It’s hard to point out a new sin right here. Each and every step the Clippers have taken so far was at least defendable in the event. The buying and selling of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and a mountain of draft picks for Paul George looks awful now. It also created a favorite for the championship. Doubling James Harden’s illness was riskier, but of course they already had two aging All-Stars. If there was ever a time to invest in assets within the offering, wouldn’t it be next? Kawhi Leonard had played in 32 of a possible 36 games for the Clippers in the week they signed him to an extreme three-year extension. He averaged nearly 24 points on roughly 50-40-90 shooting for a 23-13 team. Letting Paul George fire the same staff during the summer season made sense because of the brilliance in the way he finished the season. The January Clippers have been much more promising than their April counterparts. The full weight of the new CBA was preparing to become sick throughout the league.
The decisions were not foolproof, but the process largely made sense. The Clippers made a competitive effort over five years for a championship that consistently, if only for shorter periods, integrated championship-level efficiency. They generally allocated resources on responsible techniques and focused the right types of players. They never went out as a team without a plan. His plan just didn’t work. One of the three crucial stars who once aimed to give them their championship is most recently a member of the Philadelphia 76ers. The only thing they imported from the 76ers couldn’t kill the 39% closest to the All-Celebrity fracture. Leonard, the best of the three, is injured beyond recovery.
No matter what they gave the Clippers here, the end result is identical. This era of Clippers basketball is over. Let’s do that without clouds from the rebound. There is an incorrect smart pivot. There’s a wrong international where the new team of role-hungry players assembles, Leonard returns healthy in a few weeks and the Clippers skimp in combination, although the few belongings are left in the hands of someone else’s unvalued celebrities like Zach LaVine or Brandon. Ingram. This iteration of the Clippers has moved on. They are going to be sinister this season. Maybe not “send Cooper Flagg to Oklahoma City” ominous, but certainly “send a single-digit higher draft position to Oklahoma City” ominous. This is starting to happen. It will be embarrassing. And the Clippers may have very little time to do about it.
But the Clippers are very much a team that tends to have a plan, and while there is a bad plan that saves the existing fragment of a miraculous leg transplant for Leonard, this isn’t the first job he’s headed for. facing. Eliminate part of a decade in the lying and sick trash bin. Although it takes a couple of years to implement, the Clippers are obviously operating against one thing. They wouldn’t have let George move away without having some idea of how they wanted to spend that money long term. So the question we’re dealing with now is how the Clippers get out of this hole.
It is becoming a Herculean job. Many of the properties that an average worker would need to rebuild recently are in Oklahoma City and Philadelphia. The Clippers can’t get away with this. There are no notable formative years on the roster and their first-round picks are loaded through 2030. Don’t count on them trading Leonard back for some of those belongings either. Anyone could have taken a chance on an injury-prone mega-celebrity under the 2017 collective bargaining agreement. In a world where the younger, fitter Ingram is slightly struggling in the business market due to his expected commitment demands, no one will take over a three-year-old Leonard business. Who could find the money? for 50 million dollars for a player who may no longer be able to dress more than once as a gift.
This is not going to be a standard teardown. It should be something closer to the rebuild that the late 2010 Nets embarked on in the years known for their signings of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. They are starting to need to win on date margins by launching some type of least cost path towards acquiring a celebrity on an affordable schedule. Chances are they won’t be able to cast a celebrity until 2030 at the earliest. There are methods by which you can get a used one before the next.
Greenbacks could be an illustrative example in this regard. Milwaukee cashed in its draft chips in 2020 by buying and selling Jrue Pleasure. They were thought to be asset poor from then on, but still managed to do business for Damian Lillard over the next three years largely thanks to the project’s natural capital replenishment including time. Groups can only make business decisions within seven years. Milwaukee’s 2028, 2029 and 2030 picks were to be traded for Lillard, especially since they were not to be traded for Joy. You will be able to continue trading with YOLO if you simply wait a couple of years between them.
At the moment, the Clippers have options available in 2030 and 2031. They almost certainly won’t get them anywhere on the trade market. Let’s say the Clippers spend two more sinister years before turning the page. Suddenly, the Clippers’ picks in 2030 and 2032, along with trades in 2031 and 2033, are available. It’s a more substantial package, and with Leonard’s commitment expiring in the summer of 2027, the final 12 months of his business could easily be hit as cash in something bigger.
Leonard has some of the most useful trades on the books for the 2026-27 season. They are him, Ivica Zubac, Derrick Jones Jr. and Kobe Brown. With the cap expected to increase 10% each year, the Clippers will easily clear the cap size if they don’t bring in much additional long-term money between now and next. The question is who they could use it for.
The independent agency has fallen out of fashion as a vehicle for celebrity action in recent years. The stars have largely been able to have their cake and eat it too – the overall time has fostered the idea that they will re-sign with their new staff to secure their financial opportunity and then launch a company wherever they are. you need and that personnel will simply provide the giant batch of draft picks they will eliminate to get you. The aprons are a form of resistance against this conceptual procedure. The second platform, in particular, is so restrictive that celebrity trades are becoming virtually impossible for certain groups. Most of the time, the groups a celebrity wants to travel to are the ones that will now be too expensive to get.
The star the Clippers lost could be the example that sets their new model here. The Clippers signed George at the peak of remote agency strength in the NBA: 2019, an offseason that saw four reigning All-NBA players sign directly with new teams. The separate company died sick from there, but if George tried to be traded to Yellowish Climate before the remote company started in 2024, the Clippers and Warriors couldn’t settle for doing business in part because of all the financial changes. There have been incorrect headaches with the 76ers. He might just signal to them directly, and he did. This could be the new style for celebrity action. Switching to an existing contender may no longer be financially possible, so Stars must develop their own winners on more versatile teams.
This is especially relevant in the possibly loaded distant agent 2026’s elegance shine. Luka Doncic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Trae Younger, De’Aaron Fox and Kristaps Porzingis headline what could very well be the most efficient team of unrestricted remote running backs in years. Many of those players will wait longer. Inevitably, you may get one or two. Traditionally speaking, Los Angeles tends to be attractive and interesting to remote real estate agents. Having those draft picks and a defeated Leonard doing business can help in this recognition. If there’s a player that the 2026 type of remote running backs needs to connect with in a top-tier market, the Clippers probably have the team to house him, like they did with George and Leonard in 2019.
The names involved listed below are unknown on a two-year horizon, but some version of this method is almost certainly the quickest path to relevance the Clippers can have. The 76ers just showed us that remote business could make a comeback, and the Greenbacks showed us how quickly a team can return to the celebrity business market. If the Clippers get comfortable getting comfortable every two years, there are paths back to the playoffs for them before the end of the decade. Given how bleak every alternative option now seems, that’s the only plan the importance follows.
