Pressure Is on L.A. Clippers to Embrace DeAndre Jordan Heel Turn, Win NBA Title
Does anyone like the Los Angeles Clippers anymore?
I became a Clippers fan back in what can only be described as the Eric Piatkowski era, back when the team was an afterthought. I'm not sure I considered it would ever shoot to such a faraway class.
Wednesday's DeAndre Jordan insanity set the stage for a squad which is bound (guaranteed?) to be the most disliked in the NBA. Even in its own city, Lakers fans make up the majority of the citizens.
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Clippers fans love Blake Griffin. He's funny, exciting, immensely skilled and is basically the symbol of the team's transition of basketball bottom-feeder to respected group. Many other fans feel differently.
Clippers fans loved Matt Barnes. He was fiery, aggressive, the embodiment of the Clippers' physicality. But those "many other fans" heard his mouth, read his tweets, watched his flagrants and weren't particularly enamored.
If you thought the casual fan didn't like the Clippers when they were just considered floppers or complainers, just imagine what the heel turn that is their 2015 offseason can do.
Paul Pierce, who seems to enjoy trolling the basketball world more than anyone, was picked up from the bridge he lived under in Washington to come out west. Lance Stephenson, far from a fan favorite, became L.A.nce Stephenson.
Even when people badmouthed the Clippers last year, they'd add some sort of caveat.
But I do like DeAndre. But Jamal Crawford is a cool dude.
Except, with a second unit that now includes Austin Rivers and Stephenson, Crawford's redundancy could be a problem, and he could find himself dealt before the start of the year.
DeAndre...well, let's just say people aren't too happy with him after a circus so entertaining that he put Barnum & Bailey's Houston location out of business.
It's not like the Clippers have any added pressure on them by bringing Jordan back to L.A. Clearly, that was the right basketball move. If they hadn't, we'd be living in a world where the "Clippers Sign Cole Aldrich" news which broke over the weekend, as first reported by 1500 ESPN's Derek Wetmore, would've had a completely different tone to it.
With Jordan returning to Cali, the Aldrich signing made as much noise as a feather dropping on the sidewalk. With D.J. in Dallas, it would've been a bomb.
"Clippers Sign Their 2015-16 Starting Center" has a slightly different ring to it, doesn't it?
So, from an actual on-court perspective, the Clippers are in better shape than they've found themselves in at least a year.
They shot big with the Stephenson trade. They added some small-forward depth with Pierce and Wesley Johnson. They added their most capable backup 5 since Chris Kaman in Aldrich.
Even bringing back Rivers, as first reported by Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, is understandable given his sparsely solid playoff run and the fact the Clips don't have the flexibility to add anyone other than a minimum-salary player.
You have to wonder how the Jordan saga created awkwardness around the league, though. We know fans are going to turn him into the next Dwight Howard, the guy they hate while placing the "diva" label because of his indecision and the penchant for drama that surrounds it. But will it have an effect on the rest of the league?
Even if teams are upset with the Clippers for "stealing" back D.J., they're still going to negotiate with Doc Rivers and the rest of the front office if L.A. has an asset they desire. But will it affect the Clips in other ways, like with agents?
No one was surprised when Woj reported the Clips were retaining Doc's son Sunday, bringing him back on a two-year, $6.4 million deal which can't pay him more than $3.1 million in year one. Since the New Orleans Pelicans declined Rivers' fourth-year option before trading him midseason last year, the Clips were capped at giving the backup guard whatever that option was worth, in this case the $3.1 million.
The first joke of the Rivers contract is something about how Doc paid his son, but here's where DeAndre comes in: Doesn't the Jordan situation make you wonder exactly how negotiations went with Austin and his agent, Dan Fegan, the same man the Clips and Jordan together may or may not have shut out during Wednesday's fracas in Houston?
How uncomfortable must that have been?
Brad Turner of the L.A. Times did report Fegan showed up in Houston for Jordan's contract signing. But the turn, the recruiting after the verbal agreement with Dallas, much of that was done man-to-man with Fegan out of the loop.
J.J. Redick brought up an interesting point on Zach Lowe's podcast at Grantland, recorded shortly after what he agreed was the best day in Twitter history.
People knock Jordan for not calling Mavericks owner Mark Cuban or coach Rick Carlisle or general manager Donnie Nelson or even Chandler Parsons to inform them he had changed his mind. But in many ways, isn't that the job of the agent?
Yet, there's no way D.J. is evading the criticism. And if he can't juke that out, how the heck is he planning on avoiding the boos which are going to pour down from every road crowd?
Redick mentioned that when he hit free agency a couple of summers ago, he came close to agreeing with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Flip Saunders thought he had landed the shooting guard, but when Redick later received a call from Doc saying the Clippers were interested, he worked out a way to head west. When he eventually decided on L.A.—and when the team set up a sign-and-trade to bring him there—his agent was the one who called up Saunders to give him the dirt.
Redick wasn't the messenger. Maybe Jordan didn't have to be, either. And if there wasn't anyone to play that role for him at such a twisted moment, what was he to do?
In the end, rationality isn't going to save D.J. from the masses, though. Fandom is usually just pure, reactionary emotion. The public has mostly turned on him. Such an overt change of mind—one that odorized similarly to Howard's will-he, won't-he in Orlando—rarely goes over well.
Fair or not, the days of But I do like DeAndre are probably done. L.A.'s most likable is still the same person, but he's turned into its most disliked. And with that, suffers the reputation of the Clippers.
Should they even care, though? Actually, do they even care?
Chattering with executives around the league shows there are team officials who aren't the biggest enthusiasts of the Clippers, either. And adding someone like L.A.nce doesn't exactly aid that.
Winning might not even help. Sure, it would shake off the can't-get-out-of-the-second-round knocks. But the jabs about Clippers' inability to get into the Western Conference Finals or beyond aren't a reason for the team's general dislike. They're a result.
People didn't start to like the Bad Boy Pistons just because they won titles in 1989 and '90. Actually, their popularity—or lack thereof—may have gone in an opposite direction once they started racking up those banners.
Basketball followers may have appreciated them, but they were far from pulling for them. I can't see why the Clippers, who fans dislike for a separate reason than one of the most physical and bullish teams ever, would be any different.
The only remedy might just be time.
Follow Fred Katz on Twitter at @FredKatz.
All statistics courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com unless noted otherwise.
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