What does it mean to hold onto someone for too long? In a basketball sense, that is. I’m probably not your guy if you’re asking that question about some other type of relationship.
Anyone who has ever drafted a fantasy basketball team knows exactly what this means. For the last few years, you’ve probably been sitting in the 2nd round, staring LeBron James in the face and wondering to yourself: will this be the year he falls off? Should I just pick Donovan Mitchell, even with no rebounding upside?
It’s impossible to know when a guy will hit a wall, and in James’ case, he has proven to be an Iron Man of historic proportions. But everyone—no matter what—will fall off. Save for Bill Russell, who hung up his sneakers at the pinnacle of achievement, every great athlete has had a somewhat awkward farewell tour.
Everyone falls off eventually, no matter how great.
Even Michael Jordan couldn’t stomach retiring on top, so he went to the Wizards to make things weird enough to retire for good. I’m anxiously waiting on how LeBron’s swan song will sound, though it seems like a 1:1 recreation of the iconic Wade-to-LeBron alley-oop photo with his son Bronny is leading the betting markets.
Everyone falls off, sure, but some people don’t have to fall very far. Some guys never reach the heights people expected them to fall from, merely hopping off a small soapbox but somehow still failing to stick the landing.
We’ll start with one of those guys, but everyone on this list overstayed their welcome on the Los Angeles Clippers (or San Diego Clippers… or Buffalo Braves, actually) in one way or another.
1. Michael Olowokandi (1998-2003)
Here’s a list of every first overall pick between 1996 and 2000:
1996: Allen Iverson
1997: Tim Duncan
1998: Michael Olowokandi
1999: Elton Brand
2000: Kenyon Martin
In this very carefully chosen slice of NBA history, Olowokandi is flanked by two all-universe Hall of Famers in Iverson and Duncan, and two All-Stars in Brand and Martin. They’re like a late-70s rock band, with two household names on vocals and lead guitar and two beloved backups on bass and drums.
But then there’s the triangle player. Nobody is really sure why he’s here or what he’s even doing. But he’s impossible to ignore. Eventually, the constant “ding-ding-DING DING” begins to haunt your dreams and invade your conscious mind, chipping away at your sanity until your entire lived experience morphs into a single, maddening chorus of chimes.
It’s probably not quite that deep, but basketball statistics won’t do the disaster of Olowokandi’s Clippers tenure much justice. He was good for around 9 points and 9 boards but cost the team their most valuable asset in years. Whiffing on a number-one pick seriously hurts, and having him around for five whole years was like the maddening triangle player from earlier.
Olowokandi was definitely talented and probably could have become a 15-10 player had he taken NBA basketball a bit more seriously. But myriad contract disputes, his alleged status as uncoachable, and a wildly confusing free agency after his rookie deal muted any chance of that.
Side Note: Number-one pick historians will note that I unfairly picked a 5-year slice—1996 to 2000—that conveniently makes Olowokandi’s pick look like the worst thing since unsliced bread. Had I expanded the range by one year on each side, noted busts Joe Smith (who was a solid player but never an All-Star) and Kwame Brown (a generational flop) would have been included. I’ll refer you to Darrell Huff’s 1954 book “How to Lie with Statistics” for further reading.
2. Bill Walton (1979-1985)
Since we’re going back to 1979 when the Clippers were in San Diego and neckbeards were still in style, let’s play a game created in that very same year: Trivial Pursuit.
How many games did Bill Walton play for the San Diego Clippers in his first three seasons with the team?
a. 246
b. 131
c. 14
d. 53
e. 79
If you guessed 14, congratulations! You’ve won a 50th-anniversary box set of Lincoln Logs. But enough playtime, because Bill Walton’s 14 total games in three years is kind of sad.
Walton was hailed as the Clippers’ savior, returning to his hometown of San Diego as the new franchise cornerstone. And he hung around for six seasons, playing in 169 of a possible 492 games. This was an era before modern conceptions of free agency really existed, so Walton—a league MVP and recent backbone of an NBA champion—returning to his hometown was special.
But his tenure was long and wholly unsuccessful. Walton himself was crushed by his failure, saying recently that he still blames himself.
“It’s my greatest failure as a professional in my entire life,” Walton said to ESPN in 2016. “I could not get the job done in my hometown. It is a stain and stigma on my soul that is indelible. I’ll never be able to wash that off, and I carry it with me forever.”
That’s pretty awful to hear, as Walton was a great player on a lot of great teams. After he left the Clippers with his head held low, he became the sixth man of the century on one of the greatest teams ever, the 1986 Boston Celtics.
Walton’s Clippers tenure is like if LeBron James had failed to bring a championship back to Cleveland and then the team moved to St. Louis. I’m sure Walton thinks the 1985 move from his hometown to Los Angeles had something to do with his failure on the court, so I hope he can forgive himself one day.
3. Eric Piatkowski (1994-2003)
Everybody, please say hello to a man who retired as the Los Angeles Clippers’ all-time leader in games played: Eric Piatkowski.
