Los Angeles Clippers Face Franchise Crossroads This Offseason
On the heels of a profoundly disappointing collapse in the Western Conference Semifinals, the Los Angeles Clippers have some decisions to make.
Some are calling for major changes to the roster, suggesting that this latest failure constitutes further proof that Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan are the problem, that the core of the team lacks something necessary for true contention.
It's a convenient argument—one that capitalizes on the panic immediately following a loss like the Clippers suffered while also pointing the crosshairs squarely at a trio whose on-court histrionics and penchant for complaining irk observers.
You can credibly argue that the Clippers played tight at the worst possible times against Houston. And you can also say they've seized up in tough spots before. The team's leadership bears responsibility for the pattern of big-moment shrinkage.
B/R's Kevin Ding said as much: "They have such high-end talent and new management, but they kept that loser mentality going by losing this series without the poise that winners possess."
Paul is overbearing, and there are rumblings emerging now that his demeanor has frayed relationships on the team.
Jordan, an unrestricted free agent to whom the Clips will offer a max contract, according to Doc Rivers, has an imperfect game that makes him an occasional liability.
Griffin looks unsure in key fourth-quarter moments.
Those are real issues, and the Clippers would be irresponsible if they didn't focus some of their offseason attention on fixing them.
But the suggestion that the fix is simply removing one or more of those three core pieces isn't just irresponsible. It's a massive failure of triage.
Triage is a process implemented by responders to emergency situations. Those responders assign degrees of urgency which dictate who gets treated first. The broken leg gets addressed before the scrape on the knee, for example, and the unscathed pretty much get ignored altogether.
Looking at this Clippers season—and this specific playoff collapse against Houston—and suggesting that the proper response to the emergency is tinkering with the core is bonkers. It's like arriving on the scene of an accident and treating the guy lifting the Buick off the victim instead of the one pinned under it.
The core isn't the problem. L.A.'s starting five posted a net rating of plus-17.7 points per 100 possessions this year—the highest of any unit playing at least 500 minutes in 2014-15 and the highest overall since 2008-09, per ESPN.com's Kevin Pelton.
That group, led by Paul, Griffin and Jordan, shouldn't be touched.
Just look at the postseason statistical breakdown from Basketball-Reference.com:
| Blake Griffin | 557 | 24.7 | 2.1 |
| J.J. Redick | 540 | 10.1 | 0.5 |
| DeAndre Jordan | 482 | 20.7 | 1.9 |
| Chris Paul | 445 | 25.6 | 2.3 |
| Matt Barnes | 409 | 9.6 | 0.5 |
| Jamal Crawford | 379 | 9.9 | -0.2 |
| Austin Rivers | 250 | 12.8 | 0.2 |
| Glen Davis | 144 | 7.0 | 0.1 |
What you've got there is three fantastic performances and five unmitigated disasters. Los Angeles' role players didn't show up. When they were on the floor, they were awful. And because they were so awful, Doc Rivers had no choice but to keep them on the bench as much as possible, which clearly wore down his big guns.
Grantland's Zach Lowe explained it thusly:
A reasonable approach to triage dictates the Clippers must focus their attention on everyone but the Big Three.
That will be difficult because the Clippers have little flexibility, as Rivers told Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times: "With the contracts we're hamstrung with, it's going to be minimum deals for the most part. There are no big deals out there that we're going to make, most likely."
The Clips have the mini mid-level exception available, which helps. They have no picks in this year's draft, which hurts.
And the guy making the decisions, Rivers, is the one who put much of this supporting cast together in the first place. He signed and then buried Spencer Hawes on the bench. He sent away a first-round pick just to get rid of Jared Dudley, who would have been the team's best all-around wing. He built this mess.
That hurts, too.
Still, it almost doesn't matter whom the Clippers add to the roster in place of unrestricted free agents Austin Rivers, Hedo Turkoglu and Glen Davis. The bench could hardly be worse.
Even if the Clips don't improve their roster with the minimal resources available, there's something else to consider: They might be good enough to simply run out the same group and win a championship next year.
They were that close.
Remember, L.A. beat the defending champion San Antonio Spurs in a gutsy first-round series that showed it had the poise many have since decided it lacks.
And if not for rotten luck and total exhaustion, we're talking about the Clippers dispatching the Rockets in six games.
If you could skip backward and play out that fateful fourth quarter of Game 6 100 times, the Clippers close it out far more often than not. One model had their chances of winning at 99 percent. Another pegged L.A.'s win probability at 97 percent.
As Lowe observed, the result was truly stunning:
But the NBA is a results-driven enterprise. The Clippers lost that game and lost the series, so the questions about their makeup naturally followed.
Saying the Clips need to make changes is defensible, even if there's a lot of logic to suggest that only the tiniest ones are necessary.
Saying the changes should focus on Paul or Griffin or Jordan defies logic.
Seriously, that's where L.A. should focus its rebuilding attention? On the three players who carried the team?
Matt Barnes shot 5-of-22 in Games 5-7. We're not going to focus on the task of finding a guy who might make a quarter of his shots?
J.J. Redick was nearly as bad offensively, and because the Clippers had him chasing James Harden around all series, his legs were completely shot by Game 7. We're not going to prioritize finding a capable wing to ease his burden?
Davis couldn't score and couldn't defend. We're not going to seek out a minimum-salary player who can do one or the other?
OK, sure, maybe trading Paul could bring back pieces, let Griffin run the show and create roster flexibility. But giving up a perennial MVP candidate for cap flexibility and a handful of unknowns is insane.
The Clippers could have won a title this year. They were one quarter away from reaching the conference finals for the first time ever. They led the league in offensive efficiency. They beat the defending champs.
You don't blow that up.
You make a few moves on the margins, hope you get lucky on some cheap free agents and run the whole thing back.
Per Pelton:
"Four years after acquiring Paul, the Clippers have won just three playoff series and have never reached the conference finals, which has raised the question of whether this core can win. My answer is yes. Again, the starters weren't the problem, and while the bench is unlikely to improve substantially, it would be hard for it to get worse. The Clippers were one non-terrible quarter at home from reaching the Western Conference finals. This group isn't that far away.
"
The Clips were right there. And if they do nothing, they'll almost certainly be right there again. Barring Paul's hamstring injury, bench-induced fatigue and a barrage of improbable threes from Josh Smith and Corey Brewer, we wouldn't even be talking about this team's future, because it would presently be in the conference finals.
Is it possible the Clips could get better by trading Paul, letting Jordan go or doing something else equally crazy?
Sure.
But it's wildly unlikely.
The likelier path to success—maintaining the status quo and adding fringe talent on the cheap—is less exciting. But it's blindingly, mind-numbingly obvious.
As the dust settles on the Clippers' season and hot takes give way to cooler thought, that'll become clear.
Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. You can follow him @gt_hughes.
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