Clippers Messed Up Badly with How to Rebuild

Okay so... now they would pretty much have to lose out to have ANY shot at a top 5 pick in this super top heavy with potential stars draft. They are literally 10 wins better than the worst 3 or 4 teams. They needed to do this when they were 9 games under .500, not AT .500. Now they will likely end up with something like the 10th and the 13th picks in this draft. Not awful, but also very unlikely to draft big difference makers. To make matters worse, they stated their goal is still to remain competitive short term and push for the playoffs. Why? Best bet is tank for a top 5 pick this draft, have another around 10-15. Trade Lou and DJ for more 1st rounders. Then you let the rookies and young guys like Wallace play a ton of minutes and grow... while prepping for 2019 free agency class.

I would agree with you if I thought that is the route we were taking... but that is not the case. Ballmer has made it clear he does not want to have a losing team. A mediocre team that is barely relevant can justify higher ticket prices, season ticket renewal, media coverage, merchandise sales, etc... I think we are trying to re tool, a mini rebuild. The difference is that you do NOT tank. The reasoning is that you want to remain an attractive place for free agents. Now I am not saying we get one in THIS off season, maybe next. But....

In reference to the different paths to "rebuild" I wanted to mention that MY PERSONAL preferences are not one way or another... I do not know how I feel about the next step, and how to progress... SO it may even be that my preferences are to "trust the process" and follow the development of a high draft pick(s) like you mentioned.

It really depends on the OTHER path, and what free agents we are targeting. So until that becomes more clear, I do not know what to think.

But I do want to point out that the LA market is an X factor and can alter rebuild "game"/strategy.

Hard to say they messed up. Fom the comments this trade wasn't available when they were 9 games under 500, so the option wasn't there then. The other issue is that the plan doesn't seem to be to bottom out. They still seem to want to win, just with cheaper players and more flexibility. Bottoming out is not the only way to rebuild, so I can't really call it messing up.

Wanting to win and being able to win are two different things.Without two all star caliber players, forget it. DJ might stay.

I think clippers first priority is cap space. Drafting high is good, but no guarantee. Free agency with actual cap space is something the clippers haven’t had in forever.

West seems to like really solid role players around 1-2 stars.

It’s tough to see Blake leave this way, but it happens. West track record in building teams has to be respected so I will trust the process.

LOL Cap space means nothing to these Clippers after this trade. No Free big name free agent is going to want to sign here after this trade. The Lakers are right next door with a much more attractive pedigree and reputation for loyalty. Our best bet for finding superstar talent, is to build through the draft or trade for a big name superstar. I don't believe any one would come here by choice. Yes, the players all recognize that the NBA is a business, but this trade hurt our rep in comparison to teams like LAL or SAS. FA's may be willing to sign here because we have the money, but realistically, it's likely we can only offer them as much money as any of these other teams. Even if we're able to offer more somehow, we'll likely end up overpaying for an underperforming/overvalued talent (Gallinari?)

The bright side that I see, we have a fantastic team of scouts and our own G-League team to DEVELOP talent, so I'm confident we can make the best out of whatever picks we get. If we focus on player development and just keeping positive minded vets to provide leadership and guidance to the young guys, we can pull off a clean rebuild of our reputation as an organization that develops talent similar to GS or OKC. GS was seen as disloyal for trading Monta for Bogut but a couple rings later and a Warriors fan would laugh if you brought it up.

Agent and Postman better said what I was trying to say... there are multiple avenues to take

This is an interesting point. To which I quote SHaq, "They did to Blake, what the Lakers did to me." Every team does it, Lakers are not any MORE loyal than us. But you bring up a good point, this is more recent, so it may hurt our chances at a FA (at least in the short term, when everyone remembers.) However, you brought up another good point, with the example of GS. No one talks about their dealings with Monta or other players because they were successful (in recent memory).

This proves 2 things:

1) people are short sighted, and our reputations MAY hurt in the short term

2) winnning solves everything

With cap space, and big money backing, a free agent may not choose to come here (for whatever reason - you cited reputation, I can cite the fact that one star on this team will not make us "contenders".) However, with cap space and big money backing, free agenrs (plural) may come for many reasons (LA market, money, good basketball, fame/media coverage/relevance, business opportunities off the floor, etc...)

