The future of the LA Clippers was at stake in Leonard/George acquisition

When the LA Clippers traded for Paul George, they weren’t just trading for Kawhi Leonard’s co-star. They were trading for the hope of making team history.

Towards the end of the 2018-2019’NBA season, it was believed that the impending NBA champion free agent Kawhi Leonard was going to be courted by two prominent suitors: The LA Clippers and the Toronto Raptors. The Los Angeles Lakers were floated around in the conversation, but were never really a serious contender until Rob Palinka and Jeanie Buss cleared cap space for a max-contract free agent after the blockbuster trade that sent Pelicans forward Anthony Davis to La La Land.

“He has nothing left to prove”, “With the super-team in LA, he can have the load management he needs.”

These were the echoes throughout sports media, as the Clippers seemed to fade slowly away from the conversations. Should he have gone to the Clippers alone, he would have been heavily overshadowed by the one-two punch of LeBron James and Davis. Even with the All-Star-less Clippers winning 48 games during the regular season, it’s a daunting task to take the Western Conference without a supporting big name.

As we would find out, the Clippers were Leonard’s focus during free agency. He WANTED to play for the Clippers. The two-time finals MVP had even spent the previous week recruiting Oklahoma City froward Paul George, a fellow SoCal native. In order to actually acquire George from OKC, the Clippers needed to provide a major sacrifice, going as far as giving the Thunder a “record-setting number of picks” along with rookie point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and a proven scorer in Danilo Gallinari.

But wasn’t Gilgeous-Alexander supposed to be untouchable during free agency? What happened there?

Davis to the Lakers happened. The Lakers had achieved their second superstar acquisition in as many summers and were poised to have the more successful season, not to mention even more media attention than they had last year with just their singular superstar. Despite not having one of the league’s most revered front offices, the lure of the Laker brand want strong enough to attract two of the brightest stars in the league.

The Clippers don’t have such a luxury. Their brand has nothing to do with history or major success, but their current roster success along with their championship coach, and well-regarded front office lead by Steve Ballmer and Jerry West. In order to lure Leonard, they had to beat their history. After having scouted Leonard for the entirety last year’s season, the Clippers designed their team to fit neatly around a superstar in the front court.

As was aforementioned, the Clippers led solely by Leonard had lost a bit of appeal. In order to make him happy, they had to snag George from his disgruntled role at OKC, per the request of Leonard himself. Though Gilgeous-Alexander was once considered “untouchable”, he was the difference between the Clippers being able to add two superstars to their roster as opposed to none at all.

Per the reports that Leonard was looking for a long term deal, this could have been the only chance the Clippers could have ever had to land him in the prime of his career. Had they not been successful, had Toronto made a more appealing offer to OKC regarding the placement of George and Russell Westbrook, the Clippers would have likely needed to wait out the next two free agencies before landing their major star — spending two additional years under-the-radar working harder to build a championship team. This front office wanted to make a big splash.

And boy, the LA Clippers made quite a splash indeed.