DeAndre Jordan has been involved in lots of trade rumors recently. But does he want them to happen?
A topic of conversation among Clippers fans and NBA fans alike has been DeAndre Jordan. As the trade deadline approaches, everyone has been speculating about what team he will be on after February 8. Will LeBron James bring him to the Cavaliers? Does he really want to be traded to the Houston Rockets? Is he worth a max contract if he resigns with the Clippers this summer?
He has been held up in comparison against every starting center in the NBA. DeAndre is the premier eligible bachelor among teams looking for a center.
But for the Clippers, DJ is more than an asset. He’s an important part of the Clippers organization. A franchise player, if you will. Does he want to be a Clipper forever, alongside his buddy Blake Griffin? Signs are pointing toward that.
On January 10, DeAndre was a guest star on the Short Story Long Story podcast with Chris ‘Drama’ Pfaff, where the two talked about everything from his childhood growing up in Houston to the challenges of raising his 2-year-old son.
DJ was asked about his free agency fiasco in the summer of 2015. If you recall, he made the decision to stay with the Clippers after he verbally agreed to sign with the Dallas Mavericks. On the pod, he explains that he felt like he owed the Clippers his loyalty and he has unfinished business with the team.
"I’ve been with this team that I got drafted by, for ten years, and that’s been extremely awesome for me to be a part of. … I wanna be able to finish something that we’ve started here. … If I wanted to win a championship I wanted to win it with those guys, here, with the team that drafted me."
What does Blake think?
Does that mean he’s in it for the long run with L.A.? It would be really cool to see him play along side Blake Griffin for their entire careers. After all, Blake isn’t against that idea.
On January 10, Blake sat down with Marc J. Spears of ESPN’s The Undefeated. Spears asked Blake about DeAndre’s pending free agency situation. This is what he had to say:
"He knows and he’ll know the exact same thing about how I feel about him and how much we want him to be here, to be a Clipper for life."
So is it possible that the two of them will stay in LA for their whole careers? They are capable of doing a lot together, but a lot of people might feel like the return might be greater if the Clippers trade for DJ.
The reality is, Blake and DJ have established something that you almost never see. They’ve played together for their whole careers on the team they were drafted by. They have a chemistry and understanding of each other that you simply can’t build through making trades.
Plus, if the two of them want to play together for the rest of their careers, you’d hate to see them get broken up.
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It’s fair to think that the Clippers’ best option is to deal DJ. But before you get too caught up creating trades on the ESPN trade machine, don’t forget the value DeAndre brings to the Clippers that can’t be duplicated anywhere else.