You mentioned the Lakers and how they are primed as well to draw FA interest. But I can argue that LA has to deal with the Ball family (which may arguably be worse than the RIvers family... not arguably, they are worse.) And the fact that they still need to make moves on their roster for more flexibility.

There are a lot of factors at play, but these are just my thoughts.

Yes, it seems like Ballmer wants to have his cake and eat it too. Maybe no one in the front office has the cajones to say the paths are mutually exclusive.

I don’t think we messed up bad. I believe Jerry west knows exactly what he’s doing and how to build a competitive team. He did it with the Lakers, Grizzlies , and the Warriors. It’s unfortunate that “loyalty” is being questioned however it’s a business and there is no loyalty. It’s all about money and Winning. If loyalty existed Shaq would of never got traded, Melo would still be on the knicks, Durant would of resigned with the Thunder, etc. Seeing Blake go sucks, but it was definitely time to move on. Now it’s time to break up the Rivers and get this ball rolling.

patience , Mr West is now the front office , the rest of them are his puppets !! Did you not see Mr Clutch run over to Ballmer and talk right after the buzzer sounded last nite !!

This is one of his post that make sense in “theory” but in real life it makes no sense lol.

No big time free agents will come to the clippers because they can just go to the lakers??? So the lakers can sign 5 big time free agents over the next 3 years?

That’s reason the cap was invented.

Who says the lakers will be going after he same free agents that the clippers want.

Building through the draft is overrated and hit and miss. Finding solid rotation players in the draft is very likely. Finding superstars that will change your franchise around. Not so much.

Celtics best 2 players the last 2 years (IT/Kyrie) weren’t found in the draft.

In the last 4 years how many true superstar mvp caliber talent was drafted? Hard to tell now, but not many.

Free agency and trades are how to build contenders now.

Before Blake came, I already watch this losing team, I broke my heart every night, expect a win but lost, hate Sterling too much, scream infront of my TV, the players come and go, my wife keeps saying me "change your team" I said ok, yet I still check the schedule of next game, then Blake came and CP came and DJ improved and we we're smiling, because we are winning, but can't reach to CF. And everybody said Rivers must go or trade Blake etc. Jerry West maybe our saviour or may not, but believe me we are Clippers no matter what.

So a sport writer told me via email. The Lakers wanted Blake badly. Clippers was willing to deal with them but the Flakers had no draft picks to give away. Lol. Haha Lakers fans. Lol. 😅

Btw...Blake change his # to 23.

Balllmer is going to say what he is going to say...To keep selling tickets. But lets look at this simple fact:

As of now, we only have 3 players left (DJ, Wesley, Austin) from last season's roster. Only one starter and 2 bench players. If that isn't a rebuild, can someone explain to me what a rebuild is?

Yes, Ballmer doesn't want a losing team but based on the fact I just posted, he has little to no say in what the final record will be. Especially if they still want to trade Lou and DJ.

It's really hard to imagine us trading BG to LAL. I think the truth is in the middle of what everybody is saying. We think of the Old Celtics and teams like that whose players stayed for a career. Our system of free agency and salary cap try to prevent teams where every starter is in the HOF. LAL traded Shaq BUT LeBron left Cleveland and may leave again. THAT is disloyalty. Much of success is wanting to do well and doing your homework. Being a leader can be a learned skill and you study leadership and lead by example. If the general doesn't have fire in his belly, the soldiers won't. A huge number of BG's problems were (and I'm not in the locker room) things of his own making. As far as rebuilding, you need a combination of FA's trades good drafting and good development and LUCK -- Karl Malone. YOu also have to have cap space.

LAC is no longer the dufus team. We got a good owner who will pay. We weren't really screw ups we were just mediocre when we were expected to be a top team. We have a hard core bench and don't have any scrubs. It's not a fluff team. We may not get super stars but we should get some good ones although we may have to pay. You can't have a competitive team with out two stars and one near all star.