His career reads much more like one of a European soccer player, one who—after a long tenure of service for the team—became a club legend despite rarely contributing at a truly high level. Piatkowski was a prolific three-point shooter in his prime and started a hilarious number of games for the dark age of Clippers teams.
Despite playing 616 games for the franchise, he played a whopping three of them in the playoffs, making Piatkowski emblematic of the Clippers’ lack of direction for a number of years. His tenure on the team should have been shorter because no one on a rebuilding team should be there for nine years.
Just look at the roster turnover of the Process Era 76ers. Nobody on that team stuck around for more than a New York minute, because keeping dudes who aren’t contributing to winning in the building is a capital B bad idea.
Piatkowski is a Clippers trivia category, but shouldn’t have been around that long.
4. Loy Vaught (1990-1998)
Loy Vaught played in roughly the same era as Mr. Piatkowski but was significantly more productive. He was actually a valuable starter for several years and even won the prestigious nickname that I totally didn’t just make up right now: Dollar Store Karl Malone.
They played in pretty much the same era, were the same height, and if you roughly halve Malone’s stats in his prime, you get Vaught’s production. Malone is the NBA’s third-all-time leading scorer, so that’s not bad. Except the rebounds don’t match too well…and the minutes are sorta… awkward. Also, Vaught only had three good years to Malone’s like 15… hey I said it was roughly half.
Vaught was a walking 15-point-10 board player and could have been a valuable contributor to a better team. He was a POWER forward in the true sense of the word and a monster on the glass in his prime. But the Clippers cut bait exactly one season too late after Vaught suffered an injury that halved his production from 1997 to 1998.
And then it halved again in 1999. And then again in 2000. By the turn of the millennium, he had been marked down from 50 to 12 Cents Karl Malone at the Dollar Store. Any value he had as an asset cratered, and he will be remembered as a great rebounder and consistent player on subpar teams.
5. Elton Brand (2001-2008)
We’ve had some good players on this list so far, but Elton Brand is the first guy who was truly great while he was actually on the Clippers.
Had Brand not torn his Achilles, only playing eight games in the 2007-2008 season, he probably would have been considered one of the premier big men of the 2000s. He was a furious scorer and violent rebounder for a number of very productive years.
On the mid-2000s Clippers rosters, Brand was a fixture of successful outings. He even averaged 25 a game in a blazing-hot 2005-2006 season. But he played an unreal 459 out of 574 possible games in seven seasons with the team, putting on tons of mileage.
Even before his injury, Brand’s production dropped significantly in ‘06-’07. The warning signs were there, but the Clippers failed to use him as an asset before the straw broke the camel’s back. After Brand’s borderline superstardom, it’s hard to blame them. Nevertheless, opting out of his deal and leaving for the 76ers for nothing stung a bit.
But 2006 was a super awesome year, with him achieving All-Star and All-NBA honors as well as MVP candidacy. Maybe it was a flash in the pan, but I have a soft spot for flash in the pan-Superstars. It would make a great book: “2017 Isaiah Thomas and 2006 Elton Brand: A Tale of Two Single-Year Supernovas.” I’ll workshop the title.
6. Marcus Morris Sr. (2020-present)
It was once believed that Marcus Morris could be the legitimate third option on a championship-contending team. That was probably the theory when the Clippers traded for him in 2020 after he averaged nearly 20 a game on a weird Knicks team during the first half of the season.
But entering his fifth season with the Clippers, Morris is nowhere close to the third option the Clippers hoped for. It is questionable if he is even an option at all since he has spent the last four seasons slowly but surely playing himself out of the playoff rotation.
Don’t let his basketball reference page fool you. Though it may appear that he averaged 23 minutes per game in the playoffs this year, he only appeared in three games of a five-game gentleman’s sweep at the hands of the Suns.
It was only once Kawhi Leonard went down that Morris saw the floor, as his stature and play style make him essentially a sketchy, off-brand-emergency Kawhi Leonard insurance if things went extremely sideways all at once. Which they did.
Like many of the members of this illustrious list, Morris is not a bad player by any means. He could be a meaningful contributor on the right night, but the length of his stay meant the Clippers were holding the bag when he fell off.
But Morris hasn’t been insultingly bad for the Clippers, so his inclusion on the list is more of a preemptive strike than anything else. He has a $17 million expiring deal, and if this Kawhi Leonard-Paul George thing is going to work anytime soon, that contract needed to be moved yesterday. If Morris plays out his contract, it will definitely be too long.
7. Bob Kauffman (1970-1974)
Oh, you thought San Diego was the furthest we would go from LA proper? Let me introduce you to Big Bob Kauffman, the towering 6’ 8” behemoth for the Buffalo Braves, the former-former name of the LA Clippers.
The reason for his inclusion on this list is nothing revolutionary. He was a great player who hovered around 20-10 stat lines until he fell off harder than a penny thrown off the Eiffel Tower at terminal velocity.
