LA Clippers: 3 Offseason Regrets the Clips are Feeling
After a disappointing end to the 2019-2020 season, the LA Clippers were faced with several hard choices in the offseason. They knew they needed to improve, and with limited resources they needed to be creative.
Most of the moves made by the Clippers made sense – replacing Montrezl Harrell with Serge Ibaka was an incredibly positive move, and the Paul George contract extension is looking better and better every day. That said, not every move was a winner.
The LA Clippers are likely regretting some of their offseason moves.
As the team has given up several 20 point games and watched the bench struggle to hold on when they check in, it’s tough to look back and see some of these offseason decisions.
Let’s take a look at three decisions the LA Clippers made that are probably the cause of some regret.
LA Clippers Offseason Regret #1) The Patrick Patterson Contract
Coming off of a season that couldn’t be described as much better than “okay,” not many folks in Clipper nation expected the LA Clippers to have Patrick Patterson as a high priority. And yet, after the draft, the Clips inked him to a one year contract worth just a hair north of $3 Million.
Look, I’m not particularly hating on Patterson here. But last season he only saw the court for 13 minutes a game, and he only logged 10 minutes total in the playoffs. In his time on the court, he was fine enough, but 5 points and 2.5 rebounds while being pretty much exclusively a spot-up shooter doesn’t shout out to me.
It especially doesn’t scream “more than the minimum.” That’s what confused us the most; had the Clippers signed Patterson to a minimum contract, he would have made roughly $2.5 Million, but his salary cap hit would have only been around $1.6 Million.
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For a team that’s hard capped, every dollar counts and adding an extra $1.4 Million to our cap sheets is a big deal – that’s almost the cap hit for another minimum guy! Was the market for Patterson so competitive that the Clippers couldn’t get him for the $2.5 Million number? It’s hard to imagine so.
The other issue is that, given the structure of Patterson’s contract, he has an implicit no-trade clause. He can veto any trade that he’s involved in. So while that $3 Million might make some trades easier than the $1.6 Million, it has to be a trade to a destination that PatPat is alright with.
Making this move would be a bit more palatable if Patterson was seriously contributing to the team, but it’s hard to say he’s doing that. He’s appeared in 8 games so far, scoring more than 10 points twice and hitting more than 1 three twice. For a guy whose role is “hit three pointers” we’d hope for more than that.
When Coach Lue was introduced, Ballmer mentioned that one of the front office’s jobs is to figure out how to keep improving the team given the very tight financial constraints they’re under. It’s hard not to second-guess the Patrick Patterson contract when you start thinking about those constraints.