As far as loyalty, all the players know the real story about BG and LAC and we don't. Maybe for better or worse they know something that we don't. It's not either or

Last night there were lots of seat empty. The lady in front of me is going to Detroit for a visit and see LAC/ DET. Piston's her tickets doubled over the last day.

Make no mistake it IS a....

If we keep DJ and Lou, then I can see us probably get in but if we lose them, we got a team full of good role players with no star power. Let see what Ballmer signs off on. There is no need to trade DJ now unless there is a great deal to be had. I'd wait till the end of the season to see if he takes the offer the Clips have for him. I don't think he's going to like what he's offered on the market. This is the time for teams who know they won't have the money in FA to get him. If they want him but can't sign him outright, time to break up your team and give us part of that, with a little helping of draft picks.

DJ got options trust me, with Kevin Love out with hand injury the Calvs need defense like yesterday. Oh by the way, the Bucks are also interested, its a matter of who will pull the trigger on getting DJ first. This is DJ's last big payday and I wouldn't settle, there's no loyalty in this league as with the trading of BG. DJ will get, if not what he wants close to it.

When you are in true rebuild mode then the draft is the main route to build. Remember all star players had to be drafted, lottery range or not. Of course it's easier to go the established name route(let someone else draft and develop players) but that will cost you more money. This is why you need a good scouting department. To identify potentially good players in the draft or those who were undrafted is important so you don't go overspending on overvalued names. I would not have signed Gallinari at his salary given his injury history but the team went for the big name.

I think this method of rebuilding is a good one. It's not about getting the salary cap to zero and letting rookies grow. That's only a part of it. It's about creating dexterity within the roster so that any move can be made that becomes available.

Once DJ is gone, we will have a lot of good players, none of whom is overpaid, save for Danilo, that can all be moved fairly easily. You want to bid a big free agent in 2019, the plan is simple. Move marketable assets for youth and picks to teams looking to improve that aren't free agency destinations, like Detroit, Milwaukee and about half the league. Then you have cap room to add a max or near max player.

Where teams get stuck, as we were, is in giving max or near max deals to players like Blake, Carmelo, Wall, Millsap, Barnes, Parsons, Howard, to guys who don't make your team a contender. These players then become nearly impossible to move, which makes it very difficult for your team to find ways to improve because of cap restrictions. Getting rid of Blake, who is a great player, was a great step in the rebuild.

If we draft well (like Boston or Golden State have) we are quickly a top team again. Even if we draft reasonably well, there are still routes available for improvement since we have no albatross contracts. That said, drafting well, or reasonably well, is vital. You have to get important pieces through the draft while they are on cheap contracts.

Wallace, Harrell, Dekker are good players for the 7 -10 roster level. Wallace, if he improves his outside shooting, could reach star level, I think. Bradley and Harris are quality starting players in support of stars as are Austin and Gallinari (if he can ever get healthy).

This seems to be a good way to go as it leaves the front office a lot of options, none of which gets the team stuck with any one player.

Sam, this a great thought-out post. repped.

Agree wholeheartedly with this.

our 2018 first round draft pick is not ours unless it is a top three or four, right? What's the status for our draft pick this year, does anyone know?

Great post Sam. My ex was drop dead gorgeous but was $ and high maintenance. I traded her for a good looking woman who could cook and I kept the dog (RIP Mr. Barkley). I also had spare cash.

However drafting is a crap shoot. It's necessary but I wouldn't bet the ranch on a high draft pick. Draft picks are good as trading chips as well. You also can't stunt a youngster's' growth by using him poorly.

Re tool/rebuild Pre owned/used Pacification/War Plus size/Overweight. Euphemism/Truth. It's all the same thing - tomato/potato. No matter what you call it, it's all about dumping some MF's and getting some other MF's who are better than MFs that you dropped without fu*king yourself.

