In the 48 hours leading up to the NBA trade deadline, the LA Clippers either traded or waived six players that were on their opening day roster. As a fan, what’s a reasonable way to feel about this?
In the weeks leading up to the NBA’s 2018-19 trade deadline, the general consensus around the league was that the LA Clippers would likely not be buyers or sellers. Already having a path to their two max-contract slots in the upcoming off-season, it seemed reasonable to assume that the team would be content to roll with the guys they had and simply push full steam ahead towards July 1st.
The Clippers likely would have done just that, had the Philadelphia 76ers not approached them with an offer for Tobias Harris, Boban Marjanovic, and Mike Scott that was too good to refuse. With the opportunity to amass assets and still remain flexible heading into the off-season, LA’s front office decided that it was time to sell, sell, sell.
Making follow-up moves that would see them trade Avery Bradley to Memphis and waive both Marcin Gortat and Milos Teodosic. The Clippers even managed to flip Mike Muscala (acquired in Sixers trade) for Ivica Zubac. The real kicker is that they managed to do all this while keeping their max-contract slot aspirations intact.
Typically, when you as a fan see your favorite team turn over such a large portion of their roster in the middle of the season, interest wanes and you ask yourself, ‘Why should I even bother watching the rest of the games?’ Normally that’s a perfectly reasonable reaction, and still might be. But, what the Clippers have done is a lot more exciting than your average, ‘Punt the rest of this season’ trade deadline. The Clippers’ front office made smart moves, acquiring young talent while simultaneously freeing up time for them in the rotation (or at least making it easier for them to break into it). In a way, they’ve spiced up what may have been an otherwise mundane march to the 8th seed of the playoffs. A sure-to-be drubbing at the hands of the Golden State Warriors.
With twenty-six games remaining in the regular season, the Clippers will be fielding their young talent and letting them show the league what they’ve got. As fans of the team, this will undoubtedly cause us to groan more than a few times over youthful mistakes, but it will also be very exciting. With the team having already spent two-thirds of the season showing what they can do without any true superstar players and moving masterfully through the trade deadline, we have the rest of the season to play with house money.
For all of the fans shouting, “#Free(insert young player here),” we may actually get a chance to see a lot of those young guys get some run. Doc Rivers will continue to operate his team as a meritocracy (or something close to it), so they’ll need to earn their minutes, but for the most part, the veterans who had been taking the lion’s share of their minutes are no longer on the team.
No longer do Clippers fans need to worry about Shai being relegated to the bench in favor of Avery Bradley. The dreaded Gortat/Bradley starting lineups are a thing of the past. The team will actually have a seven-foot (plus) center in Ivica Zubac that can protect the rim without being run off the floor simply because (with all due respect to our man Marcin) he’s old and can’t keep up with the pace of the game. He’s also a solid free throw shooter, by the way, going 86.4% from the charity stripe. Landry Shamet is a downright sniper as a rookie and has drawn comparisons to JJ Redick from the man himself. The new battle between he and Jerome Robinson for minutes on the wing will be very fun to watch and is ultimately a win-win for fans. Heck, we’ll probably even get to see a little Ty Wallace and Sindarius Thornwell sprinkled in here and there.
At this point for the Clippers, we don’t need to worry so much about wins and losses. If LA makes the playoffs then they can go into the off-season able to pitch free agents on their ability to still make the playoffs while almost actively trying to miss them. If they don’t make the playoffs, then they keep their draft pick (lottery protected) and have one more asset to either package in a trade or convert into another promising young draft talent.
For the first time in a long time, the Clippers are really making the right moves. As fans, all we have to do is enjoy the ride.