The LA Clippers’ Front Office is stealthy, and it stresses me out

The LA Clippers have a great front office, but what makes them great stresses their fans out to an extreme degree: Their ability to operate in silence.

Sunday, June 30th, 2019. 3:01pm PDT. In less than two hours, the makeup of the entire NBA will change — and the LA Clippers will do and say absolutely nothing throughout that entire time.

Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving jump to the Brooklyn Nets, taking pipe dream targets off the board. All was tense, but calm, in ClipperNation. This is fine. KD is a generational talent — you take a shot, but maybe it was never meant to be. That’s fine.

Cue This Is Fine dog.

Decades of incompetence taught us that the silence probably means that the Clippers are going to do something like sign Harrison Barnes for four years and $85 million (Sacramento), or just not get anyone at all and have already burned the cap space for the next few years (Houston). That’s not the case anymore, but it informs our stress.

We didn’t forget what a smart front office with a supportive owner looks like — we’ve never seen one before. Not for the Clippers, anyway — all due respect to Elgin Baylor, but I think he’ll agree with me that he never received from Donald “The Worst NBA Owner Ever” Sterling the operational support that Ballmer provides Lawrence Frank, Jerry West, Michael Winger and Co.

So you’ll forgive me if I seem a little stressed out — this is new to us.

The defining personality trait of this collective front office is “heads down.” Trading Tobias Harris happened in the dead of night. The only indication that this was possible was a story that came and went months earlier with no real attention placed on it.

And then right after Harris led the Clippers to victory, scoring the winning shot, he packed his bags, and The Tobi and Bobi Show left for Philadelphia with Mike Scott.

It was that memory that we held on to as an army of role players and stars were taken off the board with nary a peep from the Clippers’ camp.

Al Horford to the Sixers. Silence.

Jimmy Butler to Miami. More silence.

The confidence levels were already low to begin with, but for many in the ranks of the Clipper faithful, cratered rapidly. No one was coming, all our eggs were in the Kawhi basket and he was definitely not coming to the LA Clippers. All this just to lose Patrick Beverley and come home empty-handed.

Day turned into night, and the Clippers front office remained a monolith, silent and unwavering. Midnight hits the East Coast, the bars open in Los Angeles.

It’s over.

And then:

And just like that, the LA Clippers struck. In a hot point guard market, with Pat Bev linked to numerous suitors, it was all but assumed that we would have to say goodbye to the heart and soul of the most beloved 2018-2019 team. And yet, now, here he is. Before the deal was even 24 hours old, Beverley was back with the younger players, working with them to prepare for Summer League, as if he never even went into free agency in the first place.

While our attention was directed toward our returning veteran and hero, Frank, West and the Rest stepped back out of focus, and disappeared again entirely.

This is the cycle that Clippers fans appreciate after the fact, but never in the moment. A long stretch of silence that brings the fans to their mental breaking points — and then a bomb, and then back to silence.

Most of the day flies by on Monday with the belief that the Clippers had no other moves left and were now focusing solely on Kawhi Leonard — until Miami and Philadelphia had trouble completing the Jimmy Butler trade and needed not only Portland, but the Clippers as well to finish it.

Somehow, for almost nothing, while working on convincing the Finals MVP to join them, after watching all the role players get taken off the market — they acquired a solid role player anyway.

And somehow, after Clippers fans realized that Butler to Miami meant that 2021 pick wasn’t going to be as great as initially believed — the front office went ahead and got a protected 2023 pick just to make sure.

Just like that, the Clippers got all the pieces they needed to continue their competitive future, with a Kawhi addition guaranteed to vault them into title contention.

The front office is quiet once again, with one last big domino left to fall. Maybe it happens for the Clippers. Maybe it doesn’t. What is clear is that as long as they aren’t talking, they’re probably busy, and that’s always good for the future. It’s just going to be hell on my nerves.