The LA Clippers Took Advantage of the Player Empowerment Era

The new look NBA involves players recruiting each other to team up. The LA Clippers took great advantage of that.

On July 8, 2010, NBA free agency was completely changed. When LeBron James announced that he would be “taking my talents to South Beach, and join the Miami Heat,” he started what many are calling the “Player Empowerment Decade.”

There’s been a huge amount of player movement in the aftermath of The Decision. We went straight from celebrating Dirk playing 21 years with the Mavs and Kobe playing 20 years with the Lakers, to what we have now.

We made fun of Shaq for moving teams so often (although many of those were after his prime years). In the past 10 years, we’ve got LeBron changing teams 3 times, Jimmy Butler changing teams 3 times, KD changing teams twice, Kawhi changing teams twice, Paul George changing teams twice, Carmelo changing teams twice. The list goes on and on.

And what’s more, most, if not all, of those cases were driven by the players themselves. It’s not enough to just be a good basketball program anymore. If it was, Kawhi wouldn’t have left Toronto. KD wouldn’t have left Golden State.

More and more now, superstars are making free agency decisions based on so much more than just a talented roster. Don’t get me wrong, you still have to have that. But you’ve gotta be more! And the Clippers have been able to take full advantage of that

For starters, you need to be located somewhere that superstars want to live. If you were to make a ranking of the best NBA cities – ignoring the roster, ignoring everything besides the city itself – your top 3 would have to be, in some order: Los Angeles, New York, Miami.

Lo and behold, those are the cities making moves in the NBA. You had LeBron and Bosh going to Miami, Butler going to Miami this year. You have KD and Kyrie going to Brooklyn. You have AD going to Los Angeles. You have Kawhi Leonard and Paul George going to Los Angeles. That’s 1/1 for the Clippers – being in a good city.

You also need opportunities outside of just basketball. Look at Brooklyn: billionaire cofounder of Alibaba, Joseph Tsai, is a 49% owner now and has the option to be the full owner in a couple of years. That opens up a suite of opportunities for superstars to grow their brand and expand into business ventures that aren’t possible with other ownerships. Not to mention the whole Roc Nation angle.

In Los Angeles, Steve Ballmer is a mega-billionaire with countless connections across the tech industry. Combine that with his obvious passion for the team and being in the city of Los Angeles, and that matters to these guys. It’s shades of Kevin Durant moving to the Bay Area and launching a business empire. One of the favorite sayings of NBA talking head/writer Danny Leroux is “Ownership is the biggest competitive advantage in sports.”

When he says that, he is often referring to having an owner/ownership group that will let the basketball minds do their thing (which, by the way, Ballmer is happy to do). But that’s also got to be expanded some. Having a way to get your foot in the door to talk with the highest levels of business-people, media gurus or tech leaders is becoming more and more of a draw to superstars. That’s 2/2 for the Clippers – opportunities beyond basketball.

Third, NBA superstars are teaming up more and more often nowadays. In the “player empowerment decade,” guys are showing that they don’t just want to go play in a nice city with lots of opportunities. They want to do all that with a friend. And it’s looking like being able to do that is becoming more important than going to a team with history. This is where having a smart front office is such an important commodity.

Taking the example of the Clippers (though the Nets followed a near-parallel path), our front office realized that the team is in a great city and has the kind of ownership that superstars would love to be in contact with. With those things in mind, it was only a matter of time before a couple of guys would start eyeballing the Clips as a potential destination for a team-up.

So Lawrence Frank, Michael Winger and Jerry West and the others did the smart thing. They built a team that was good enough to be attractive to superstars, but they made sure to keep the flexibility at all times to bring in a pair of superstars. They made moves like trading away Tobias Harris, a fan favorite, to bring in more young talent and assets.

By stockpiling as many assets and picks as possible, the front office was ready as soon as a superstar inevitably wanted to come here and bring a friend. So as soon as Kawhi said “I’ll come here if you can grab me Paul George,” the warchest was ready to open and send out what was needed. 3/3 for the Clippers – being a destination to team-up with another star.

In the player empowerment era, the Clippers played their cards masterfully and made themselves a top-flight destination. It’s not as much about the history anymore. It’s about being a destination, having the opportunity to expand beyond basketball, and being able to bring a superstar buddy. The Clips had all three of these in spades, and that’s how they managed to snag the premier free agent from under the nose of the “bigger brother” team in LA.