Keep The Clippers Great
Team-building is hard. Trying to construct a championship contender is nearly impossible. You need intelligence, luck, and most importantly — you need stars. You need a good front office, a good coaching staff, and it all needs to come together in the exactly right ways at the exactly right time. There are 30 teams competing for the same goal, with the same rules and constraints, picking from the same talent pool — and there can only be 1 out of the 30 to fully achieve their goals.
How do you get those star players? Some teams try to keep their salary cap clean to nab that major free agent, some stockpile assets to be ready for trades, some try to lose for years on end in order to maximize the chances of acquiring that franchise star in the draft — all of these methods have yielded just as many successes as they have failures.
For all of these reasons I find it utterly insane that there is still discussion about whether the Los Angeles Clippers need to “blow it up” if they don’t win a championship this season. The Clippers currently have two definitive franchise players in Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, a top center in DeAndre Jordan, and one of the more valuable secondary players in J.J. Redick — all relatively within their prime. This roster is what teams aspire for, the kind of roster general managers have employed risky strategies just to have a 25% chance of compiling. Sam Hinkie didn’t see a path from going from the Philadelphia 76ers team he inherited to amassing the kind of talent the Clippers have and had to throw away several seasons just to hope that he could achieve it — this is not a time to overreact to short term disappointments.
Further, the Clippers are only now climbing out of the massive reputational hole that their franchise had dug itself over decades of incompetent ownership and management. It’s easy to forget that the Donald Sterling fiasco is only about two-and-a-half years old. Try explaining to a Clippers fan in 2010 that this would be their team, Doc Rivers would be their coach, Steve Ballmer would be their owner and that their franchise is somehow considered a failure. The championship-or-bust narrative is one that has plagued the NBA and allows for no nuance or consideration of circumstance.
What would “blowing it up” constitute, anyway? Both Chris Paul and Blake Griffin are going to be free agents this offseason by virtue of only being committed to a player option for next season, which will almost certainly be declined. Trade Chris Paul, a point guard that continues to age well and produce remarkably consistent results? Who is giving up a bounty of assets for a point guard who will be free to leave? Or is the alternative to trade Blake Griffin, a 27-year-old physical freak, with underrated playmaking abilities? How are they getting better with that? Trade DeAndre Jordan, a player who has consistently improved on defense while being an elite roll man who has developed an extremely lethal chemistry with Chris Paul?
Yes, there are flaws with this roster. Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan are imperfect fits in the front court — the promise of a Blake Griffin jump shot remains unfulfilled and is disappointing. The inability for Doc Rivers to draft or acquire a proper “three-and-d” swingman leaves a glaring hole in their otherwise stellar starting lineup, despite Luc Richard Mbah a Mboute’s best efforts. The Clippers have shown themselves to fall apart at the worst possible times, and their constant struggles with being unable to restrain their displeasure towards the officials takes its toll. They inexplicably blew the Houston Rockets series in 2015, a blemish that may end up being the definitive series of this Clippers team.
Yet, they are the team that just a series before that Rockets series, defeated the mighty San Antonio Spurs in a valiant seven-game effort. This very team that we view as mentally weak, also strung together some of the most impressive games against a full-strength Spurs team that we have seen. This team is capable of that, and misfortune and mishaps have minimized the opportunities for them to show it.
The truth is, the Clippers can’t win a championship this year. The Golden State Warriors are just too good, too complete, too dominant. This same fact almost certainly applies to every team other than the Cleveland Cavaliers, however, and decisions can’t be made solely based on this season. This Warriors squad is a once in a generation historical anomaly much like the Bulls in the 90’s, the Lakers and Celtics in the 80’s — and the Clippers can’t do anything about it. No amount of trades or free agent luck can change the reality of their situation, and my argument is that making change for the sake of change is the worst possible option.
To me, the only viable option for the Clippers is simple: compete. Give yourself a shot, and every single year this group is together, they have given themselves a shot. What if the Warriors are unable to keep their team together? What if injuries strike? Chris Paul and Blake Griffin might be the next John Stockton and Karl Malone — the latter two played together for 18 seasons (!), competed every year, and made their fanbase proud. They weren’t able to ultimately win, but nobody should look back upon those Jazz teams as failures — they just happened to exist at the same time as the dominant Chicago Bulls. Sound familiar?
