The Clippers are not going to win the NBA Championship this year. If rumours are true that Chris Paul has verbally committed to a $200-million deal while also keeping Blake Griffin, they won’t win the title for a long time either.
For the past five years that the Clippers have made the playoffs, the consensus has always been they’re just one piece away to being the favourite to win the West. In Vinny Del Negro’s last two seasons, it was their bench that became his downfall when they got knocked out of the playoffs.
In Doc Rivers’ three seasons, it’s been the last player in their starting five – usually their SF – that’s been the downfall with a relatively strong bench. That last player over the years has included Matt Barnes, Jared Dudley, Jeff Green, Paul Pierce and their current starter, Mbah a Moute.
What do the Clippers expect to do with their roster when they’re going to pay so much money to Paul? He’s a 31-year-old who has had injury issues his entire career. Yes, at his best he is still a game-changing point guard who controls the pace of play better than anyone else in the league. Is he going to be able to do that for four more years? Probably not.
There’s been a whole host of stars in the past that have taken pay cuts to help bring in more help for their team. Tim Duncan was underpaid his whole career to help the Spurs keep bringing in pieces.
Dwayne Wade famously took a pay cut to get Chris Bosh and LeBron James over to Miami to form the big three. Dirk Nowitzki has been severely underpaid for a long time to help Dallas win. You could keep going with more names but the common theme among these three? Taking pay cuts all helped them win championships.
Excluding the obvious Durant to the Warriors move, look at what the top teams in the West have done from the offseason until now to help improve their teams. Utah added veterans to their young core, Memphis went all in on Chandler Parsons, Portland took gambles by securing all their talented wings, Houston took a chance on Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson and the Spurs added Pau Gasol.
What have the Clippers done in all that time? Signed Raymond Felton and that’s about it. Why are they so content with what they have when it’s not even close to good enough to win it all?
If they were in the East this is a different story but they aren’t. There has been a significant opportunity here for them to do something and it looks like they’ve blown it.
With a large majority of the salary dedicated to DeAndre Jordan and seemingly Paul and Griffin, what are the Clippers going to do about JJ Redick? He’s about to receive probably the last significant contract of his career and the Clippers are not going to able to afford what he’s worth.
If they do pay him, they’re going to be in the exact situation that they’ve been in the last three years. Even if you let him go, there isn’t going to be anyone on the market that they can afford which will help them compete with the giants of the Western Conference which just seems to get more competitive by the year.
The difference between the Clippers and the other big teams in the league is that LA haven’t had the luxury of getting talented players through the draft so building their roster is a bit harder. However, they must’ve known for a while now that this core of Griffin, Paul, Jordan and Reddick wasn’t going to win the Western Conference if the other teams were healthy.
It seemed like they were ready to go a different route when they almost let Deandre go. He’s played well since resigning with them but he’s limited to what he can do. Griffin is a great talent but has he reached his peak with injuries plaguing his career as well?
Reddick is always going to give maximum effort but will never be the main guy. Add all of that up with them being ready to persist with this by giving Paul 200 million and you have a team stuck in no man’s land.
As of now, it doesn’t seem like the Clippers are keen on Carmelo Anthony and want to keep Griffin as well. They have no chance of getting someone like a Gordon Hayward or a Danilo Gallinari to give them that missing piece of the puzzle.
They can keep winning 50 games a season, headline Sports Centre every night with their flashy dunks and be the best team in LA over the next few years because that’s all these Clippers will be able to boast about for the foreseeable future.
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