struggle massively on the boards without Zubac, as its rebounding percentage has been 3.8 percentage points worse with the Croatian on the bench.
The Clippers’ potential struggles without Zubac in the interior could be an issue against better teams, but they probably won’t be against Sacramento, which has conceded the league’s second-highest field goal percentage in the restricted area and the second-most points in the paint overall. The Kings have even had the league’s lowest rebounding percentage, which is somewhat of a surprise given that Sabonis — who, to be fair, has missed most of the season with a torn meniscus — led the league in boards in each of the past three seasons and Russell Westbrook is arguably the best rebounding guard in NBA history. Sacramento also ranks in the league’s bottom 10 in points off of turnovers and just lost its best perimeter defender in Ellis, so it isn’t well-suited to take advantage of a turnover-prone LA team.
Shooting-wise, the Clippers haven’t been great at generating uncontested looks as is and could have some trouble without Harden, who ranks fourth league-wide in on-ball perimeter gravity and fifth in creation leverage. However, in Leonard and John Collins, LA has two players who rank in the league’s top 40 by three point percentage over expectation, while the Kings only have one (LaVine). Plus, Sacramento has been even worse at creating open looks, and trading two guards for a non-playmaking wing won’t help. To make matters worse, the Kings have allowed an above-average number of wide-open threes and gotten lucky that opponents have hit such shots at a below-average rate, and the Clippers have been among the league’s best teams at closing out on shooters.
Without Harden and Zubac, who anchor LA’s offense and defense, respectively, I’m not sure that the Clippers will be good in the long-term, and they could still consider trading Leonard’s $50.3 million contract in the offseason. However, this Sacramento team truly has no redeeming qualities and somehow managed to get worse at the trade deadline.
Best bet: LA Clippers -5.5 Alternate Spread (+112)