Between 1973 and 1974, Kauffman’s minutes were cut in half and his scoring was trisected. He became a bench player on a much more talented roster captained by Hall of Famer Bob McAdoo. But that’s not what matters.
What matters is that on November 13th, 1971, the 6’8” Kauffman put 44 points directly on the head of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, going 19-27 from the field and willing his crack squad of teammates to lose… by only 21 points.
Maybe Kauffman didn’t become a household name, but dropping 44 on one of the greatest players in NBA history is something no one can ever take away from him.
8. Norm Nixon (1983-1989)
If I had a nickel for every Clippers player that fell off a cliff in the last year of their deal and thus made this list of players they held onto for too long, I’d have three nickels. That’s enough to buy a single rubber band bracelet from a financially struggling convenience store!
Save for his first year on the Clippers in San Diego, Norm Nixon spent his entire career in the city of Los Angeles. He was a two-time All-Star and two-time NBA Champion… on the Lakers, before being passed to the Clippers like a hand-me-down sweater.
It was a nice sweater though, and Nixon continued his rock-solid 15 to 17 per game scoring clip for three seasons until he hit a wall in 1988. You could do this for every team in the league, but having a player on the books when they become unplayable is a real issue for wannabe contenders. Stormin’ Norm was a showtime playoff performer in his early career, but the Clippers bought in too late.
The shrewdest General Managers know when to cut bait on talent before it truly falls off, and some of the most lopsided trades in NBA history are predicated on this concept. Danny Ainge trading away Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett for the entire future of the Brooklyn Nets looks like an all-time-super-genius move these days, and I’d bet some number of dollars that whatever Damian Lillard is traded for comes back to haunt whoever gives it up.
Everyone falls off eventually, and Norm Nixon just happened to do it on the Clippers. Trying to avoid that is how you dominate the league.
9. Milos Teodosic (2017-2019)
I chose to include Milos Teodosic—a truly awesome international player who just won a EuroLeague Championship last year—because he demonstrates one of my favorite continuities of basketball: someone’s game can be lost in translation.
Teodosic signed a two-year, $12 million deal with the Clippers in 2017, but never could put a solid NBA season together. The reason he makes this list is the maddening fact that he had a player option for the second season, which he picked up before being waived, effectively sitting as $6 million in dead cap.
But in 14 seasons in Europe, Teodosic only failed to average double digits twice and has been a prolific contributor to the Serbian national teams since 2003. His style of play is consistent with many other Balkan players, known for positionless skills and all-court mentality. Teodosic may have been an oversized point guard in the States, but in Europe, he would play all around the floor.
He was probably just more comfortable in the European system, where players are demanded to develop a game fitting every position. That’s very unlike the United States, where players are identified at extremely young ages and often hemmed into a particular positional style based on their build, height, and innate skills. That’s why so many big men can’t shoot free throws. It was never prioritized.
Teodosic is still cooking in Serbia, playing for his childhood club KK Crvena Zvezda. It’s unfortunate he couldn’t make it in the NBA, but I doubt he’s too beat up about it.
10. Kawhi Leonard
(cracks knuckles) I hope you enjoyed the history lessons, cultural commentary, and international analysis. But let’s get down to business. Kawhi Leonard has overstayed his welcome.
Leonard is a generational talent and the 34th-best player in the history of the league according to the NBA 75 list. But he has already missed essentially two of the four total playoff runs the team has made in his time there, playing only two games this year before consigning the Clippers to oblivion.
I would never imply that it is a player’s fault that they got injured, but I would absolutely imply that Leonard’s communication and accountability with the team throughout has been positively abominable. The lack of clarity about his injury status for games three, four, and five of the Suns series felt like a replay of his chaotic injury timeline during the 2021-2022 season, which he missed in its entirety.
Leonard has not sniffed playing 60 games since coming to Los Angeles, and the team is on the books for $45 and $48 million for the next two years. His injury history and massive body of playoff success make him sound like he’s 38 years old and ready to enter a desk job, but he’s only 31. NBA history says a guy like this should have 3-4 good years left in him, especially with how his style of play is not particularly demanding physically.
But the cultural detriment of Leonard is beginning to show itself. I question how committed a team can be toward winning when their quote-unquote leader seems uninterested in playing in games. Load management is important for getting guys across the finish line, but also sends the wrong message to the rest of the team.
Leonard is like the Small Forward Who Cried Wolf. It’s hard to take his absences seriously since they are so frequent. He’s not a very public guy, but that has the unfortunate byproduct of seeming like he’s so-so about winning in Los Angeles.
Even with all that said, getting Leonard in 2019—when most considered him the best player in the world—is a deal the Clippers would do again if they could. As with Marcus Morris, this is a preemptive strike against a new extension. Resigning Kawhi to a mega deal before he hits free agency in 2025 would be an apocalypse. Don’t do it. Do not.
8 Players the LA Clippers gave up on too soon
The LA Clippers have had multiple stars on their roster in the mid-2010s and early 2020s, but they've also had a few others slip through their fingers.