Are the 2020 LA Clippers the best NBA team money can buy?

Rodney McGruder – $4,629,630

Rodney McGruder is another Clippers role player in a similar salary-range to JaMychal Green. While he’s made the most of the playing time he gets, we’d rank his value to the team’s on-court success a little lower than Green’s. We might find a few more swaps we’d be willing to make for McGruder where we said no when it came to Green.

His $4.63 million contract means we’ll be evaluating him against players earning between $5.79 million and $3.7 million this season.

The full list of players in that salary range:

Rodney Hood, Mohamed Bamba, Timofey Mozgov, Trey Lyles, Deron Williams, Aron Baynes, Kris Dunn, Josh Smith, Coby White, Lauri Markkanen, Ryan Anderson, Wendell Carter, Pau Gasol, Daniel Theis, Luol Deng, Jaxson Hayes, Buddy Hield, Frank Ntilikina, Ed Davis, Richaun Holmes, Frank Kaminsky, Mike Scott, Avery Bradley, Robin Lopez, Justin Holiday, Garrett Temple, Enes Kanter, Collin Sexton, Rui Hachimura, Kevon Looney, Dennis Smith, Jamal Murray, Kevin Knox, Cam Reddish, Zach Collins, Mikal Bridges, Alex Len, Cameron Johnson, Malik Monk, Dorian Finney-Smith, JaVale McGee, Patrick McCaw, Reggie Bullock, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nicolo Melli, P.J. Washington, Luke Kennard, Miles Bridges, Jakob Poeltl.

We’re going to say yes to every young and veteran player on the list who was a no-doubt-about-it or almost-swap for Green: Bamba, White, Markkanen, Carter, Hayes, Hield, Bradley, Sexton, Hachimura, Murray, Knox, Reddish, Collins, Bridges, McGee, Johnson, Gilgeous-Alexander, and Kennard. We’re also adding Frank Ntilikina and Miles Bridges to this list for their upside.

We’d also swap McGruder straight-up for Rodney Hood, Daniel Theis, and Malik Monk.

Just missing the salary-range cut are no-doubt-about-it one-way swaps for Tyler Herro ($3.64 million) and Donovan Mitchell ($3.63 million).