LA Clippers Mailbag Questions #3 and 4
Question 3: Who do you think is the most tradeable, consistently played player on the team right now? Who do you think could replace them feasibly and work to strengthen the team?
Question 4: Do you guys think the LA Clippers need to make any major moves? The clock doesn’t run forever so when do they throw it all in for a chip?
We’re going to do two submissions here because they’ll touch on a lot of the same topics.
Naming the most tradeable AND consistently played player is a pretty tough ask. I think if you ask anyone who is the most likely candidate to find themself on another team after the deadline, many would go with Patrick Beverley. However, given his injuries, I wouldn’t call him the most consistently played player.
Bev is good and a key piece to this team. He just has a couple of things working against him – his injuries and his contract. He is one of the few mid-level movable contracts on this team and getting a lot of these rumored players would require sending him out to make the money work. The other options are Lou Williams and Marcus Morris but Lou said he’ll retire if traded and Morris seems a bit harder to replace and the team had to give up a valuable first-round pick to get him.
There’s a reason so many proposed deals by fans/media include Beverley AND a young player like Luke, Zu, Terance Mann, or Mfiondu Kabengele. The Clips would have to sweeten the pot to make a move.
This is where Question 4 gets answered. I don’t think we make a big move. There just aren’t enough tradeable assets to get anything big and if the team does manage to flip for a star (like Lowry), the depth would be severely hurt.
I don’t know when you throw all you have in for a chip. It sort of seems like they did that already, right? We’re as close to the hard cap as possible, have no first-round picks we can deal and have to superstars. There are only so many moves you can make at this point and that is likely why the team wants to only make small moves that improve them on the margins.