It’s ours. Next 2 years is ours 1-14

It’s ours. Next 2 years is ours 1-14

Maybe its just wishful thinking on my part but, with Jerry West in charge, I see PG13 and Klay in Clippers uniforms soon

The full fledged head on tanking is starting to die. Philly, the Lakers, and so forth did it to the fullest capacity and yeah they're are on track but still haven't gotten over the hump and became solid playoff teams. The new model is Boston- draft extremely well and get good free agents or at least a star to come aboard. Hate seeing Blake in a Pistons uniform but I believe Jerry West is on tract. He's got to have a nice draft coming up tho. This Blake trade won't manifest itself until at least a year from now

no to Klay...fu#k that guy.

The new model is Boston, fleece some dumb GM to give you multiple future unprotected draft picks for 35+ year old players, lol.

Detroit is actually a team that's been trying to avoid the full tank, draft well, then make strategic trades for a star when available. Blake was the star they found available. Stanley Johnson was one of their draft picks. They got Tobias for some useless assets too. You have to also work the draft, try and move up, package a player and a pick to get the guy you want, etc. Detroit is not a big FA location though, so they didn't have a strong presence in that aspect. Houston is a team that has done it well, never tanked, just waited for opportunities. They have a far stronger FA attraction ability than Detroit, and so do the Clippers, so the flexibility method without tanking works better for teams like that.

Full blow it up mode is certainly not the only or the best way, as we see with multiple examples of teams that have been doing the lottery forever, but whatever method you choose, just have to do it well.

Yup, one good thing Doc did is lottery protection on all draft picks he traded, so if the team ever went bad, they keep the picks.

So we root for the team not to make the playoff this year or next

Trust the Logo!

I just don't see how any one can expect "Big Name" free agents to want to sign here after this trade. The Clippers have ALWAYS had a reputation for being disloyal to their players in the DTS era, and this move by Ballmer continues that tradition. That is where they messed up badly with this rebuild. Historically, there is no evidence to suggest that any big name free agent would want to come play for the Clippers. Our biggest signings were Baron Davis (who hated his time here and was traded), Caron Butler (who underperformed and was traded), and now Danilo Gallinari (the logo's first signing, who is injury prone and underperforming so far). Our biggest star ever, CP3, asked for a trade rather than taking $205million. The one guy that did want to stay, we call him a franchise cornerstone pay him $175mil then ship him to Detroit. If you're a player, none of that is attractive. Why sign with a team that will, Yes, give them the money they want, and Yes, provide them with a premium location in Los Angeles, but will trade them across the country 6 months later without hesitation? People keep citing players wanting to play for Ballmer and Jerry West and I just don't see a tradition of players going to play specifically for owners or execs, and if they do, it's an owner like Mark Cuban, or Jerry Buss who are renowned for their loyalty. The best I can see us doing is overpaying a guy like Aaron Gordon because he's young and still has room to grow. I can see Jerry convincing a young guy that we're turning over a new leaf and we're looking to build around players with the right kind of attitude. I just can't imagine Lebron, PG or Cousins choosing....

I wouldn’t worry about this year.

It’s just a PR move to suggest the organization is gonna try to win next year.

The following year is what I’m looking forward to. Besides, free agents have the option of receiving the no trade clause. Blake should’ve done that but instead bought into what they were selling. Unless West and Ballmer act like Phil Jackson when he was with the Knicks against Carmelo, then I would highly question management.

I think Tobias will thrive in the system. I predict he will be really good, and his numbers will go up.

Let’s not kid ourselves, Blake was loyal to the $175 million on the table. Blake,CP3,DJ has plenty of opportunity to win and really catapult this organization into places it has never been to. Time for a fresh start before the current plan spoils completely.

I don't think BG wanted to play for us, he wanted to be in LA. Our staff and owner are now different from the DTS era and not in need of therapists. As far as being disloyal to BG I think there are issues being the scenes that we don't know about and the league probably does. We don't really know why CP left. We gave him everything that he asked for. Why would we want LeBron? I don't. We'll just watch him physically fall apart and be a painintheass for the coach. Boogie and his Prozac. What do we mean by "Big Free Agents"? A bunch of guys who have peaked and in 3 years may be worse a la CP3? A "big FA" for us is some guy 23 years old with potential who will be comfortable with the newer style of play not Melo. Aaron Gordon is not a bad example. "Win Now" is crazy. Win when CP is old and GSW falls apart. We need two star players and we need them for the long run not three years.

