The LA Clippers Trading the Kyrie Pick Brought Us Here

Trading the pick that became Kyrie Irving is widely viewed as one of the darkest points of LA Clippers basketball in the last ten years. But it might have turned out to be a great turn for the franchise.

In February of 2011, the Clippers made a trade that has been held up for a long time as one of those “you think you have it bad?!? My team traded Kyrie Irving for Mo Williams.”

There was a bit more to it than that, of course. Baron Davis was on the third year of his 5 year, 65 million dollar contract, and the Clips wanted to get off of that to free some cap space (because we were a huge free agent destination under Donald Sterling, right?)

To make that happen, the Cavs demanded an unprotected first round pick in the next draft, so the total trade was Baron Davis and an unprotected pick for Mo Williams and Jamario Moon. Of course, the Clippers lottery number came up and the Cavs were given the first overall pick in the Kyrie Irving draft.

Ouch.

Like, really. Ouch.

Rightfully so, the Clippers have been lambasted since then about making that trade. To make matters worse, that offseason NBA introduced the amnesty clause, allowing teams to waive one player and completely remove his cap hit. Had the Clips held off on the trade, they would have been able to waive Baron Davis and save even more money by not taking on Mo Williams.

That said, had they held off on the trade, the Clips also probably would not currently have Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and the best bench in the NBA.

Let’s do a dive into the What-If machine…

It’s 2011, and the Los Angeles Clippers, instead of trading the pick, have just drafted Kyrie Irving and amnestied Baron Davis. They have an exciting young duo now in the 22 year old Blake Griffin and the 19 year old Kyrie Irving.

Which means that, when New Orleans superstar point guard Chris Paul wants a trade, the Clippers probably don’t jump into the mix. After all, they just have a super young point guard who looks extremely promising. In this alternate history where the front office was competent enough to not trade the Kyrie pick, it’s hard to imagine them trading him just a few months into his promising tenure.

Jump forward a couple more years. It’s the 2013 offseason. We can all remember that neither Blake Griffin nor Kyrie Irving were ready to be leaders for a winning team at this point in their careers, so the Clippers, at best, are probably winning something like 30-35 games.

So now, when Boston blows up the team and Doc Rivers decides he doesn’t want to be part of a rebuild? The Clippers are not going to be anywhere near his preferred destinations. Instead, the Clippers either stick with Vinny del Negro or enter the coaching carousel.

Further ramifications of this? In our timeline, Doc Rivers is given the lion’s share of the credit for DeAndre Jordan‘s development. The year before Doc came, DJ averaged 8.8/7.2. The five years after? 10.4/13.6, 11.5/15.0, 12.7/13.8, 12.7/13.8, 12.0/15.2.

Without Doc’s leadership, DeAndre probably doesn’t reach those same heights. So now instead of a big three of CP3, Blake and DeAndre, we have a big two of Blake and Kyrie.

Flash forward some more. It’s the offseason of 2017. Since we don’t have Chris Paul, we don’t have an All-Star wanting to leave and willing to work with the team to facilitate a trade. Of course, in our timeline, we sent out Chris Paul to the Rockets and received Lou Williams, Patrick Beverley, Montrezl Harrell and other players.

In this alternate timeline, that trade never happens. The Clippers don’t receive Lou, Bev and Trezz and don’t lay the foundations for a bench that would, in 2018-19, score more points than any bench in history.

I would argue the Blake Griffin trade probably doesn’t happen either. At this point, Blake is the face of the franchise, and the Clippers have zero indication they could replace him. He’s a superstar on a team that, in this alternate timeline, hasn’t really had one. The front office will do what they can to keep Blake and Kyrie together. The butterfly effect here is no Blake trade = no Tobias Harris = no Tobias Harris trade = no war chest of picks and young assets and Landry Shamet.

Which, of course, means the Clippers can’t possibly free up the space for two max contracts. By the time the 2019 offseason comes around, both Blake and Kyrie Irving are on max deals, and space is narrow.

But even if they could, why would Kawhi Leonard come? We don’t have a great coach, we don’t have a bench that can help carry the load when he needs to load manage. We don’t have the assets to trade for Paul George. If the front office moved one of Blake or Kyrie to free up space for Kawhi, he’d still be joining a team with one potentially injury-prone star, but without any supporting cast to let them rest.

Essentially, he’d be joining today’s Knicks if he joined those Clippers. And we saw how likely that was in this past free agency.

So while that Kyrie Irving trade was pretty devastating at the time, I’d argue that making that trade put some events in motion that led directly to us claiming Kawhi Leonard and Kevin Durant. So, maybe, all’s well that ends well?