LA Clippers’ Reason to Not Trade Paul George: They Would be Selling Low
For two reasons, the LA Clippers would be minimizing their return if they traded Paul George now: his playoff performance and his contract.
Playoff Performance
There’s no question that the Playoffs and the Bubble were not kind to Paul George. His per-36 minutes numbers dropped from 26/7/4.7 on 44%/41%/88% shooting down to 20/6/3.7 on 40%/33%/91% shooting.
He was very open about his struggles in the bubble, and how the isolation led to anxiety and depression that affected his performance. This is in no way an indictment of that or a judgement based on that.
But the trade market is going to view that recent performance and dock his value significantly. If the Clippers were to trade him now, it probably wouldn’t be viewed as one of the league’s best players being made available. Instead, teams would see, unfairly so, that there’s a reclamation project, and that maybe taking a flyer on PG gets you the OKC version of him.
We know we have a star on our roster, but the teams who would be trading for him probably wouldn’t value him as such.
Contract
The other issue which pushes PG’s trade value down is his contract. He’s got a player option next year, which he will probably opt out of and re-up on a max. So teams trading for PG will view him as an expiring.
If you’re a small market team, do you give up a huge haul for a PG who could leave after next season? Probably not, right?
So that means that, if anybody’s going to trade for Paul George, it’s got to be either a big market that thinks they can convince him to stay, or a team that thinks adding Paul George wins them a championship, in which case he’ll probably stay. So we’re probably looking at
- New York Knicks
- Brooklyn Nets
- Miami Heat
- Milwaukee Bucks
- Philadelphia 76ers
- Los Angeles Lakers
- Golden State Warriors
- Denver Nuggets
- Dallas Mavericks
- Boston Celtics
Maybe I missed one or two, but those are the teams I could see even potentially reasoning themselves into a PG trade, but none of them are giving up what we would see as fair value. Does Spencer Dinwiddie and Caris Levert do it for you?
We’re not getting a star back from any of those teams, if they would even want to trade for PG (which several of them probably wouldn’t). Between his playoffs and his contract, we’re not getting anything fair back for PG, so it shouldn’t be considered.