Does everyone forget how this off season went? We offered Blake a 4 year deal, he wanted 5. He then scheduled a meeting with Phoenix to force our hands and that’s why we gave him the 5th year as his option. He played the part in negotiations too. I don’t think him seeing his number raised up to the rafters brought him to tears and made him sign. He legit got the money he wanted, which was more than he could get elsewhere. That’s why he signed here, not a loyalty or bc of the clipper for life crap. This may hurt our reputation for a couple months, but soon enough it will all be about basketball again.

And 2019 should be the summer we’re looking at for signing guys, not this offseason.

Forgot about the part we tried to low ball him.

Lowball or didn’t want to pay an injury prone guy max money when he wasn’t a top 10 player? Even if half the injuries were freak accidents, he gets at least one a year and 5 years from now, his body is going to be feeling the toll from these injuries. And to pay a guy like that $38 million is tough. I wasn’t mad about having him on the team but this move doesn’t upset me at all.

Harris is younger and more versatile, although not as dominant. I like him a lot. Bradley can be used to get a first. Lou could nab us another first. We could probably get a second for Austin from a team needing bench help. Toronto comes to mind and they have an exception about the size of Austin’s contract. There’s still a lot we could do to make some exciting moves.

It was a brilliant move from a business perspective, but probably a bit of a "shady" move from a player's perspective. As far as basketball goes... We're still in the hunt for the playoffs if Doc can get the guys to buy-in to what we've been building here so far this season. Trading Blake laments the "No more soft sh*t around here" motto. We will see what happens, but Cousins going gives a chance to stay in the hunt if we can figure it out fast enough.

Losing Blake takes a bit of the air out of being a Clippers fan, but how much different is it than when he goes down with an injury? We got 2 very good players in return for him, and they both can contribute to a team that's already proven it can win without Blake.

Getting over the shock of it all is the hard part, but all in all it's a good move for the franchise. It might feel like we took a step back losing our "superstar" but we've got a ton of options, assets and cap flexibility. We could be a contender again in no time, you never know, Jerry works fast.

Wasn’t sure where to put this, but with the current players I feel we can have a solid rotations with started and bench Players. If we make no more trades.

I think a starting line up like this would be Awesome.

Starters

PG. T.Wallace

SG. A.Bradley

SF. T.Harris

PF. D.Gallinari

C. D. Jordan

Bench.

PG. T. Milos

SG. L.Williams

SF. W. Johnson / A.Rivers / S. Dekker

PF. T. Harrell

C. B. Marjanovic

Lineups seem solids just wouldn’t know where to fit the rookies in.

LA Clipper 818, the problem is that Doc will only use 6 total guys with an average of 36 minutes each:

PG: Teodosic

SG: Rivers/Wiliams

C: Jordan

PF: Gallinari

SF: Johnson

Mark my words, this will be the lineup because as Clipper Joe* says, "Doc will go 'full retard' "

Doc is going to waste this opportunity to field a great bench...just like he has EVERY year. However, what Doc does is different from what should be done. Ideally, we should have no one player getting more than 20 minutes. What I mean by that is that we should essentially have different combinations of players. We have depth, and we should use it. We could have our team all be on fresh legs and play hard because most teams do not have our depth. By limiting every player to like 20 minutes we make sure everyone gets some burn and make it hard for the other team to adjust to so many different looks.

A few months ago, the LA Times even wrote an article of Doc burning out his guys. He essentially rides his starters and one sixth man (in the past this was Jamal, not Lou). It seems Doc doesn't adjust.

Doc &Son are gone !!

I wish. Maybe its the long tenure I have being a clippers fan, but I am pessimistic and I think he will be here a while longer

My fear is Doc will not use Wallace anymore. He essentially would be taking Austin’s spot, and PaPa ain’t doing that.